Smoke Signals

I “There was much smouldering discontent among the Sioux and Cheyennes based upon our failure to observe the stipulations of the treaty made in 1867, which guaranteed to them an immense strip of country, extending, either as as a reservation or a hunting ground, clear to the Big Horn Mountains. By that treaty they had been promised one school for every thirty children, but no school had yet been established . . (” Bourke 1981: 242)


“It was never a matter of surprise to me that the Cheyennes, whose corn fields were once upon the Belle Fourche, the stream which runs around the hills on the north side, should have become frenzied by the report that these lovely valleys would be taken away from them, whether they would or no . . . In the summer of 1876 the Government sent a commission of which Senator William B Allison of Iowa was chairman and the late Major General Alfred H. Terry was a member, to negotiate with with the Sioux for the cession of the Black Hills, but neither Sioux nor Cheyennes were in the humor to negotiate . .” (Bourke 1981: 243 .)


Bourke was impressed more by the Cheyennes than by any other Plains tribe: He found them handsome,

“comparing favorably in appearance with any other people I’ve seen. In general character the Cheyennes are extremely fierce, cruel, skilled in battle, unequalled in horsemanship, precise as marksmen. From my acquaintance with them at Red Cloud agency in 1877, and my service against them, I formed a very high opinion of their general character, and always found them truthful and to be relied upon.” (Porter 1986 :60.)

From “We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher”
By E.C. Abbott (“Teddy Blue” Abbott) and Helena Huntington Smith
1939 Farrar and Rinehart, Inc. New York Chapter XVII


Of all the Indians, the ones I admired the most were the Northern Cheyennes. That time they broke out in Oklahoma and fought their way north to this countryup here, was the greatest fight put up by any bunch of Indians in all history. And they were a hundred per cent in the right all the time, because they were fighting to get back to their own country, that had been theirs for more years than the oldest Indian could remember. One army officer who was out against them said it was “the greatest national movement ever made by any people since the Greeks marched to the sea.”

You can read about it in a very few books, the best being in “Remininiscences of a Ranchman” by Edgar Beecher Bronson, in the chapter called “A Finish Fight for a Birthright.” But except for that book and perhaps one or two others, you will seldom hear anything about the great fight made by Dull Knife and Little Wolf in ‘78, because the white man is such a damn poor loser, he does not talk about the times when the Indians were victorious. Even the Custer fight is no exception to this statement, because, while the Indians cleaned up on Custer at the Little Big Horn, the government sent out more troops and cleaned up on the Indians later in that same year, 1876.

It was after the campaign in the fall of 1876 that Dull Knife and his tribe were sent down to Ft. Reno in Indian Territory, or the Nations as it was called at that time. That is a hot, low lying country and they was used to the High Plains. All through 1877 and the first half of 1878 they sickened and died. They begged the government to let them come back to their own home, but this was refused. In September, 1878, the whole tribe jumped the reservation and headed north. Going up through Kansas they fought five battles oin less than three weeks and fought the soldiers off every time, and when they didn’t fight they slipped through and kept on going, and the United States Army couldn’t stop them.

They crossed the Kansas Pacific Railroad and burned down some houses near Dodge City, after they’d whipped two companies of cavalry first. They crossed the Union Pacific half a mile east of Oglala. And boy, those Indians were travelling. They were making seventy miles a day with women and children, and raiding on the cow outfits as they went along, to get fresh horses. They run onto a band of cowboys at the forks of Republican River and killed eighteen of them,and everybody else that was in the country got out of the way. I know I run at least a hundred miles.

When they got up to the North Platte River, Bill Paxton’s ranch was on their loine of march, and they stole some 0f his horses. From the way Bill talked about it he thought Johnny Stringfellow should have stood them off, or else followed them up and got back the horses. String told me about it. He said, “Bill Paxton wanted to know why I didn’t go after them Indians. I told him I hadn’t lost no Cheyennes.”

They killed quite a few people and burned some ranches, but you couldn’t blame them for that, because they were only savages and were fighting for their freedom like savages. On all that long march, they didn’t do but only one bad thing. I did hear that they come across a lonely schoolhouse, and some of them took the teacher and one of the older girl pupils and abused them. They both got well and I believe got married afterwards. Sixty years is a long time to remember all the details of a thing like that and I am not sure this is right. But I believe it was done by a small bunch of young bucks who were raiding out from the main bunch. The Cheyennes were very moral Indians and it was not like them to do a thing like that as a rule. The Apaches was the worst ones for that kind of stuff.

