Closed Captions

Conrad Fiser, Northern Cheyenne tribal historic preservation officer, traces Cheyenne migration from the Hudson Bay area to the Great Plains, their transition to horse culture, and their limited contact with Lewis and Clark. He discusses Prophet Sweet Medicine's prophecies, major battles including the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and the devastating impacts of disease and westward expansion on Cheyenne society and sovereignty.

Transcript

0:01 glad to have you with us this is the tent of many voices and it is part of a traveling exhibit that has been following the Lewis and Clark Trail since January of 2003 started in monachello the place of Jefferson's dream went on across through the eastern states then from St Louis to the Mandan villages in ' 04 in ' 05 from the Mandan Villages all the way to the Pacific
0:25 Ocean and now here we are in ' 06 and we're doing the return Journey just as and Clark did 200 years ago and we're delighted to be here at pompy's Pillar thank you all very much for inviting us here and thank you all for coming out to visit with us and to see all the festivities that are going on here this is a commemoration of that event 200 years ago Lewis and Clark crossed the
0:50 continent and they could not have done it alone if they if it had just been Lewis and Clark it would have been another of those failed expeditions to the West so with that in mind I'd like you to remember the people who assisted Lewis and Clark on their Journey the Native Americans gave them food they gave them directions and they often helped them with their transportation needs so with that I'd like to introduce
1:13 you to our next speaker today we have with us Conrad fiser who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne tribe he is also the tribal historic preservation officer and an educator at Chief Dull Knife College he's going to be talking about Northern Cheyenne history culture so
1:31 let's please make him welcome thank you very much first of all I'd like to thank uh Mary Ellen and and the rest of the folks for inviting me over here to be part of this signature event Clark on the
1:55 Yellowstone as I was leaving this morning I wasn't sure exactly how long it was going to take to get here and as I was about 20 mil away I noticed that time was getting a little short so I thought to myself well I said if I'm late I'm going to have to come up with something for for
2:18 being late and I thought about the about Indian time and how Indian time usually means you're either 15 20 minutes early or 15 or 20 minutes late so fortunately uh I didn't have to use that but uh that did cross my mind real real quick I needed to use some
2:41 excuse this is actually the first time I've been here and uh it's such a wonderful site to see all the folks that are gathered here as part of this signature event I know there's a lot of folks from out of town that are also part of it and many different tribes when I had gotten a call to do the presentation I wasn't exactly sure what
3:05 this would entail and I think it's mostly based on the audience and wanting to uh at least tie something into the Lewis and Clark event I guess I should first start off and say that uh the Cheyenne people had
3:29 some kind contact with the the uh explorers that came from St Louis limited contact over near the uh present day border of North Dakota and South Dakota along the Missouri River however it was very very short uh one of our some of the leaders
3:53 at the time had uh refused or rejected the medal that was was offered by Lewis and Clark and this was based on the prophet sweet medicine who said that uh um and he was a prophet that gave us
4:16 our spiritual ceremonial ways the structure the political structure of the of the cheyen people in one of his prophecies he mentioned that someday we will encounter this Strang looking man with hair on his face and that he will bring with him an
4:40 animal with a long man a strange animal and that we were not to be part of uh his enticements because if we do and he would also bring a strange animal with split hooves and the Animals meat would be sweet and
5:05 that we would take a liking to this meat and then we would be under the uh opes of this strange man um and so that was part of the and there were a number of other um prophecies that he that he uh gave to the cheyen
5:27 people but as far as the Louis and Clark this was something that sort of tied into to the coming of the European into what we considered our homeland the Black Hills area it was sort of
5:50 uh strange that some of the prophecies that he predicted uh have come true in many way ways we' become more dependent on uh the Western way of life today we love beef beef is good uh we're in the process of
6:14 revitalizing our buffalo program and uh I think there's a trend toward ethnicity in terms of living at least partially some of the old ways just a brief history about Lewis and Clark first of all I'd like to give you a little background on the
