I have been told that when a Crow stole a horse or found any article
it was expected of him that he give it away. It was considered not
right for him to keep it. A Cheyenne might present a stolen horse or
a found article to a relative or a friend, but it was regarded as
entirely fair and proper for him to keep it for himself if he chose
to do so. Ordinarily he kept it. I admire the old Crow way of acting
in that respect. Such conduct makes a good and unselfish heart.
The Sioux often buried their dead on scaffolds, but I never saw
any Cheyenne burials in that way. Sometimes our dead were put upon
platforms on tree branches. Mostly, though, they were placed in small
hillside rocky caves if these were convenient. In later times, and in
many instances at the present day on our reservation, the dead body
was deposited on the surface of the ground on a rocky hill or in some
place out of the way of usual travel. The body was well wrapped in
blankets or skins, and it may or may not have been put into a wooden
box. In either case a heap of stones was piled over it to shield it
from animals.
Our women used to cut their legs and arms, usually in crosswise
slashes, as an act of mourning. Some of them--the older ones--yet
do this. A married woman cut off her hair, in ragged form, if her
husband died. In mourning for other relatives the hair might be worn
loose and uncombed for a long or a short time. Men did not cut the
flesh in mourning. They let loose the hair or cut off their braids.
Men who had lost relatives often cut off also the manes and the tails
of their horses as a sign of mourning.
There was no marriage ceremony among the Cheyennes. Such union was
mainly a simple agreement between the two principal parties. In far
back old times young men purchased their brides, but during my days
this was not the custom among us. In our later practice presents
might be given by the young man, these ordinarily to the girl’s
brothers. But these were given after the marriage, as an indication
of good will, not as a purchase price. Reciprocal gifts often were
made to the newly married couple.
The older way of entering upon the preliminary steps toward marriage
was for the young man first to consult his own father. An old woman
relative was enlisted as an emissary. “Tell the girl’s father I
will give him four horses (or some other number of horses) for his
daughter as a wife for my son.” The old woman went and negotiated
with the father and his daughter. If the offer or some modification
of it were agreed upon, the initiative father gathered together or
borrowed from relatives such horses or blankets or other gifts as
were required. These were taken to the lodge of the girl’s father.
The prospective bride was put upon a blanket. Her personal belongings
were put there with her or were wrapped in another package. She and
her property were carried to the lodge of the young man’s father and
placed inside, the carriers leaving her there and going elsewhere.
The young man seized her as his wife. All of the supposed purchase
gifts often were bestowed upon the young couple. Relatives of the two
parties exchanged presents and compliments. The old woman emissary
got a horse. Gifts all around were made in accordance with the
ability of the people interested and in accordance with the degree of
satisfaction felt because of the event.
Our most common custom was for the young man to do all of his own
managing of the affair. In the night time he crept stealthily to
the vicinity of the loved one’s parental tepee. He looked and
listened--listened long and intently. He crept closer, still closer,
until he was at the outside wall of that side of the lodge where
slept the one he was seeking. He whispered, perhaps had to whisper
more loudly, to awaken her. They conversed in whispers, possibly the
first time they ever had spoken directly to each other, although all
their lives they had lived in the same camps.
“Will--will--will you marry me?”
“Y-y-yes.”
She crept out and joined him. They went together to the lodge of
the young man’s brother or sister or to a place where dwelt elder
relatives of his.
The next morning two intruders were discovered there, a young man and
his young wife. The discovery was announced, all parties interested
were informed. Not often was the information displeasing. Ordinarily
all concerned were contented and manifested their contentment in the
usual exchange of gifts.
The newly married couple lived temporarily at the lodge of relatives
on one or the other side, preferably with a brother or a sister of
the husband. This was but a fleeting residence. The first important
duty of the husband was to get skins for a tepee, either by borrowing
them or by taking them in the hunt. Then it was the duty of the young
wife to tan and sew together these skins and set up a home lodge.