All this happened in October, before I left home and just before I went up to the Pine Ridge agency with that beef herd. I was up at the North Platte by this time, and when the Indians got up there a posse went out to chase them, and I was with the posse. They was scattered out in bunches of fifteen or twenty, raiding on the different ranches while the main bunch kept pushing on, and this band that we were following dropped back and stood us off, in an arroyo. I was lying down behind a buck brush,trying to get a shot at an Indian, and one of them saw me and took a shot at me, and it kicked up the dust in my face. I can shiver yet when I think of it.

There was an Indian in this bunch called Brave Wolf, who was a great warrior. They claim he danced thirteen dried buffalo heads off him before he started from the reservation, to make his medicine strong. And he got up in the arroyo in front of us, all painted up, and he did a war dance to prove we couldn’t kill him. He was prancing around out there going “Hi-ya, hi-ya,” with sixteen of us shooting at him and all too excited to hit him, until finally somebody got him through the head. They picked him up by the arms and dragged him over the hills. We let them go. We had got our bellyful of Cheyennes.

And that was all I saw of them until I got up to Montana in ‘83 and they was here. But I heard the rest of the story from Hank Thompson, who was a government scout at Ft. Keogh for years, and knew the Cheyennes very well, and was married to a Cheyenne woman. And I also heard about it from some of the Indians who made the trip, especially Wolf Robe and High Walking. When they got up into the sand hills of western Nebraska they run out of cow ranches, so they run out of horses. They knew they would never make it the way they were going, so Dull Knife and Little Wolf decided to separate. Little Wolf, the young chief, was to take the fighting men and most of the ammunition and the best horses, and try to get through. Dull Knife took the old men and women and chiildren, and just a few warriors.

The country was full of soldiers, patrolling up and down, ready to head them off. So Little Wolf and his band went up and showed themselves on top of a high hill, and the soldiers saw them and surrounded the hill in the night and thought they had got them. When morning come there wasn’t an Indian -- they was so much smarter than the troops at that kind of game. But that move by Little Wolf gave Dull Knife the only chance he had, and he and his women and his old men sneaked off into the brush down on White River. The soldiers captured them there a few days later and took them to Fort Robinson. They were out of ammunition, they were starving, they didn’t have a horse that could travel. Of course when they were taken prisoner the soldiers took all their weapons away, but in spite of everything those Indians managed to take a few guns apart and hide them under the squaws’ dresses, and a few small knives, and when they got to the fort they hid them under the floor boards of the guardhouse.

And the post commander was going to send them back to the reservation down in Oklahoma, marching overland through that terrible below zero weather, and those Indians had no clothes, they were naked, they would have froze to death. So Dull Knife refused to go. So that fool of a commander ordered their rations cut off because they were disobedient, and for three days they were in the guardhouse with nothing to eat, just swaying back and forth and singing their war chants; and the third night they took their few poor weapons that they had hid and killed a sentry and made a break for the hills. They had nothing to fight with, nothing, only sticks and a few guns and a few knives, but they fought anyway, women too; and one man who was there tells of seeing a big six-foot warrior dying, with a little three-inch skinning knife in his hand. That was all he had. Pretty nearly the whole band died fighting, women and all.

But Little Wolf and his followers won out, and that is one of the miracles of Indian history. They got clear up here almost to Tongue River, when General Miles come down from Ft. Keogh with a big body of troops and demanded their surrender. They said no, they would never surrender. They said that before they would go back to the reservation in Oklahoma they would kill each other with their knives. But then they told him that if the government would let them stayup here in their old country on Tongue River, they would lay down their arms and be good Indians and never make any more trouble. Miles knew it was a question of that, or else he would have to massacre these Indians and lose a lot of men himself, so he agreed.

And for a wonder the government backed him up, instead of doublke crossing him and making a liar out of him the way they done when Chief Joseph surrendered after the Nez Perce campaign. And so Miles’ word was not broken, and the Indians was allowed to stay and keep their victory.

And that is the whole story of why the Northern Cheyennes were up here when I came to this country in ‘83, and why they are here today. They have a little bit of a reservation on Tongue River and the Rosebud, not half as big as the reservation next to it that the government gave the Crows. But the Crows were smart; they fought on the government side in the seventies. And so the Crows are well off, they drive cars and run race horses, but nobody ever heard of a Cheyenne with a race horse. They are too poor.