6:38 Cheyenne people the origin of the Cheyenne people uh their migration just to give you a little background about who we are where we came from where we went what our role was in the shaping of the Western Plains Wars many of you may or may not know that the Cheyenne were involved in many
7:03 battles with the US government uh during the 1800s and we sort of shaped the plain's Indian uh history along with several other tribes one of the last tribes to to uh throw in the tow so to speak uh many of you know the battle of the
7:26 Little Big Horn or as we call it where long hair was wiped away I'll be talking
7:33 a little bit more about it here uh
7:57 later just like to thank everybody for being here here and me being part of this uh my Indian name is Travoy been passed down from many generations with the Cheyenne and with lot of tribes the people the faces may come and go but the names are always carried down in a
8:18 lineal sense so the name Travoy has been with our family for many generations normally those are those names are inherited um through your lineal descent the Northern Cheyenne are part
8:40 of the Algonquian speaking language family the alangan speakers include uh the Ottawa the Mohan the kapoo the poaty the cre the black feet and our closest family or the closest language family would be the
9:05 arapo uh and this is based us on oral history and also on uh linguists who can trace the languages back to their mother language and if you put all that together our history start in the uh Hudson Bay Area in fact that's where a lot of lot
9:27 of tribes have their origin stories the land of many many lakes or Turtle Island and as our oral histories indicate we call this time the ancient time where there was no horses no dogs cold weather we were mostly hunter
9:52 gatherers didn't have the bowl and arrow used Spears fished in The Lakes uh and this can be verified through um scientific data and also through our oral histories sometime there was an event that occurred a pressure that moved the Cheyenne Southward in our oral
10:16 histories it indicates that there was great disease that forced the movement and also famine into the uh Great Lakes area in our oral histories uh it says that we had crossed the great Marsh so great was the marsh that our Scouts were uh afraid to cross this vast Marsh
10:40 for the fear of being lost and it was uh they used long poles to be able to find their way around and as we know it today it's on the western part of the Great Lakes area and uh we lived in the close to the Min to the Great Lakes area for a while uh cultivated uh wild rice fished small
11:04 game Hunters ate a lot of bird um there's a hill there that is called uh Hill of the skunks and in this area we we uh had an annual skunk hunt and uh so we feasted on skunks every fall I'm not sure if I do that today I've never eaten a skunk but uh
11:28 that's part of our oral histories I don't know if we've got a skunk Society or not but uh and also um this was the time of the bow and arrow in our histories we call it the time of the bow and arrow so if you look at it from a scientific perspective it's probably
11:51 1,500 2,000 years ago that's about the time scientists say that the bow and arrow was uh invented here in the northern country little later on we uh moved even further south into the down to the Missouri and where the Minnesota River
12:14 Cross and by and that was during the 1600s between the 16 hundreds and 1700s we became let me back up just a little bit in the in Minnesota we lived in small Dome shaped huts and uh then by the 16 1700s we started moving Westward lot of pressure from the
12:39 Eastern tribes uh kind of a trickle effect we became part of the Corn Belt which is the area where you grow a lot of corn and tobacco and beans and squash that sort of thing and at that point we became a sedentary
13:04 tribe conducive for farming and because of the pressure there we slowly moved our way northward into the dtas all the way up to North Dakota in Southeastern North Dakota is a river called Cheyenne River starts with an
13:26 S the Sue call it where the Cheyenne plant corn and that's a documented Palisade or what is commonly known as the beasterfeld site so his in historical times and also in our oral history and also uh from other tribes that was a known
13:51 Cheyenne uh Fort and uh as we started going Westward we start to see instability of of the climate um at that point we we moved suddenly
14:13 Southwest we had a lot of pressure from the caboy uh they by this time they had acquired the gun whereas we still had the bow and arrow and we have many stories about the defeat by the Asino and the chipas because of of the their ability to acquire the gun before the Cheyenne
14:38 folks did by the early 1700s we had moved into the Missouri area and at this time we had acquired the horse so we went from a fishing bird gather wild rice cultivators to a to another transition to being
15:02 farmers and now we were in another transition phase into a horse culture and at this time we also became allies with the araro and had a loveh relationship with the Mandan and the groan and of course the feared a cine
