Coming home: Driven from their Colorado land more than a century ago, Cheyenne
Indians are returning to the state of Colorado

By Bill Briggs
Denver Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 14, 2002
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,171%257E519144,00.html

Inside the math, you can see misery and, some say, a glimmer of triumph. 3,000 -
2,672 = 328.

Over the blur of several generations, the Cheyenne nation has nearly evaporated
from Colorado, an area many still consider a sacred home. That dark equation,
Cheyenne people say, seems to sum up the blood and tears of their history:
Roughly 3,000 men, women and children thrived in these parts a century and a
half ago. Today, 328 full-blooded Cheyenne live in the state, according to U.S.
census figures.


A Cheyenne triabl member dances during a ceremony. "We were eradicated from our
own land. They chased us off and put us on a reservation," says Bill TallBull, a
loan officer in Denver and the great, great grandson of a Cheyenne chief killed
by the U.S. Cavalry.

"That number is low, considering it was once our beloved homeland, our hunting
area," says Henri Mann, a full Cheyenne and chair of Native American studies at
the University of Montana at Missoula. "But Colorado still figures very
prominently in my sense of identity as a Cheyenne person."

How do you explain this mass substitution? It was genocide on the Colorado
plains, including the 1864 massacre of nearly 150 Indians - mainly women,
children and the elderly - at Sand Creek by U.S. troops. It was war in Denver's
backyard and the region beyond, often pitting Cheyenne "Dog Soldiers" against
white settlers. And it was the forced relocation of an entire people to a
reservation in Oklahoma, driven largely by white America's thirst for "manifest
destiny," historians say.


Nora Standing Elk, left, with Margaret Fighting Bear and her son, Robert. This
cycle is not over, say some Cheyenne people in Colorado. But it may be turning
around, all these years later. Along with 328 full Cheyenne, another 91 people
live in Colorado whose family lines are split between Cheyenne and at least one
other tribe.

"Those numbers probably reflect that the campaign - taking away our way of life
and taking us off a land we knew so well - didn't work," says Montoya Whiteman,
part Cheyenne and part Arapaho, who moved to Colorado five years ago.

"The numbers say we are a resilient people, a very strong-natured people who I
think belong here. This is where we have a lot of history."

And, slowly, some Cheyenne people are coming home.

In the modern vernacular, we'd call them Canadians.

The Cheyenne tribe - today splintered into northern and southern bands on
reservations in Montana and Oklahoma - was once part of the Algonquin language
family of tribes. Its members lived along the green meadows and marshes south of
Hudson Bay.


Montoya Whiteman, spokeswoman for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder,
moved to Colorado five years ago. 'I felt at home right away,' she says. 'It was
a connection beyond just moving somewhere and starting a new life ... My
relatives and ancestors were all over Colorado. According to oral histories told
for generations, a lethal disease broke out and orphaned many younger tribal
members. It forced the group to leave Hudson Bay in the 1600s and migrate south
toward the Great Lakes, into present-day Minnesota. The move also forced the
people to shift their survival skills from fishing to farming.

They raised corn, lived in earthen lodges and encountered another group of
prairie Indians, the Sioux. This is where they got their name: "Cheyenne" is
taken from the Sioux words meaning "people of alien speech."

Possibly driven out as a result of the fur trade around the Great Lakes, the
Cheyenne roamed southwest toward the Black Hills of the current Dakotas. Just as
English colonists were settling into the eastern seaboard, the Cheyenne were
rounding up horses and morphing their way of life yet again, relying on the
buffalo for meat, clothing and shelter. The huge, grazing herds kept the tribe
on the move and pulled them into what is now Colorado.

"They were a large and powerful people with . . . intelligence," wrote Jerome C.
Smiley, in his 1903 book "History of Denver." Highly spiritual, some Cheyenne
would cut off an arm during hard times to win favor with the Gods. On their
necks often hung necklaces made of the dried, severed fingers of their "enemies"
- seen as another visible reminder to the spirits of their worthiness as a
people.

