Fig. 100—Cheyenne camping circle.
These are the names given to the author by the Cheyenne themselves as the complete list of their tribal divisions. Grinnell, on the authority of the Clark manuscript, names six of these with two others, Matsĭ′shkota, “corpse from a scaffold,” and Miayŭma, “red lodges,” which may be identical with some of the others named above, or may perhaps be degrees of their military organization instead of tribal divisions.
In the great ceremony of the “medicine arrow,” last enacted on the Washita in 1890, the camping circle opened to the south. At all other gatherings of the tribe the circle opened to the east, agreeable to the general Indian custom, the several divisions encamping in the order shown in [figure 100].
The Cheyenne, like the prairie tribes generally, are, or were until within a few years past, a nation of nomads, living in skin tipis, and depending almost entirely on the buffalo for food. Yet they have a dim memory of a time when they lived in permanent villages and planted corn, and in their genesis tradition, which occupies four “smokes” or nights in the telling, they relate how they “lost” the corn a long time ago before they became wanderers on the plains. They deposit their dead on scaffolds in trees, unlike their confederates, the Arapaho, who bury in the ground. Their most sacred possession is the bundle of “medicine arrows,” now in possession of the southern division of the tribe. They have a military organization similar to that existing among the Arapaho and other prairie tribes, as described under number 43 of the Arapaho songs. Above all the tribes of the plains they are distinguished for their desperate courage and pride of bearing, and are preeminently warriors among people whose trade is war. They are strongly conservative and have steadily resisted every advance of civilization, here again differing from the Arapaho, who have always shown a disposition to meet the white man half-way. In fact, no two peoples could well exhibit more marked differences of characteristics on almost every point than these two confederated tribes. The Cheyenne have quick and strong intelligence, but their fighting temper sometimes renders them rather unmanageable subjects with whom to deal. Their conservatism and tribal pride tend to restrain them from following after strange gods, so that in regard to the new messiah they assume a rather skeptical position, while they conform to all the requirements of the dance code in order to be on the safe side.
[Clark], in his Indian Sign Language, thus sums up the characteristics of the Cheyenne:
As a tribe they have been broken and scattered, but in their wild and savage way they fought well for their country, and their history during the past few years has been written in blood. The men of the Cheyenne Indians rank as high in the scale of honesty, energy, and tenacity of purpose as those of any other tribe I have ever met, and in physique and intellect they are superior to those of most tribes and the equal of any. Under the most demoralizing and trying circumstances they have preserved in a remarkable degree that part of their moral code which relates to chastity, and public sentiment has been so strong in them in regard to this matter that they have been, and are still, noted among all the tribes which surround them, for the virtue of their women.
The Cheyenne language lacks the liquids l and r. It is full of hissing sounds and difficult combinations of consonants, so that it does not lend itself readily to song composition, for which reason, among others, the Cheyenne in the south usually join the Arapaho in the Ghost dance and sing the Arapaho songs.
SONGS OF THE CHEYENNE
1. O′tä nä′nisĭ′näsists
O′tä nä′nisĭ′näsĭsts—Ehe′e′ye′!