Northern Cheyenne Exodus: The Band That Walked Home

After the Great Sioux War ended in eighteen seventy-seven, the Northern Cheyenne were removed from their homeland in Wyoming and Montana and relocated to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, to share the reservation of the Southern Cheyenne. The removal was presented as a solution. It was not.

The climate in Indian Territory was hotter and more humid than anything the Northern Cheyenne had lived in. Rations issued by the government were insufficient and often contaminated. Malaria and other diseases moved through the camp. In the first year, an estimated one in three Northern Cheyenne died. The Indian agent's requests for additional food were forwarded through bureaucratic channels that did not move quickly enough to save anyone.

In September of eighteen seventy-eight, approximately three hundred Northern Cheyenne under chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf broke out of the reservation and began walking north. They were heading home.

The Army pursued them. The march went through Kansas, through Nebraska, through Wyoming, northward. Multiple engagements occurred along the route. The Cheyenne fought rear-guard actions to protect their people, separating from each other when the Army pressure became too concentrated, using terrain they had lived in for generations. The march north covered roughly fifteen hundred miles and lasted several months.

Approximately sixty Cheyenne were killed during the flight. Dull Knife's group was captured in Nebraska in October of eighteen seventy-eight and imprisoned. Little Wolf's band reached Montana in the spring.

The survivors eventually received a reservation in Montana, the Tongue River Reservation, now the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. The American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming holds Army pursuit records documenting the Wyoming portion of the route.

They walked home because staying would have killed them faster.