But this reservation they are living on today is their country that they fought for in ‘78, and half of them died. In the old days, no matter how far they went on their hunting parties they would always come back to Tongue River to winter. It was home to them. And no wonder. It is a beautiful country, well watered, with high hills and big yellow pines scattered over them, and grass everywhere, and lots of shelter. They were used to this, and that is why when they had to go down to that low, flat Oklahoma country they took sick and died.

But a lot more things happened even after they were allowed to stay up here in ‘78. Because wherever Indians and white men come together there is bound to be trouble, or there was until the Indians was completely broken. There was trouble up here with the Cheyennes in the season of ‘83-’84, and I was mixed up in it, though it was more or less against my will.

From “We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher”
By E.C. Abbott (“Teddy Blue” Abbott) and Helena Huntington Smith
1939 Farrar and Rinehart, Inc. New York Chapter XVI

“THE BRAVEST INDIANS ON THE PLAINS”


“Most of the Indian tribes was doing a regular business of that kind with the white men and some of them, especially the Crows and Sioux, had got so low they would offer you their wives. But the way they did it in most of the
camps, that they had special tepees for the purpose, and certain squaws that was just like sporting women among the whites. Only among the Indians it never seemed to hurt their chances of marrying afterwards.

The Gros Ventres, Crows and Sioux, and I think the Blackfeet were all doing this kind of business,. But never the Northern Cheyennes, nor the Pawnees down in Nebraska. You couldn’t touch one of their women uinless you married her with a priest.

I tried hard to get a Cheyenne girl once, but she wouldn’t even marry me. She was one of a big band of Cheyennes that was camped all over our range, from Armell’s Creek to the Rosebud, in 1883. There was two lodges of them that came down to the FUF ranch, and I told the old man it was a good idea to treat them well and give them a little grub once in a while, tea and coffee and sugar. They didn’t have any too much of it.

For these wee the Indians that put up that great fight in ‘78, when they broke out of the reservation down in Indian Territory where they had been sent for punishment after the Custer Battle in ‘76. They broke out under Dull Knife and Little Wolf, and they fought their way clear up from Indian territory to Tongue River in Montana, because they was dying like flies down there, dying for home. There was three hundred Indians, and less than a hundred of them was warriors, the rest women and old men and children. And with thirteen thousand troops out against them they fought their way across three railroads and five lines of defense, and they whipped everthing they come to. And, by God, half of them made it up here to Montana, and for a wonder they was allowed to stay. I tell you they were the bravest Indians on the Plains -- the Northern Cheyennes.

This girl I speak of was in one of their tepees that came down and camped at the ranch, and oh, but she was a good looking girl. It wasn’t easy to see much of her. She was very modest. You had to hunt her. But she did come to the ranch house once or twice for dinner, with the rest of them. You see, we put on kind of a party for them, cooked up some plum duff and so on; because two or three of us in the outfit was n Nebraska when they come through there like a prairies fire in ‘78, and we knew these Indians, what they were. We ought to know. They killed eighteen cowboys down there when they was making the break for home. They come pretty near to getting me, too, but if I’d been in their place, I’d have done the same.

One of the lodges that was camped on Armall’s Creek belonged to an Indian named High Walking. He was one of the government’s Cheyennes that were scouts with Miles during the Nez Perce campaign.-- because a lot of those Indians would fight with the government against their old enemies -- and he could talk pretty good English. I used to sit and visit wuith him nights, in the tepee. You hear talk about Indians being dirty, and a lot of them are today,so it makes you sick sometimes to see them. But these modern reservation Indians are entirely different. Mrs. HighWalking kept her lodge as neat and clean as any white woman I ever knew kept her house, and their kid was dressed like a little warrior. She was a manager, too. The Indians loved coffee, and they had very little of it, and I have seen Mrs. High Walking take six beans of coffee and pound it up for her and her husband.

The girl would be in the tepee nights, with the rest of them. I never had much chance to talk to her. She would just sit there with her head down and wouldn’t say nothing. She didn’t have to. You knew all you needed to know, just looking at her. I did try to make up to her a couple of times, p 147 but she give me to understand she didn’t want a damned thing to do with me. She seemed a little bit freer when the men were not around. I think she was afraid of them. The Cheyennes were very strict with their women.They were one of the Indian tribes that would cut off a wife’s nose if she was unfaithful, and I have seen them that way around the camps,, with the tips of their noses sliced off. It was an awful thing to see.

