Great Plains Studies, Center for

 

Date of this Version

May 2002

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2 (Spring 2002). Published by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Copyright © 2000 Center for Great Plains Studies. Used by permission.

Abstract

In September 1878 about three hundred Northern Cheyenne men, women, and children under the leadership of Dull Knife and Little Wolf fled Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma in an attempt to return to their homeland in present-day Montana. Thousands of soldiers were eventually involved in a chase that turned into a 1,200 mile running battle of pain and sorrow. The following April less than half of the starving and sick Cheyenne reached Montana. Eventually they were granted a reservation there. Many of the others, mostly women, children, and old men, had been captured in Nebraska, and many of these would be killed after they escaped from imprisonment at Fort Robinson where they had been held for nearly two weeks without food and water.

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