15:25 boy because of their their uh the technology that they had acquired from the fur Traders further up north and it's about this time in the late 1700s that we start seeing visitors from the west from the north and from the
15:49 south there was actually uh folks from Mexico that would come up and visit the tribes the the uh the senary tribes the Mandan rarra and Hada and in our oral histories um we have stories about
16:11 um M the Mexicans coming up north to visit uh the Black Hills area about this time there's some confusion whether or not not the
16:30 Cheyenne had actually uh met the the uh non indan non-indians and it was at this time that we discovered our the center of our universe and that would be beb or as we call it
16:53 NOA this became this is where we we found our political social structure this is where the Prophet sweet medicine uh gave the arrows the sacred bundle of the Cheyenne people we were also in that phase of becoming a horse culture we we were
17:18 still growing tobacco and corn but we' plant and then we go out to the Plains and uh acquire food the Buffalo was the primary source of food at this time and it was at this one of these times when the Cheyenne had planted food
17:41 on another river called the Cheyenne River starting with a CA that uh and they plant this corn and what they did was they'd have these Plum bushes for most of you they're familiar with Plum bushes they have these thorny Thorns coming out and what they did was they tie the plum bushes together and they'd
18:03 make a fence to keep out other animals particularly Buffalo and deer and during one of their return trips to harvest the corn they noticed strange Footprints and they weren't moccasin Footprints these had a
18:26 strange uh print to them and they they couldn't figure out who it was but we do know that there was uh uh routes being traveled by by Mexicans and non-indians around the Black Hills area and it was about this time in 1806 I think on Lewis and Clark's return trip
18:50 that he offered the medal to the cheyan people and initially it was refused but eventually and the and the the purpose of that was that the cheyen knew that this was uh Bad Medicine based on the the Prophecies of our of sweet medicine so that was that was our
19:15 uh encounter with Lewis Lewis and Clark the however we did ask him for to teach us how to uh trap Bieber and other pelts we didn't know the the the the way to trap them to where they could be sold
19:39 uh commercially and uh we never heard back from him after that so that was kind of our he promised he'd bring back the traps but he he never did come back we're still waiting for him by the way although we don't have any more
19:56 Beaver so the point is moot during this time we went through this transition of being a horse culture called the time of the
20:17 Buffalo from the from the Palisades in eastern North Dakota to the time we acquired the horse uh Edge just changed the social organization of the cheyen people as with many other tribes number of of advantages of the horse is that uh we didn't look at the
20:42 horse initially as being a beast of burden we looked at him as in Practical terms as feeding a lot of families so probably the first several few horses were probably good eaten until we figured figured out that they could also be used for as pack animals and of course as we know the horse has many
21:06 advantages versus a dog dog can only carry so much uh weight uh movement is fairly slow whereas a horse uh you know you have a many advantages just Superior to to to the uh dog to the canine
21:30 and uh so it changed dramatically the way we viewed our hunting our Warfare um our trade it became a trade item of value to the to the sedentary tribes further north and this would be the Mandan and Hada and raro um so we sort of found ourselves as
21:55 being middlemen as we made our way past the Black Hills and further south and the incentive for M moving south by the 18 early 1800s was that the horses uh came out of Mexico so if if you have something of
22:17 value you want to go to the source and this would be to move further south and but first of all we had to uh we we had to to try to convince some of the ples Indians that were in our way to move further south and that was through Warfare and so the Kwa the pon the kamachi the crow the
22:41 shishoni were some of the groups that we fought uh during that time um by the 1850s uh we were pretty well established uh all the way down to Oklahoma and New Mexico we covered uh eastern Kansas or uh
23:03 Western Kansas excuse me western Nebraska all along the Rocky Mountain front in Wyoming here in Southeastern Montana uh Colorado uh and we developed um a political system where we had the Council of
23:27 44 10 major bands there was 10 major band of Cheyenne and you had uh out of that 10 major bands were the Council of 44 so uh and then we had four Omen Chiefs that sort of made up the
23:50 structure of the of the Cheyenne and this was also the beginning of the if we look at the horse we start to see this phenomenon called the uh counting coup and I think that was evident in many Plains tribes became more of a status uh