I wanted this girl so much I asked her if she’d marry me, but she wouldn’t do that, either. I asked her through old High Walking, and as I told him, “She’s good enough for me.”

Well, she was, or that was the way I felt about it at the time. And I wasn’t the only one in a long way, because there was plenty of cowpunchers in the old days who were not ashamed to marry an Indian girl. You couldn’t blame us. We were starving for the sight of a womn, and some of these young squaws were awful good looking, with their fringed dresses of soft deer or antelope skin that hung just below their knees -- that was all they wore, just the dress -- and their beaded leggings and wide beaded belts. Oh, boy, but they looked good to us. But I was always that way. I always wanted a dark-eyed woman.

There is one thing more I want to say about these mixed marriages. that used to take place in the early days. Those Indian women made wonderful wivres. The greatest attraction of a woman, to an Indian, was obedience. They were taught that, and they inherited it. Their husband’s will was their law. Every white man I ever knew that was married to an Indian --like Granville Stuart -- thought the world of them.
--------------------------------------------------------

NORTHERN CHEYENNES AND CLASS ONE AIR
TRIBAL CHAIRMAN ALAN ROWLAND. 1976


In August of 1976 Northern Cheyennes again were in the headlines for challenging the construction of two additional 700 million watt coal fired generating plants at Colstrip 15 miles from the reservation., where the pollution from two such plants already in operation is clearly evident.

On August 23 the Great Falls Tribune reported that the Cheyennes might hold the trump card in this increasingly complicated fight, via their petition to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) for redesignation of the air quality standard from the existing Class II to Class I, an unheard of prerogative.

“The petition means,” said Tribal Chairman Allen Rowland, “that we’re in a bad habit of breathing fresh air and we want to continue to do so.” Billings Gazette, Aug 22 1976.

“My own personal feeling is that I don’t think Congress should say, “Your air should be like this -- this number two. Everyone should be able to choose the kind of air they have to breathe.” (High Country News, July 16, 1976.)

The Cheyenne petition is the first of its kind in the country. At this time it appears the petition will be approved despite strong opposition from the mining interests, and from the Crows who wish to see mining development proceed (Environment Reporter, April 29 and May 6, 1977) although effective enforcement of its provisions will entail a grim and continuing battle (cf. Conoway1973; Gold 1974; Jospehy 1973; Smith 1975; and Northern Cheyenne Research Project 1976 and 1977.)

Rowland has also, to the utter amazement of the Cheyennes’ Montana naighbors, offered to purchase in the name of the tribe the nearly community of Decker (along with Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, which was in the spring of 1977 talking about secession from its own state government. )

“We would like to buy Decker and incorporate it into the Northern Cheyenne Reservation,” he said, pointing out various benefits which might accrue to Decker from such an action.

“For instance we could conceivably extend our proposed Class One air designation to your area.”

Decker need no longer be “a resource colony of the State of Montana.” The tribe could reactivate time tested procedures long utlilzed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Indians by issuing Certificates of Competency to all eligible Deckerites:

“Those unable to meet this test will be under our utmost supervision in all financial matters, to insure their continual well-being.” Full tribal membership for Decker residents would not be possible, but a schedule whereby some might attain full voting rights could be considered.

In closing, he extended the purchase offer to the secession-minded residents of Martha’s Vineyard of Massachusetts.

“We believe our special stutus is flexible enough to offer the same protection to that beleagured island” (Billings Gazette, April 6, 1977.)



from Margot Liberty 1980 The Symbolic Value of the Little Big Horn in the Northern Plains

pp. 121-136 in Ernest L Schusky ed., Political Organization of Native North Americans Washington, University Press of America

 

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL OBSERVER

Turning Northeast Wyoming Upside Down in the Hunt for Coal-Bed Methane
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: December 1, 2003

n its own quiet way, there is hardly a landscape in America lovelier than the hills of northeastern Wyoming. The drama of that countryside is understated, except when the weather bears down hard. Pockets of low brush on the hillsides burn as bright as sugar maples when October comes. After half a decade of drought, the pasture grasses by mid-November seem utterly bleached, as if they had been reduced to silica. Angus mother cows wander along the irrigation ditches, and when the sun catches the herd through a break in the clouds, the contrast between the black cattle and the blond light rising from the grass seems to define the limits of the visible spectrum.