Told from an upper-crust, white perspective, Smiley's epic also painted the
Cheyenne as able hunters and expert fighters, an "aggressive" group whose "usual
occupation" was "making raids on their neighbors" and, later, "attacking white
men when (they) came within their reach." (Many Cheyenne don't view their
history that way.)

Ultimately, clashes between the Cheyenne and white settlers in the Colorado
territory defined and doomed the tribe. But long before the Gold Rush lured
sudden swarms of treasure hunters to Colorado, there were the Cheyenne, an
estimated 3,000 men, women and children. They shared the plains with their
friends, the Arapaho, and - after waging warfare - later aligned with the Kiowa,
Comanche and Apache.

An 1845 map of the West contains the words "Cheyenne Indians" in large, dark
letters over what is now Denver and the Front Range. As the mid-1800s dawned,
that land provided a wealth of buffalo and an era of health and peace for the
Cheyenne.

It wouldn't last.

"Their story," says Suzette Brewer, spokeswoman for the American Indian College
Fund in Denver, "is one of the most tragic stories in American history."

The end of the Mexican War in 1848 enticed more white settlers to head west, and
some of their well-worn routes sliced through Cheyenne territory. The pathways
restricted the tribe's nomadic travels and contributed to a split between the
northern and southern bands. Still, the Cheyenne kept a "general friendship"
with the settlers, some historians say.

But the discovery of gold in 1858 - along Cherry Creek in what today is Denver -
eventually killed that goodwill. At the onset, scores of ore seekers jammed onto
the Cheyenne tribe's buffalo hunting grounds, driving off much of the game.

As Denver boomed, some Cheyenne people camped in and around town where they were
occasionally "robbed and cheated in trades" during which the Indians received
some of the "vilest" blends of whiskey as payment, Smiley wrote in "History of
Denver." Meanwhile, as the buffalo herds dwindled, the Cheyenne were "threatened
with starvation."

Two years after the first gold nugget was plucked from a creek bed, the Cheyenne
and Arapaho grudgingly ceded their lands near Denver to the government. A treaty
allowed them to live on a reservation in southeastern Colorado but, according to
Smiley, they left Denver "with hearts filled with bitterness against the whites,
and inspired by the desire for revenge."

They slowly amassed guns and ammunition through trades, thefts or purchases, and
by 1862 nearly every warrior on the plains was armed, historians say. Government
troops were ordered to find and kill the Cheyenne as the tribe's renegade
military arm, the "Dog Soldiers," increased its raids on white settlers.

The sputtering violence boiled over in 1864. In June, the Cheyenne and Arapaho
people were told by government officials to head southeast to Fort Lyon, near
the Arkansas River. It took four months but the group arrived before winter, led
by Cheyenne "peace chief" Black Kettle. They were then told to wait by the banks
of Sand Creek, about 37 miles from Fort Lyon, under the protection of the U.S.
government.

In November, a former Methodist minister turned military commander, John
Chivington, led 700 soldiers from Denver toward Sand Creek. At dawn on Nov. 29,
the troops attacked Black Kettle's camp, killing 163 Indian people. Some of the
fleeing Cheyenne were tracked for 5 miles and then slain, historians say.

To many Cheyenne people today, the "Sand Creek Massacre" is every bit as
poignant and brutal as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They see similar
patterns in the two acts, including the hatred of an entire culture and the
blood lust to extinguish it. It's one more reason why this state remains central
to their history.

"Colorado is significant because, unfortunately, it was there that the most
ruthless butchery of a people occurred," says Native American studies expert
Mann. Some of her ancestors survived the attack at Sand Creek.

"It's something that continues to remain a part of who we are as a people."

Sand Creek also prompted the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers and some tribal allies to
launch retaliatory raids on stage stations, ranches and wagon trains all across
the Colorado plains. Hundreds of whites, including civilians and soldiers, were
killed.

The war on the grasslands raged for years - despite the 1867 Medicine Lodge
Treaty signed by Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs that assigned the two tribes to a
reservation in north-central Oklahoma. That treaty, some Native Americans
contend, fulfilled a U.S. policy to fence in the Indians as more white people
streamed westward.

"Growing up, we were taught about "manifest destiny' - "Let's go from ocean to
ocean.' But really, what that meant to the Indians was, "Something has got to
give.' They were considered an obstacle to that philosophy," says Brewer, of the
American Indian College Fund and an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.