Plural wives were kept by many of the old Cheyennes. The one family
lodge sheltered the entire combined family. Commonly the two or
more wives were born sisters. This condition checked or prevented
the jealous quarreling likely to occur were they from different
families. Two wives ordinarily was the limit. But in my time I knew
two different men who each had three wives living with him. In each
of these instances the three wives were sisters. The two men were
named Red Arms and Plum Tree. Both of them and their entire families
were in the Cheyenne camp on the Little Bighorn when we had the great
battle there. Plum Tree was the father of Sun Bear and Two Feathers.
Both of these sons of his fought the soldiers at that time, and Two
Feathers is yet living here on the Tongue river.
Captive women from other tribes were made wives of our men. There
were many of such among us. Spotted Hawk’s mother was a Ute woman
captured by our people when she was a small girl. The old Chief
Dull Knife, or Rabbit, or Morning Star, had as his wife a Pawnee
captive woman. At the time she came to us, two other Pawnee women
were brought and were taken into marriage for bringing up Cheyenne
children. Crow women stolen long ago by our warriors in raids were
mothers of some important Cheyennes, including Big Foot, Big Thigh
and the Chiefs Crazy Head and Little Horse. I do not know of any
Cheyenne women having been captured from us by the Crows. The Pawnees
and the Shoshones got away with some of them.
An unfaithful wife did not incur any public penalty, according to the
laws of the Cheyennes and the Sioux. Her husband might inflict some
penalty. That was permissible, but he was not conceded the right to
kill her. I knew one man who cut a great gash in his wife’s forehead
because of her going with another man. Ordinarily, though, the loss
of his wife’s affection was looked upon as a joke on the husband, and
he kept quiet about it or pretended that he did not bewail the loss.
The Arapahoes had a tribal punishment for a wife’s unfaithfulness.
They cut off the end of the woman’s nose. Then any future observer
might have notice of her frailty when contemplating the taking of her
as his wife.
Fighting between Cheyennes, either men or women, was forbidden by
the tribal laws. In case of a fight some chief near at hand would
call out: “Warriors, separate these fighters and whip them.” The
warrior policemen then on duty would respond to the call. A band
of them would give such punishment as seemed to them fitting. If
the fighters renewed their strife they might have punishment added,
might have their tepees torn down, their horses killed, property
damage done to them in some other way, any suitable and sufficient
punishment--except, no policeman warrior nor anyone else lawfully
could kill a Cheyenne.
Pony whips, either the lashes or the heavy stick handles, were the
customary attacking weapons in a personal fight. Cheyennes did not
use fists as the white people do. Not often did any two women fight.
If they did, they merely scratched and pulled hair. It was more of
a comic show than an alarming sight to see two women clawing each
other. I never heard of any Cheyenne woman killing another nor
maliciously killing a man. Nor did the men kill women. I used to
hear old people talk about a Cheyenne named Wounded Elk who had
beaten his wife and then shot her, killing her. I never heard of any
other like case. That incident happened before I was born.
Suicides were not uncommon among us. Men shot themselves, women
hung themselves. Foolish ones yet do such acts. Several years ago
my neighbor and friend Whirlwind shot himself to death. Five or six
years ago a woman hanged herself at Lame Deer. Many of these sad
occurrences, particularly among the women, have come to pass during
my lifetime.
A sister of Bobtail Horse and Hollow Wood hung herself when I was
yet a small boy and our people were camped on a branch of the Tongue
river. Her mother had scolded and threatened her, but had not
struck her, as the striking of any child was not customary among
the Cheyennes. But the girl was ashamed and crestfallen because of
the scolding. She brooded a while, then she disappeared. Searchers
failed to find her. Two years later, a Cheyenne young man hunting
deer in that vicinity found the remains of her body suspended by the
neck from a tree limb. Several years before that time another young
woman had done this same act near there on this same stream. From
this first incident, and confirmed by the later one, the creek got
a permanent name. It became known as Hanging Woman creek. It flows
into Tongue river from the east side, just above the present white
man village of Birney, Montana.
As we were in camp one time on the Rosebud, below Lame Deer creek,
another boy and I went rambling afoot among the timber by the stream.