The eye catches just the surface of things — the drought-deprived flow in the creek bottoms, the long rows of round bales stacked against the prevailing winds, the superficial differences that separate wild land from rangeland from hayground.

In the Powder River Basin, it's hard to miss the fresh dirt roads that crawl along the draws and up over the saddles in the hills. But those roads are a sign that the surface no longer means much in this part of Wyoming. What the eye can't see is that the real owners of the land own what lies beneath. Those who own the surface are just squatters.

The Powder River Basin is the most active region of coal-bed methane drilling in the nation, a place where in the next few years more than 50,000 wells will have been drilled to obtain, at most, a year's supply of natural gas. There has always been plenty to divide one neighbor from another in the area. But the coal-bed methane push, which began, innocuously enough, with a tax credit in the late 1980's, has caused a bitterness that may never be repaired.

In Wyoming, and in much of the country, mineral extraction is still considered the highest and best use of the land. When property is sold in Wyoming, a portion of the mineral rights usually remains with the previous owner. What that means is that most land has two and often many more owners — the owners of the mineral rights, which include the state and federal governments, and the owner of the surface rights.

Extracting coal-bed methane means draining groundwater that is often charged with toxic salts. The process has demoralized the landscape of the Powder River Basin, especially its western edge where there has been little conventional mining. The coal-bed methane push has carved up a delicate landscape, causing new scars all across the terrain. It has created an incentive for ranchers who control their mineral rights to deface the land. It has sent ranchers who don't control their mineral rights into the frenzy that most people would feel who saw land they cared for being torn up.

The methane push has also demoralized the landscape in another sense. When entire valleys have been seamed with new roads and punctured by new drilling, when the draws have been dammed and lined to hold the runoff water from methane wells, it becomes harder and harder to stand up for the character of your own land, especially when you know, as most people in the basin do, that someday soon the crews will be back to lay the pipelines that will connect the wells.

The erosion is moral as well as literal. Ranchers usually do pretty well when their backs are against the wall. That's part of the ethos of ranching. But when you feel that the entire logic of the land is suddenly against you, it's all too tempting to give up in the name of what some people like to call the national interest.

I've come to think of the coal-bed methane industry as a metaphor for something deeper that's going on in our country. The methane play, as the industry likes to call it, is being sold on the grounds of energy security, as a way of ensuring that the American lifestyle can continue uninterrupted and undiminished. But what that means is turning everything upside down. All that drilling and scarring, all that animosity and moral erosion lead to one year's supply of natural gas and the waste of billions of gallons of water.

Americans could essentially create that amount of energy through conservation, which is the true source of energy security. But conservation turns no profits, not to the owners of subterranean mineral rights or the gas companies or the pipelines or the lobbyists who drive this kind of extraction through the highest levels of government. No. The methane play is about short-term profits, not long-term security. A deal gets done, and soon you no longer recognize the country you live in.

Letter Sent to Tribal Report of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, Lame Deer, Montana

To Whom It May Concern
November 12, 2006

In the 1970s, when the western US energy boom was really getting underway, some Birney and Decker ranchers learned to their horror of what was in the North Central Power Study. Energy development plans therein projected some 100 mine mouth generating plants to be built in the areas of Tongue River and Powder River. (See Ross Toole 1979, “The Rape of the Great Plains.” ) The area was to become a world energy source akin to the Ruhr Valley of Germany. I was staying with one of these ranchers at the time, Ellen Cotton of the Four Mile Ranch at Decker. She and some others organized resistance to this effort. Helped by the Northern Plains Resource Council of Billings, they placed some signs out on the county road to Sheridan -- “NATIONAL SACRIFICE AREA.” The signs did not last but among some the sentiment remained. Leasing for coal development took place but up to now the big mines and power plants like those at Colstrip have not been developed.

Which of the areas of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation can the tribe best designate as a "Tribal Sacrifice Area?" As the Environmental Impact Studies for coal development get underway -- and these are projected to take two years or more -- this question will have to be addressed. The answer is probably -- Birney -- on Tongue River -- where the river has already been affected by salinity of coalbed methane development and the pollution of water sources east of the river. (See smokesignals6000.blogspot.com for hearings including Northern Cheyenne participants, concerning the effects of such development on reservation air, water, and soil.)

