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The Cheyenne

Sand Creek, Little Bighorn, and the Northern Plains Wars

Your AP US History exam is two weeks away, your textbook gives the Plains Wars two paragraphs, and you still can't keep Sand Creek straight from Little Bighorn. This guide was written for exactly that situation.

**The Cheyenne: Sand Creek, Little Bighorn, and the Northern Plains Wars** covers the full arc of Cheyenne history from their pre-contact origins as Great Lakes farmers through their transformation into horse-mounted buffalo hunters, the catastrophic collision with American expansion, and the survival of their nations into the present day. Six focused sections walk you through the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and Colonel Chivington's assault on Black Kettle's peaceful village, Red Cloud's War, the Cheyenne-Lakota victory over Custer at the Little Bighorn, and the harrowing 1878–79 flight of Dull Knife and Little Wolf back to their Northern Plains homeland.

This is a Native American Plains Wars primer built for students who need the facts, the context, and the historical debate — no filler, no padding. It's also useful for parents helping kids prep for a unit test, tutors running a quick session, or any reader who wants an honest, concise account of one of American history's most consequential conflicts.

Key terms are defined on first use, timelines are clear, and historians' genuine disagreements are stated plainly rather than glossed over.

Pick it up, read it in an afternoon, and walk into class knowing the story.

What you'll learn
  • Trace the Cheyenne migration from the Great Lakes to the Plains and explain how horse culture reshaped their society.
  • Identify the key treaties, conflicts, and federal policies that defined US-Cheyenne relations in the 19th century.
  • Explain what happened at Sand Creek and the Little Bighorn and why historians still debate their meaning.
  • Distinguish the Northern and Southern Cheyenne and describe their fates after 1877.
  • Recognize common myths about the Cheyenne and Plains warfare and correct them with evidence.
What's inside
  1. 1. Who the Cheyenne Were: Origins and the Move to the Plains
    Introduces the Cheyenne people, their language and identity, and how they shifted from Great Lakes farmers to horse-mounted Plains buffalo hunters.
  2. 2. Treaties, Trails, and Trouble: 1825–1861
    Covers early US-Cheyenne contact, the 1851 Fort Laramie Treaty, the impact of the Oregon and Santa Fe Trails, and the split between Northern and Southern Cheyenne bands.
  3. 3. The Sand Creek Massacre, 1864
    A detailed account of the events leading to Sand Creek, the attack by Colonel Chivington's volunteers on Black Kettle's village, and the political fallout.
  4. 4. The Northern Plains Wars and the Little Bighorn, 1866–1876
    Traces the cycle of war and treaty from Red Cloud's War through the Battle of the Washita to the Cheyenne-Lakota victory over Custer at the Little Bighorn.
  5. 5. Exile, Resistance, and the Northern Cheyenne Outbreak
    Follows the surrender of 1877, the forced removal of the Northern Cheyenne to Indian Territory, and the dramatic 1878–79 flight home led by Dull Knife and Little Wolf.
  6. 6. The Cheyenne Today and Why This History Matters
    Briefly covers the modern Northern Cheyenne Tribe and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, ongoing sovereignty issues, and how historians have revised the story.
Published by Solid State Press
The Cheyenne cover
TLDR STUDY GUIDES

The Cheyenne

Sand Creek, Little Bighorn, and the Northern Plains Wars
Solid State Press

The Cheyenne

Sand Creek, Little Bighorn, and the Northern Plains Wars

Copyright © 2026 Solid State Press.

Published by Solid State Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in critical reviews and educational use.

Part of the TLDR Study Guides series.

Contents

  1. 1 Who the Cheyenne Were: Origins and the Move to the Plains
  2. 2 Treaties, Trails, and Trouble: 1825–1861
  3. 3 The Sand Creek Massacre, 1864
  4. 4 The Northern Plains Wars and the Little Bighorn, 1866–1876
  5. 5 Exile, Resistance, and the Northern Cheyenne Outbreak
  6. 6 The Cheyenne Today and Why This History Matters
Chapter 1

Who the Cheyenne Were: Origins and the Move to the Plains

Before Europeans reached the Great Plains, the people who would become the Cheyenne were living nothing like the image most students carry in their heads — no horses, no tipis, no vast buffalo hunts. Understanding how dramatically their world transformed helps explain almost everything that follows in this story.

Tsitsistas — "the people who are like this together," or more loosely, "the people" — is the name the Cheyenne call themselves. The word "Cheyenne" comes from a Lakota term whose exact meaning historians still debate, but it stuck in English usage and the Cheyenne have lived with it. They speak a language in the Algonquian language family, the same broad family that includes Ojibwe, Cree, and Arapaho. That linguistic connection is a clue to their origins: the Cheyenne did not start on the Plains at all.

Archaeological and oral historical evidence places the early Cheyenne near the Great Lakes region, probably in what is now Minnesota and Wisconsin, somewhere around the 1600s or earlier. They were semi-sedentary farmers and hunter-gatherers, living in earth-lodge villages, cultivating corn and wild rice, and supplementing their diet with game. Pressure from the Ojibwe to the northeast — who had begun acquiring European firearms through French trade networks — pushed the Cheyenne steadily westward across the Missouri River and onto the northern Plains during the late 1600s and early 1700s. They were not unique in this displacement; many Plains tribes arrived there through similar pressures and migrations.

The Horse Changes Everything

The single biggest turning point in Cheyenne life was the spread of horses northward from the Southwest. Spanish colonists had reintroduced horses to North America in the 1500s, and by the early 1700s horses were moving through trade and raid networks across the Plains. The Cheyenne likely acquired horses in significant numbers sometime in the early to mid-1700s. The effect was rapid and profound.

With horses, a small group of hunters could pursue a buffalo herd over miles of open ground and harvest more meat and hides in a day than was possible in weeks of foot hunting. Buffalo became the center of Cheyenne life — food, clothing, shelter (the tipi cover is made from buffalo hide), and trade goods. Farming villages were abandoned. The Cheyenne became fully nomadic, following the great herds across the Northern and Central Plains. A people who had planted corn in river bottoms two or three generations earlier were now among the most skilled equestrian hunters on the continent.

A common misconception is that Plains Indian horse culture is ancient and timeless — students often picture it stretching back thousands of years. In reality, for the Cheyenne, it is roughly 18th-century technology, less than a century old by the time Lewis and Clark crossed the Plains in 1804.

About This Book

If you need a focused Cheyenne history for high school students — or you're a college freshman in an introductory US history or Native American studies course — this guide is built for you. It's also useful for any student facing a US history Native American unit test and needing a clear, fast orientation to the people, events, and stakes.

This book covers the Cheyenne from their pre-contact origins through the Plains Indian wars, with close attention to the Sand Creek Massacre. Consider it your Sand Creek Massacre study guide, your Native American Plains Wars primer, and your entry point into Little Bighorn Cheyenne and Lakota history — all in one place. It also walks through the Northern Cheyenne Dull Knife Outbreak and the long aftermath of conquest. About fifteen pages, no filler.

Read it straight through in order — the sections build on each other. There are no worked math problems here, but each section ends with review questions you can use to check what stuck.

Keep reading

You've read the first half of Chapter 1. The complete book covers 6 chapters in roughly fifteen pages — readable in one sitting.

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