We suddenly came upon a woman dangling and strangling. I had no
knife. The other boy had one.
“Cut the rope,” I urged him.
He already was about to do this. We let the woman down upon the
ground. I ran to the creek near by, got a mouthful of water, hurried
back and squirted the water into her face. I stayed beside her while
my companion rushed into the camp to tell her people. A band of women
came, bringing a blanket. They put the disabled one upon the blanket
and carried her to her home lodge. A medicine man was called. The
next day I saw the woman. She gave no indication then of having had
any unusual experience.
A widow Cheyenne woman was living in our camp at a time when we had
stopped on the east side of the upper Little Bighorn river. Her
husband had been killed three or four years before then, in the
battle where Cheyennes and Sioux had won a great victory over the
soldiers. (Fort Phil Kearny, 1866.) From this Little Bighorn camp
my older brother and another boy and myself went out riding. I then
was about twelve years old. Ahead of us, on a branching creek, we saw
a woman walking rapidly afoot. She had a blanket over her head and
shoulders. She turned into a thickly wooded gulch beside the creek
and disappeared into the timber. We wondered a little at her strange
actions, but we felt it not proper to follow her. Pretty soon three
other boys came galloping their horses.
“Did you see any lone woman around here?” they asked anxiously.
“Yes, she went there,” and we indicated the wooded gulch.
My two companions followed them. I went to a plum patch. As I stood
there eating plums I saw a man and a woman hurrying up toward the
gulch. Both of them were crying. I followed them.
The five boys were trying to revive the woman being sought, who had
hanged herself. But she now was dead. The body was rolled into the
blanket she had been wearing and she was taken into camp.
This widow had been dependent upon friends for her support since her
husband’s death. She had a daughter eight or nine years old. One
day the young widow asked her mother for a certain fine robe. The
mother refused. The request was urged. Still the mother for some
reason said, “No.” The aggrieved and disconsolate young woman was so
downcast by this apparent coldness of her mother that she went out
and hanged herself.
My mother’s sister hung herself in their family lodge when we were
in camp one time on Powder river. I was nine years old. Our family
lodge was right beside the one where dwelt this aunt of mine. My
mother heard the noise of the struggling and strangling. The sister’s
tepee entrance flap was tied shut, but my mother burst through it.
She found my aunt suspended by a rawhide rope tied high upon a pole
of the lodge. She hastily cut the rope and cut it again from her
sister’s neck. White Bull, a medicine man, was called. His medicine
then was the tusks of a bear. He held these over and around my aunt
while he got down upon his hands and knees and grunted like a bear.
He kept this up until she suddenly had a hard coughing spell and
brought up a chunk of something that had been choking her. She soon
stood up and was all right. White Bull was a good medicine man. He
saved the lives of lots of Cheyennes.
Only one wildly insane Cheyenne person did I ever see. As I was
out on a hill beside the camp one day I heard a woman screaming. I
looked in the direction of the sound and saw a woman outside a lodge
charging about here and there and tearing off her clothing. People
were running to the scene. I hastened down there. A chief called out:
“Warriors, come.”
Warrior policemen rushed there from all parts of the camp. They
seized the woman and held her while medicine men were summoned. I
stood there among the surrounding crowd and watched the proceedings.
Finally the medicine men caused her to gag and choke and cough
out the tail of a deer. At once she came into her right mind. Our
medicine men always could cure that kind of sickness.
This woman had another attack of this same kind some months after
that first one. The medicine men gave her the same kind of treatment.
Again she spat out the tail of a deer and instantly became sane. Not
long after that she got married. She had a third attack a month or
so after the marriage. Her husband did not send for any medicine man
this time. He himself tied her and whipped her. He beat and lashed
his wife until she spat out a deer tail. This cured her right away. I
never heard of her going insane after that time.
