Lame Deer: The Northern Cheyenne Came Home

Lame Deer is the capital of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, and the story of how the Northern Cheyenne got here is one of the most harrowing in the history of the American West. In September of eighteen seventy-eight, roughly three hundred and fifty Northern Cheyenne people led by Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf slipped away from the Darlington Agency in what is now Oklahoma, where they had been confined in a climate that was killing them. They walked north toward their homeland across Nebraska and Wyoming, pursued by the U.

S. Army. The group eventually split: Little Wolf and his people reached the Powder River country of Montana and were allowed to stay.

Dull Knife's group was captured and held at Fort Robinson in Nebraska, where a deadly breakout occurred in January of eighteen seventy-nine. Both Dull Knife and Little Wolf are buried today in Lame Deer, among their descendants. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation covers four hundred forty-five thousand acres of southeastern Montana, and about six thousand tribal members live here today.