"Wherever or whenever there seemed to be resistance to that philosophy, (the
Indians) were put under great duress to move, to get out out of the way, or
simply disappear or be killed."

Two years after the Medicine Lodge Treaty, U.S. troops cornered the Dog
Soldiers. Helped by Pawnee trackers and chief of scouts "Buffalo Bill" Cody,
government forces overran the Dog Soldiers' village at Summit Springs in
northeastern Colorado. More than 50 Cheyenne were killed, including their chief,
Tall Bull. The Dog Soldiers' reign was done.

"To me, I feel like I'm still a warrior inside, still thriving," says Tall
Bull's great, great grandson, Clark TallBull, who today is head of sales and
marketing for Caddo Design & Office Products in Denver. (Bill TallBull is his
brother).

"It certainly didn't end us at Summit Springs. We have a place in Colorado and
the history of it. We're still here."

Clark TallBull seems to personify so much about Cheyenne people today: He revels
in tribal lore; he participates in "sweats" and other ancient ways; he came back
to Colorado.

After a divorce 16 years ago, TallBull's mother, Rosalie, brought her three sons
to Denver from the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Lame Deer, Mont.

The TallBulls already had family in town - Clark's now 83-year-old grandfather,
Richard, who came to Colorado in 1960 as part of a federal relocation program to
move Native Americans from reservations and high-Indian population areas to
big-city jobs. Even more, their ancestors lived and died here.

"It's a living history, the history of our family," says Clark TallBull, 30. "I
want to be able to teach my (two) kids about the pride, teach them to take a
piece of it and go build their lives. . . .

"The spirit is still here when you hear that name, Chief Tall Bull. The power of
our name. We have to carry on and still stand up."

Yet the name itself was another government casualty. When Richard TallBull
entered the U.S. military during World War II, he was ordered to squeeze "Tall
Bull" into a single last name. As a nod to the chief, Clark capitalizes the "B"
on his business card at Caddo. The 8-year-old company sells office supplies and
furniture to tribes and huge companies alike, including Xcel Energy. It has
blossomed into a national, 30-person venture. And Clark TallBull sees the deep
irony of a Cheyenne man playing and winning the corporate game in the city where
his forefathers were cheated and chased away.

"I live that every day," he says. "That's the pride and spirit I have as a
warrior, a way to appreciate and be thankful. Because our ancestors prayed for
(our future success). I'm just carrying out our ancestors' prayers."

Several local Cheyenne people identified the TallBull family as the core of the
tribe's re-awakening in Denver.

You can't accurately label the few hundred Cheyenne in Colorado as "close-knit,"
though many do know each other and sometimes gather informally for
"celebrations." (U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., is Cheyenne.) Many
maintain their tribal traditions.

Some, like Whiteman, spokeswoman for the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder,
trek to the Montana reservation each year to participate in four-day fasts.
Meanwhile, in Berthoud, Paul Hart smokes tobacco from a Cheyenne pipe to pay
homage to his Colorado ancestors.

"I was raised with a pipe, and I keep up with that regularly," says Hart, an
engineer with Hitachi Data Systems. "Whenever you're feeling bad, you always get
your pipe out and pray. You pray for your people, you pray for your friends.

"I don't want my traditions to die," Whiteman adds. "I want to help my culture
survive."

Born in Oklahoma and raised in Montana, Whiteman came to Denver five years ago
for a job. Many other Cheyenne people have followed a similar modern path toward
better paychecks. But once here, they often tap into the old ways.

"I felt at home right away," Whiteman says. "I felt a connection with Colorado.
And it was a connection beyond just moving somewhere and starting a new life.

"My relatives, my ancestors were all over Colorado. I'm a descendant of Arapaho
chiefs on Father's side and Cheyenne holy men and women on my mother's side.
They were at Sand Creek. They were down in Cherry Creek. Little Raven Boulevard
is named after one of my great, great, great grandfathers (an Arapaho chief).

"The longer I was here, the more I thought this connection had something to do
with the spirits maybe. I came back to my roots."

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