24:15 symbol uh Rank and Prestige and the the idea of course is to touch the enemy without killing it e either with your hand or or with this uh stick the killing of an enemy was secondary but the primary purpose of receiving recognition was to count coup
24:40 on on the enemy and also the scalping was also uh uh considered a trophy but it was it was also not the primary purpose for for uh getting recognition and so horse stealing became sort of a uh a real special skill and the cheyen were
25:02 no different than any other tribe in in acquiring these types of skills became very very expert Horsemen this was the beginning of the separation between the northern bands and the southern bands of the Cheyenne people this was also the beginning by the 1850s of Westward
25:25 Movement uh to California and some of the the other places Santa Fe Trail became established uh later the Oregon Trail and much later the Boseman Trail so you start to see these divisions and of course this led to uh many many wars
25:50 for the Cheyenne people not only were they warn with uh primarily at this point the pan the Kwa the shishoni and the crow uh but also with uh the US government at the time as I mentioned we found ourselves in
26:14 the um mids of a of a this uh Buffalo trade forts bent was established in Southeastern Colorado to trade with Buffalo we still were friendly with the tribes over in in North Dakota we still had these ties with them uh we traded horses for guns and other Western
26:38 Goods um we we sort of deviated from making arrowheads because by that time metal points were were the choice of use and metal kettles number of other things uh European Beads number of European trade items but the primary
26:58 Focus was Buffalo and uh by that time there was it was just a a traumatic change for the Cheyenne people not only for the for the uh Cheyenne but also for the animals as well I always uh say that you know there was a number of different diseases that
27:20 were coming into to the Plains Indians at the time small pox was was one of the uh primary diseases but also with the animals the Buffalo uh acquired brucelosis from the exotic animals coming in from uh uh Europe so it wasn't only just the and also plants so it wasn't just the people but it was also
27:45 the animals and the plants that were being affected uh tremendously really a time of instability because you have uh not only changing to a horse culture but also the of Western Civilization into what we call considered uh Cheyenne territory so just a tremendous change for the Cheyenne people in terms of
28:10 their political structure their social structure and also the whiskey Traders coming in from Mexico so we kind of took a liken to those to that fire water also not very good for us and as a result of this conflict the gold rush in California westward
28:33 migration uh Discovery discovery of gold in the Pikes Peak uh and also the Black Hills in the early 1860s uh number of events occurred and that would be the plains Wars um the first Treaty of the Cheyenne was
28:57 the friendship treaty and that was near the Black Hills and later on there was another other treaties Fort laramy Treaty of 1851 another treaty in 1865 and then uh 1868 Fort laramy Treaty of course none of them none of them ever held they were
29:21 all broken so but we tried to we tried to be friendly and and make treaties as a result of these conflicts uh we have a whole host of battles that I just want to name a few that may or may not sound
29:45 familiar uh the fort fetman fight uh in Wyoming occurred in the mid 80s M mid 1800s gentleman was bragging about how he could uh ride through Indian uh country with 80
30:08 men um and come out Victorious while he was half right he drove into Indian into a bunch of Indians but he he never made it out so uh so his prediction was half true uh the wagon box fight is another one here in
30:32 Wyoming um and these all occurred in the mid 18 hundreds the Powder River Battle where we start to see the rounding up of Indians that weren't uh didn't necessarily want to go to reservations and these are all Cheyenne battles the uh Tongue River
30:56 Skirmish Battle of the Rose some of you probably know that that was a Prelude to the battle of the Little Big Horn and of course the most famous that everybody knows is the Battle of the old big horn and also after that after that battle was uh Chief D knife P battle uh with the US government and after that
31:21 was the Wolf Mountain battle um or Battle of B Billy but let me just go back to the fetman we call it 100 in hand because of the fact that uh one of our spiritual leaders had had a vision that 100 soldiers would be handed to the Cheyenne people so the
31:44 Cheyenne know that battle as 100 in hand the battle of the Rose but we know this battle as where the girl saved her brother during the battle the uh one of the uh Warriors was caught in a
32:07 crossfire and his horse was shot under him and uh there was in impending um death looming the sister who had actually been part of the the uh battle saw this and she ran the gauntlet to save her brother