The Cheyenne Tribe has a very unusual designation in its Class One Air status. Already the emissions from Colstrip mine mouth units 1,2,3 and 4 are endangering its Clean Air status. It will be much more endangered when mining takes place on the reservation itself. This designation probably cannot survive the development of reservation mining. The reservation will probably be reduced to Class Two air or worse, like most of the rest of the country. The only other Class One areas are the National Parks. It will be a shame to lose this unusual distinction, in which the Northern Cheyennes have set a proud example for other tribes and for the nation as a whole.

Birney is the most traditional reservation community. It has provided ongoing cultural and spiritual continuity and values for others. It will be very sad to see it wiped out by a strip mine. I taught at the Birney Day School there from 1954 to 1958 and the example of Northern Cheyenne tradition which I experienced there has changed my life. Among other things I met John Stands in Timber while I was there, and helped him to write “Cheyenne Memories,” which since publication in 1967 has been known as the best native account of the tribe. It has gone into Italian and French language editions, and remains in print in a second edition at Yale University Press after almost 40 years. John would be grateful. I know I am.

If Birney is not to be the" Northern Cheyenne Sacrifice Area," which other area can be chosen for destruction? ? Lame Deer? Busby? Muddy? Ashland? Any of these communities would virtually disappear under the onrushing forces of development. The communities may not look like much to outsiders. They have tremendous economic and social problems. They have garbage problems!! But they have real and lasting values as Cheyenne communities. Surely there must be a combination of other ways forward, which will not see them obliterated in terms of their cultural identity. They may be rural slums now and some would argue that they are, but at least they are Cheyenne rural slums -- so far.

I would like to suggest that the tribe look at something else, while the Environmental Impact Studies for coal development are underway. This concerns many possibilities in the development of tourism related endeavors.


NORTHERN CHEYENNE TOURISM


Why is there no museum of Cheyenne history and culture on the reservation, other than the one open for limited hours only, at the Mission? Why is there no public event other than the summer powwow? How come the Crows have a total monopoly on guided tours for visitors to Custer Battlefield? Here are some ideas/suggestions to explore.

1. Look into the idea of a guided history tour service to be organized through the tribe. The College could offer a “Certified Cheyenne Guide” program, a one term class whose graduates could be listed on a tribal register to offer half or full day escort service to visitors interested in learning about the Cheyenne past. They could charge at least $100 a day to step on a bus, or accompany a private automobile. A variety of trips and tours could be worked out and offered. These could include visits to the Rosebud and Custer Battlefields
and possibly special tours by arrangement with landowners at the site of the Dull Knife battle near Kaycee. They could include as options, visits to St. Labre’s and the Mennonite missions -- the Buffalo Jump -- the cemetery and graves of the great chiefs --
Head Chief or “Squaw Hill” -- many other sites could be proposed and developed.

2. Look into a visitor “Rest Station” at Busby where visitors could make a pit stop, buy gas, and learn about George Custer’s next to last night on this earth. His route from the Colstrip marker to Busby could be traced. Soldier and Indian food could be offered. The battalion stopped for just 6 or 8 hours at Busby and then went over the hill to the Littlehorn leaving in the middle of the night. They must have left a lot of traces -- stuff they dropped in the dark on the way out -- no archeology has ever been done there. State and federal funds are available for the development of such projects just off highways. Conrad Burns might be happy to help with such funding in his last “Lame Duck” months in the Senate.

3. Think Big in terms of a museum, at Busby or elsewhere. The head of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington
is Richard West, a Southern Cheyenne. Talk about contacts! Major collections of Cheyenne artifacts exist at many museums throughout the country. These could be returned to the Tribe if there was a responsibly administered place for them. A lot of planning and grant writing would be required for this dream to become a reality. But look what other tribes have done!! Visit the web site of the Head Smashed In historic and cultural site of the Blackfoot tribe of Alberta. It is a World Heritage Site as designated by UNESCO of the United Nations. It has year round programs and camping facilities at a beautiful modern museum built right over a buffalo jump. When I visited there they had an all-Indian staff or almost so, which appeared to employ nearly half the tribe. It is one of the Can’t-Miss sites of North America. Telling the real Cheyenne story could result in something as successful and beautiful.