The killing of any Cheyenne was the most serious offense against our
tribal laws. The punishment was prompt. A council of the big chiefs
and the warrior chiefs was called at once. The case was inquired
into. If guilt was evident, the offender began without delay the
payment of his penalty. Sometimes action was taken without the
council being assembled, the situation being so clear that unanimity
of feeling was expressed either for or against the person charged
with the crime. The defendant was not permitted to be present at the
trial council. When the decision was rendered he was notified at his
lodge by the warrior policemen. If found guilty they proceeded at
once to put into effect the regular fixed and standard punishment.
“Get ready to go,” they ordered him.
Banishment for four years was the main penalty. It had to be entered
upon that same day. If the offender protested or dallied, he might
suffer the additional infliction of being whipped, of having his
horses killed or his tepee destroyed. If he acceded willingly, he was
allowed to take along his possessions. In any case, he had to go.
His wife or his children might go with him or remain with the tribe,
as they might choose. If he had a medicine pipe, that sacred object
regularly possessed by every adult male Cheyenne, his very first act
of entrance upon the banishment was the smashing to fragments of this
most revered talisman. Everything else he owned he might take along
with him. But he must not have the devotional medicine pipe.
Two or three miles from the main camp was considered a sufficient
distance for the banished one. Relatives might visit him there or
take food to him, but it was not allowable for them to remain long,
and in no case should they remain after sundown. The chief spiritual
guide or medicine man of the tribe withdrew the sacred protection,
so the outlawed one was altogether out of touch with the Great
Medicine. He kept watch of the camp movements, and he could follow
at a distance with his lone tepee and set it up at a distance within
sight of but out of convenient hearing of the new camp location. He
hunted alone. If in the course of his hunting he accidentally came
close to other Cheyennes, it was expected he should hasten away
from them. The warrior policemen would whip him, or they might kill
him, if he should offer to intrude himself. It was not permissible
for anyone to speak to him nor in any other manner extend to him a
friendly recognition. He was entirely avoided--or, it was required
of him that he entirely avoid all other Cheyennes. Day after day,
month after month, summer and winter, fair or foul weather, for four
complete years he lived altogether the life of a scorned hermit. He
was conceded the right to join some other tribe, but he did not do
this. The great obstacle was, the people of the other tribe surely
would ask: “Whence came you, and why?”
When the four years ended, the absolved man came back and took
temporary abode in the lodge of relatives. Soon he set up his own
lodge. He was admitted then to the principal rights, privileges
and immunities of a recognized member of the tribe. But to this
rehabilitation there were some important exceptions. For one, he
never thereafter was allowed to have a medicine pipe nor to take part
in any smoking circle. He was tolerated in personal presence there,
if he chose thus to place himself, but as the pipe was being moved
along from one to another it always went on past him, just as if he
were not there at all. Nobody abused him. They simply ignored him.
Hence, he ordinarily kept entirely away from such gatherings.
An insignificant little pipe having a short stem was conceded to him
as an individual comfort. But he had to smoke always alone. Such
little pipes were made of stone or of the leg bone of a deer or of
some other material not used for making the venerated pipe used in
formal smoking. When I was a little boy I used to see one certain
very old man who smoked one of these little short-stemmed pipes. I
did not understand why he should do this. I asked my father about it.
He told me: “He killed a Cheyenne.”
Social ostracism in various ways haunted the subsequent life of the
murderer otherwise cleansed from his stain. If he came hungry to
any lodge he was fed. But when he was gone, the spoon or dish he had
used was destroyed. If he sat upon a robe, nobody else ever afterward
would sit upon it. If he became needy, gifts were taken to his lodge,
but this was done by way of pity rather than by way of friendly
feeling. By exemplary conduct he might partly restore his standing,
but it never was fully restored.
One time, when I was a boy five or six years old, all of the Northern
Cheyennes and all of the Southern Cheyennes were camped together by
the Giving White Medal river.[10] Each of the tribes had its sacred
medicine tepee, the Northern Cheyennes for their Buffalo Head and the
Southern Cheyennes for their Medicine Arrows. The great double camps
remained together several days. There were many ceremonies, many
social dances and other affairs, much going back and forth between
the two camps in the renewal of old acquaintance and the making of
new acquaintance.