32:29 and came back and this was witnessed by uh a number of Warriors and also by the calvary and so the Cheyenne know this as where the sister saved her brother Battle of the Little Big Horn is what we know as where long hair was wiped
32:53 away uh and it we call it that because early on uh during the battle of the was in Oklahoma in 196 1866 General George Armstrong kuster had a battle with the Cheyenne he did capture a
33:17 village but some of his men were killed there and after that battle was over he smoked the pipe with the with our sacred Arrow keeper Keeper of the arrows and after the after the smoke the ashes were wiped on the ground on his boot the sacred Arrow keeper wiped the
33:42 ashes into the ground and when you smoke a pipe you've you've committed yourself to to keeping that promise and that sort of sealed his his Destiny according to the Cheyenne that if he ever fought the Cheyenne Again that his his ashes would be wiped into the ground so today the Cheyenne know this battle as where long hair was wiped
34:06 away so we had this uh intimate relationship with Lon hair Wolf Mountain the Battle of Wolf Mountain was after the Battle of Little Big Horn and we we know it as where big Crow danced in front of the soldiers he was a warrior that uh to show his bravery would dance in front of the
34:30 soldiers and shoot at them um uh to show his bravery and his medicine and uh unfortunately after the four third time of dancing uh he was mortally wounded but the odds were against his favor anytime you see a bunch of people shooting at you and you're going back
34:55 and forth you're probably going to get shot soon or later and that's kind of what happened here and of course when we were we finally uh threw in the tow in 18 uh 77 the spring of 1877 we were moved down to Oklahoma to Indian Territory a lot of you know that this
35:19 was considered Indian Territory a lot of the Eastern tribes were moved over to Oklahoma territory in a uh event called the Trail of Tears uh the Cheyenne were no different some of the Southern bands had already established a reservation there uh for the northern bands this was a long trip on foot we stayed there for a year and a
35:43 half by 7 1878 um through the leadership of Chief D knife and Chief littlewolf and some others wildhog um Turkey Leg some of those folks we decided we wanted to come back up to our Northern home Homeland we felt this this was our our homeland and it was an
36:05 incredible journey of endurance and uh unfortunately part of the band was captured in Fort Robinson and uh Northwestern Nebraska and there they broke out a lot of folks were killed finally we made it to our homeland here in the North Country uh and in 1884 the Northern Cheyenne reservation was
36:29 established uh here in Southeastern Montana in the present Community called lame deer and uh it's an area that we hold dear to our hearts and that um uh we we try to maintain its uh PR pristine condition we've we've uh not allowed any
36:53 type of natural um or Economic Development terms of our mineral resources because our our ancestors fought long and hard to secure this area for for the northern cheen people um another battle was the San Creek battle I don't know how many of you know about it but it was in uh um
37:16 Colorado so we had a long hard uh history with the US government the shaping of federal Indian policy here on the PLS uh the last confrontation was on during the reservation days when uh a couple of young gentlemen decided that because they had killed a cow they weren't going
37:38 to go to to jail they said we'd rather die as Cheyenne Warriors and so they the night before they uh camped on a on a but and they told everybody they said bring the soldiers bring the Indian police cuz tomorrow we're going to ride down this hill and we're going to
38:01 die as Cheyenne Warriors and this was during the reservation days uh and that's what they did the next day they rode down in front of a firing line consisting of soldiers out of my city and also the local Indian police uh one of them head Chief made it through the line the other one uh was
38:23 killed as he was coming down the hill so that was the last confrontation with the US government was in 1890 and that was during the reservation period today we have close to 450,000 Acres of reservation land uh in Southeastern
38:44 Montana vast coal reserves there um Ira form a government Indian reorganization Act or the Howard wheeler act um and that sort of briefly covers the Northern Cheyenne people uh at this time I know I seen the hand go up five minutes but uh like to ask if there's any questions that you have that I might
39:09 be able to answer I know that was quick and you probably didn't know what I said but that's okay yes was it common to have have um a woman be interested in being a warrior to go to a
