Cheyenne
Traditional Territory
Originally lived in the Great Lakes region and Minnesota; by the early 18th century moved west across the Missouri River into North and South Dakota; later settled the Black Hills of South Dakota and Powder River Country of present-day Montana and Wyoming; territory eventually stretched from southern Montana through most of Wyoming, eastern Colorado, western Nebraska and Kansas
Overview
The Cheyenne are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains comprising two tribes, the Só'taeo'o (Suhtai/Sutaio) and the Tsétsėhéstȧhese (Tsitsistas), which merged in the early 19th century. Today, they are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne in Oklahoma and the Northern Cheyenne in Montana. The Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family.
Historical Notes
Earliest written record of the Cheyenne was in the mid-17th century. At first European contact in the 16th century, they lived in present-day Minnesota. They were forced west over time and by mid-19th century were on the Great Plains. Still present today in two federally recognized nations.
Language and Culture
The Cheyenne speak a language belonging to the Algonquian language family, with historical presence recorded across Oklahoma, documented from 1650 to present. Language family affiliation is one of the primary means by which historians and anthropologists identify historical connections between Indigenous peoples across time and geography.
Federal Recognition
The Cheyenne hold federal recognition from the United States government, administered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Federally recognized tribes have a government-to-government relationship with the United States and are eligible for services and protections under federal Indian law. There are currently 574 federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
Indigenous peoples had inhabited North America for at least 15,000 years before European contact, developing complex societies across every region of the continent. The Mississippian culture, centered on the city of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis, reached its peak around 1100 AD with a population estimated at 10,000 to 20,000 — larger than contemporary London. The Ancestral Puebloans built multi-story stone complexes at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde between the 9th and 13th centuries. The Iroquois Confederacy, formed between roughly 1450 and 1600, united five nations under a constitution that influenced later American democratic thinking. Across the eastern woodlands, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Southwest, hundreds of distinct nations maintained sophisticated trade networks, agricultural systems, and governance structures. European contact beginning in the late 15th century introduced epidemic disease — smallpox, measles, influenza — which devastated Indigenous populations by an estimated 50 to 90 percent within a century.
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Source: Wikipedia.
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