The Northern Cheyenne Exodus was the attempt by the Northern Cheyenne to return to the northern Great Plains after being forcibly relocated to the Southern Cheyenne reservation in the Indian Territory. This movement occurred in the context of intensified U.S. Army efforts to subdue the Northern Cheyenne following the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Cheyenne sought to escape the conditions of their assigned reservation and reclaim their traditional lands in the north.
In September 1878, approximately 300 Cheyenne men, women, and children departed their reservation heading north, engaging the U.S. Army in their journey. The article indicates that the Cheyenne fought and won several skirmishes against the Army during this campaign. As the group traveled northward through Nebraska, they made a strategic decision to split into two groups of approximately equal size to increase their chances of success in reaching their destination.
The outcome proved mixed for the Northern Cheyenne. One group successfully reached Montana, achieving their objective of returning to the northern plains. However, the other group was captured and imprisoned at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. Those imprisoned escaped in January 1879 and attempted to flee north, though most were subsequently captured or killed during the Army's pursuit. Despite these hardships, a few Cheyenne escaped and remained on the northern plains. Notably, seven Cheyenne warriors were tried and acquitted of killing white civilians during their flight, and the Cheyenne survivors were ultimately allowed to remain in the north, representing a partial victory for their cause.
The Indian Wars encompass more than three centuries of armed conflict between the United States government, American settlers, and Indigenous nations — from the Powhatan Wars of the 1620s through the final Plains campaigns of the late 19th century. The eastern conflicts — King Philip's War (1675–1676), the Tuscarora War (1711–1715), and the Creek and Seminole Wars — largely ended organized Indigenous resistance east of the Mississippi by the 1840s. On the Great Plains, the Sioux Wars (1854–1890), Red River War (1874–1875), and Nez Perce War (1877) followed the displacement wrought by the transcontinental railroad and the near-extinction of the American bison — an estimated 30 to 60 million animals reduced to fewer than 1,000 by 1890. The Ghost Dance religious movement and the massacre at Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890), in which US cavalry killed approximately 250 Lakota men, women, and children, marked the effective end of armed resistance. The Dawes Act (1887) allotted reservation land to individual families, opening millions of acres to white settlement and reducing Indigenous landholdings by about two-thirds over the following decades.
3 soldiers killed, 3 wounded; 2 Cheyenne killed
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