Cheyenne History and Culture

Cheyenne History and Culture — page 1 — INTRODUCTION The Cheyennes are a people originally from the Great Lakes region They are just one of the many groups of Native Americans who live today in North America There are well over five hundred Native American tribes in the United States and more than six hundred in Canada At least three million people in North America consider themselves to be Native Americans But who are Native Americans and how do the Cheyennes fit into the history of North America’s native peoples Probable extent of dry land during the last ice age SIBERIA CHUKCHI SEA Bering Strait ALASKA BERING SEA Canada Anchorage Siberia Asia and Alaska North America are today separated by an area of ocean named the Bering Strait During the last ice age the green area on this map was at times dry land The Asian ancestors of the Cheyennes walked from one continent to the other THE FIRST IMMIGRANTS Native Americans are people whose ancestors settled in North America thousands of years ago These ancestors probably came from eastern parts of Asia Their migrations probably occurred during cold periods called ice ages At these times sea levels were much lower than they are now The area between northeastern Asia and Alaska was dry land so it was possible to walk between the continents Scientists are not sure when these migrations took place but it must have been more than twelve thousand years ago Around that time water levels rose and covered the land between Asia and the Americas

Cheyenne History and Culture — page 2 — By around ten thousand years ago the climate had warmed and was similar to conditions today The first peoples in North America moved around the continent in small groups hunting wild animals and collecting a wide variety of plant foods Gradually these groups spread out and lost contact with each other They developed separate cultures and adopted lifestyles that suited their environments The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde Colorado is the most spectacular example of Native American culture that survives today It consists of more than 150 rooms and pits built around A.D. 1200 from sandstone blocks SETTLING DOWN Although many tribes continued to gather food and hunt or fish some Native Americans began to live in settlements and grow crops Their homes ranged from underground pit houses and huts of mud and thatch to dwellings in cliffs By 3500 B.C. a plentiful supply of fish in the Pacific Ocean and in rivers had enabled people to settle in large coastal villages from Alaska to Washington State In the deserts of Arizona more than two thousand years later farmers constructed hundreds of miles of irrigation canals to carry water to their crops Before 1700 the Cheyennes were living in wooded regions near the Great Lakes in what is present-day Minnesota They survived by hunting fishing and farming In the early 1700s they were driven westward then southward by enemy tribes and became buffalo hunters on the Great Plains

Cheyenne History and Culture — page 3 — Inuit Cultures Northwest Coast Cultures Adena Hopewell Region Cahokia Anasazi Region Hohokam Region Mogollon Region Aztec & Mayan States Cerro Sechin Machu Picchu Inca Empire Cuzco Tiwanaku This map highlights some of the main early Native American cultures In the Ohio River valley between 700 B.C. and A.D. 500 people of the Adena and Hopewell cultures built clusters of large burial mounds such as the Serpent Mound in Ohio which survives today In the Mississippi floodplains the native peoples formed complex societies They created mud and thatch temples on top of flat earth pyramids Their largest town Cahokia in Illinois contained more than one hundred mounds and may have been home to thirty thousand people CONTACT WITH EUROPEANS Around A.D. 1500 European ships reached North America The first explorers were the Spanish Armed with guns and riding horses they took over land and forced the Native Americans to work for them The Spanish were followed by the British Dutch and French who were all looking for land to settle and for opportunities to trade When Native Americans met these Europeans they came into contact with diseases such as smallpox and measles that they had never experienced before At least one half of all Native Americans and possibly many more than that were unable to overcome these diseases and died

Cheyenne History and Culture — page 4 — Guns were also disastrous for Native Americans At first only the Europeans had guns which enabled them to overcome native peoples in fights and battles Eventually Native American groups obtained guns and used them in conflicts with each other Native American groups were also forced to take sides and fight in wars between the French and British Horses too had a big Cheyenne chief Little Robe 1828 1886 photographed in 1871 He became a chief in 1863 influence in Native American lifestyles especially on the Great Plains Some groups became horse breeders and traders People were able to travel greater distances and began to hunt buffalo on horseback Soon horses became central to Plains trade and social life The Cheyennes acquired horses around 1760 The horses made their buffalo-hunting lifestyle much easier and the tribe soon became very powerful At the end of the 1700s people of European descent began to migrate over the Appalachian Mountains looking for new land to farm and exploit By the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached the west coast of North America This expansion was disastrous for Native Americans The Cheyennes were not affected by white settlers until the middle of the nineteenth century Then in 1849 many Cheyennes caught a disease called cholera from Europeans A few years later the United States began a war with the Southern Cheyennes

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