39:33 battle that sort of thing that's a good question the question is uh when the battle of the roseb but occurred the woman saved her brother how often did they were they participants in every battle depended on the situation uh more than likely the older women would be um would do the the uh caretaking uh making
39:57 uh prepar ations for those that were wounded um some of the older women never you know they were just as stressed as those that were fighting out there but yes there were women warriors within the tribe that did participate in uh in the battles in fact there's a Cheyenne proverb that goes something like this and I may not have exactly the quote but
40:21 I've I've uh mentioned this a number of times uh no matter how strong a Nation or how powerful their weapons the nation is not defeated until the hearts of the women are on the ground so I think that's a very powerful
40:45 tribute to a woman warrior among the Cheyenne people thank you for asking that question anybody else if you'll raise your hand we'll come around with a microphone and and everyone can hear your question a couple of things that you left out we had an article in
41:09 the paper recently where Dr Joseph medicine Crow noted that counting coup also included killing an enemy raiding the horses of others and then leading into battle and those all caused loss of Indian lives and I also noticed that you
41:32 left out the battle where the cheyen warrior tallbull was killed by retaliating paon forces with the help of the US Army and Massacre Canyon which also involved the paon you have a question so why did you leave those
41:56 out well if if uh I guess if we had old day I we could get into intimate detail and just the response to to uh medicine Crow I think that uh every tribe is unique in their perspective of what counting coup is so to say that Joe medicine
42:20 Crow version is indicative of all tribes uh is is very wrong and so you know he may be right according to the crow but the Cheyenne have their own unique uh interpretation of counting coup and I think that's that's really the wrong attitude to have when you
42:44 start to generalize about Native Americans and that they were a simp and give them a simplistic view of who they were just because they lived in teepees doesn't mean that uh every tee was the same very unique and diverse and in their own ways so thank you for bringing that question up and I hope that answers
43:09 your question have a question back here we could talk about it some more later but you know we I've only got uh 40 minutes to do this uh normally when I talk about the history of the Cheyenne it takes me one semester to do this so you know this is very brief and to talk
43:30 about a specific incident such as TBO U I think that's a defeats the purpose of talking about the history of the Cheyenne people yes uh you mentioned briefly the effects of small poox on your tribe and I would like to have you enlarge on that because from what I understand decimate is not the right word to use because it only means one tenth of the people killed and I know
43:55 the most of the tribes lost many many more more than than some up to 90% and how did that affect the tribal order and the tribal history good question uh with any group I think that when you lose the majority of your people you're losing a lot of people that have
44:18 specialized skills and I'm looking at it from a anthropological perspective you're looking at a lot of talent you're looking at your spirituality you're looking at your mother and father you're looking at your sisters your brothers uh you're looking at Warriors that have a chained a certain status so in essence you're losing your history your way of
44:41 life and that can you know we all know that can be devastating uh if not only if to disease but to Warfare I mean you know not only were they losing to other diseases but you know when you have Warfare you're also losing a lot of Young Warriors uh to those particular events so yes um I would say that this was uh
45:05 really traumatic um uh historical trauma and and we still um today we still have a lot of that embedded in our history in our stories any other questions one right here and this will probably be our last question okay if you counted Co coup on
45:30 me you would receive an honor what would I receive a dishonor within my tribe how how did that work that's a good question if you re if you if I counted coup on you and and what would that leave you you know I would uh suspect that that if you didn't die at the at the
45:50 scene and wasn't scalped uh uh I'm not sure exactly I can't talk for other tribes yeah but if somebody counted if you counted coup on me um I suspect that there would be some type of social control that that would address that but that's a very good question I'm sure you wouldn't hear the end of that for a long
46:15 time especially if you were a female all right ladies and gentlemen thank you very much thank you

Tent of Many Voices

Conrad Fiser on Northern Cheyenne History and Lewis & Clark

Conrad Fiser

Northern Cheyenne

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Conrad Fiser on Northern Cheyenne History and Lewis & Clark

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