Native American Tribes: The History and Culture of the Cheyenne

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Todd Van Linda

Length: 1 hr and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the most famous Native American tribes on the Great Plains is the Cheyenne, and their fame may be surpassed only by their influence on American history. Having split off from other groups around the 16th-17th centuries, the Cheyenne shifted from a sedentary agricultural society to the kind of nomadic group many envision when thinking of groups on the Plains. Land disputes and conflicts with white settlers and the Cheyenne set in motion the chain of events that led to the most famous battle among Native Americans and the American government: the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The United States sought to defuse tensions with natives during the westward push by drafting treaties regarding major pieces of land. They did so without understanding the complex structure of the various tribes, and subgroups within those tribes. The Cheyenne were part of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, along with the Sioux and other Plains groups, but violations of that treaty and violence led to increased conflicts, and the Cheyenne fought federal troops at battles like Washita River and Little Bighorn.

Ultimately, like so many of the other Plains tribes, the Cheyenne eventually were forced to relocate onto land set aside for reservations, but they've managed to preserve their culture and traditions.

©2012- Charles River Editors (P)2015 Charles River Editors

Eye opening overview of the journey, and strife.

Loved it! The historty, knowing this is a general account, is well presented. The author tells with a very good balance of the Cheyenne people and factions without losing the reader. The story brings out the sometines gruesome accounts and the mis treatment of Native Americans. A quick read but a must hear book as often we only hear one side. At times I was taken back of the horrible treatment and how the American Government was so manipulative.

Helpful, but lop sided.

Something like a third of this history of the Cheyenne is a military history of the battle of Little Big Horn. That is interesting to some people, but it demonstrates the shortcomings of this volume, which relies heavily on material found in other CR Editions volumes on plains indians. The editors/ authors/ compilers often quote their sources with no reflection on the bias of those sources-- for instance the repeated assertion that the hostages Custer held weren't technically hostages. Whose technical definition are they copping to here? Often sweeping assertions about Cheyenne life (or the lives of other natives covered in other CR Editions) are attributed to vaguely defined sources like "anthropologists" or "historians," with no sense of the particularities of those sources, their biases, or their limits in terms of being representative of the fields. I'm an anthropologist (not someone who is very educated about Native Americans), and I kept finding myself thinking, "Oh, anthropologists say this, really? Which ones?" Anyway I did in fact learn a lot, but I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who needs a holistic picture of Cheyenne history and life.