Chief of Many Buffalo and Rolling Wheel were two men belonging
then to our Northern Cheyenne tribe. Chief of Many Buffalo was not
married. Rolling Wheel had a wife and a small boy. This wife was
tempted by the single man, and she took her boy and went to live with
him. Rolling Wheel complained to the chiefs. He asked that Chief of
Many Buffalo be compelled to give him a certain running horse, the
swiftest animal in the whole tribal herd.
“Yes, he must give you that horse,” the chiefs decided.
An old man was sent to notify Chief of Many Buffalo. The owner of the
racer announced that he would keep it, that he had concluded he did
not want the woman. He sent her away to her father’s lodge. “That
makes no difference,” the old man said. “Rolling Wheel now owns that
horse.”
He went and informed the aggrieved husband of the situation. He told
him:
“The horse belongs to you. Go and get it.”
“I go now,” Rolling Wheel replied.
He took his lariat rope and went out among the herd. There on a
little knoll stood Chief of Many Buffalo, armed with a rifle.
“Go away,” the armed man commanded.
But Rolling Wheel kept on after the horse. The rifle flashed and
barked. The man with the lariat tumbled forward dead. Chief of Many
Buffalo was a murderer.
This banished man was not allowed to have any tepee. For four years
he slept in caves or in other natural shelters he might find in
the neighborhood of our camping places. At the end of his term of
isolation he left us and went to the Southern Cheyennes. There he
married a widow of that tribe. Soon afterward he brought her and her
two children to join us. They made their permanent home with our
people. I remember clearly the time of their arrival at our camp. I
was ten years old. We were on Crow creek, a stream that flows into
Tongue river just north of the present Sheridan.
The misguided wife of the dead Rolling Wheel remained for several
years an inhabitant of her father’s lodge. Finally she was married
to another Cheyenne. She was my aunt, a sister of my father, White
Buffalo Shaking Off the Dust.
A Cheyenne named Hawk came to us when I was a small boy. I heard
people talk of him. They said he had been away four years, in
consequence of his having killed Sharp Nose. From the repeated
stories I learned the details.
The two men had been out together capturing wild horses or on a raid
upon an enemy herd. They brought home three horses, one of them
considered a specially good animal and the other two of inferior
grade. Each one wanted to keep the first choice and give the two
others to his companion. They quarreled. It appeared that Sharp Nose
had the better claim to preference, but Hawk had possession of the
disputed animal. He had it picketed beside his lodge.
Sharp Nose on horseback and his father afoot went there to argue
further about the matter. Hawk sat just outside his tepee entrance.
He had his bow and arrows. As the two approached, he stood up and
declared:
“I am going to kill you right now.”
His arrow went through the body of the young man on horseback.
Sharp Nose plunged forward and fell dead to the ground. His father
shouted imprecations upon the hot-headed killer. The father of Hawk
intervened to take a part in the affair. This old man went into their
tepee and came out with a muzzle-loading rifle in his hands. The
father of the dead Sharp Nose turned and walked away toward the camp
boundaries. The rifle was leveled and fired at him. He staggered,
evidently wounded, but he did not fall. The shooter reloaded his
rifle with powder, bullet and cap. By that time the retreating victim
was far off and still walking away. A second shot was sent after him.
This time the result was fatal.
Hawk and his father were banished at once, not being allowed to take
with them any property whatever. I used to gaze upon the returned
Hawk with awe-stricken feelings. People whispered, “He killed a
Cheyenne.” I do not remember ever having seen his father. I believe
the old man died while they were in exile. The killing had been done
somewhere between Cherry creek and the Arickaree river (northeastern
Colorado). When Hawk joined the tribe again we were near the agency
south of the Black Hills.
No property indemnity payment nor any other substitute penalty could
take the place of the four years of banishment put upon a willful
killer. If a killing were accidental, the survivor might be compelled
to give horses and other presents to the relatives of the deceased,
or he voluntarily and promptly might do his best to make amends to
them in that manner. If no blame whatever rested upon him, he need
pay nothing. Yet, it was customary for him to show in some such way
his sadness of heart because of the occurrence.