The Cheyenne Nation, 1830s–1850s

The Cheyenne began as a riverine horticultural society that gradually migrated from the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River Valley to the Great Plains. There on the plains, they developed the horse, hunting, and warrior culture we are familiar with today. While leaving a portion of their people behind on the banks of the Missouri River to cultivate corn and tobacco, the more wide-ranging members of the Cheyenne made their way to the Black Hills of present-day South Dakota. Charles Bird Grinnell comments that having early settled in the Black Hills, the Cheyenne subsequently made those hills for generations “the center of their wanderings.”