4. The National Park Service is now working on creating protected national memorials to Cheyenne history at the battle sites of Sand Creek and the Washita. Each is already a National Historic Site. Work is now going forward to nominate the Deer Medicine Rocks at Lame Deer for such an honor. What part will Jimtown play in this? That’s a challenge. Could there be exhibits about the Deer Medicine Rocks at the Cultural Center at the College, or would more space be needed if National Historic Site status become a reality? What story would the Tribe like to tell here? It was the site of the Uncpapa leader Sitting Bull’s Sun Dance, where he saw the vision of all the soldiers falling into camp, just before the Custer fight. But Northern Cheyennes shared in that ceremony, as well as in the battle that followed. And it is not well known, but there was another Sun Dance the year before, in 1875, near the same place, where the Northern Cheyenne medicine man Ice participated with Sitting Bull in a similar event. This cemented the Cheyenne-Lakota alliance, and resulted in the Cheyennes leading the great camp and battles of the following summer.


Come on, Cheyennes, it’s a good day to die!! Your lives and fortunes do not have to be based solely on a coal mine. For two centuries you have given the United States and the world an amazing example of courage and cultural integrity -- persistence in the face of adversity, and loyalty to sacred tradition. Keep up the good work. Nobody else can do it the way you can.


With respect and hope


Margot Liberty
Sheridan, Wyoming
Coauthor with John Stands in Timber of "Cheyenne Memories", 1967

NORTHERN CHEYENNE NET


Reservation Wide General Election Results
Ashland District

Dan Carlson 840
Tracy Robinson 611

Busby District

Darlene Bement 737
L. Jace Killsback 688

Lame Deer District

Allen Fisher 893
LaForce Lonebear 539
Jennie Lou Small LaFranier 847
Judith "Judy" Spang 630
Jule Spang Sr. 584
James Walksalong 603

Initiative #1

FOR the development of Coal Resources 664
AGAINST the development of Coal Resources 572

Initiative #2

FOR the development of Natural Gas Resources 365
AGAINST the development of Natural Gas Resources 941

OCTOBER 30, 2006


Northern Cheyenne to vote on resource extraction
 Posted: October 30, 2006
by: David Melmer / Indian Country Today

Click to Enlarge


Photo courtesy Philip Whiteman Jr. -- Members of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe held an Arrow Worship ceremony in 1989 to prevent ARCO from digging exploratory wells for coal bed methane extraction and coal mining operations on the Montana reservation.

LAME DEER, Mont. - Voters on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation will decide on Nov. 7 whether to allow coal bed methane extraction and coal extraction within the reservation exterior boundaries.

The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council approved a letter of intent between the tribe and the Great Bear Corp. of Oklahoma to proceed with exploration and extract coal bed methane while providing the reservation with economic incentives.

The letter stated the two parties agreed that the GBC, in addition to the plan to develop the coal fields, would introduce a construction-based education program for the Northern Cheyenne.

In addition, the tribe would be required to become a super 8(a) entity. As a further incentive, the company agreed to build a retail store, a laundry facility and a water bottling plant, according to the letter.

The letter was approved on Chairman Eugene Little Coyote's tie-breaking vote; the next day, however, Little Coyote rescinded the letter of intent because, as he stated in his letter of disapproval, the districts did not have enough input or information.

Two resolutions to put the matter to a vote of the people were approved in August of this year and the letter of intent approved on Oct. 1.

Both sides of the issue have brought in outsiders to provide information at various public gatherings.

Winona LaDuke, Ojibwe director of the White Earth Land Recovery Project on the White Earth Reservation, held a press conference and met with people on the reservation.

''I feel like a community should not have to trade an ecosystem for an economy,'' she said. ''For years they fought coal development off. There is a much better plan than using fossil fuels and destroying land and water.''

A local organization, the Association for the Advancement of Indigenous Resources, headed by Northern Cheyenne member Terry Bear Tusk, brought in hydrologists from Montana to present what he called non-biased information.

Bear Tusk said representatives from the Southern Ute Growth Fund and Red Willow Gathering Co. will come to the reservation to talk about how the Ute Tribe of Colorado developed gas reserves without any damage to the air, water or cultural base.

LaDuke promotes biofuels and wind energy as an alternative to the potential destruction of the land to develop fossil fuel energy.

''We are addicted to energy, and Halliburton is driving the decision-making in these states. Water is a human right and a private corporation does not have the right to destroy the water of a people,'' LaDuke said.

Halliburton Corp. is a major player in the oil, gas and coal industry of Wyoming.

To extract coal bed methane from the crevices in the coal beds, water must be removed from the coal and the gas extracted from it. The water has a high saline content and, in some soils, has the potential to destroy vegetation. The water that would be extracted from the coal beds on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation would be dumped into the Tongue River, which is the eastern boundary of the reservation.

The Tongue is a tributary of the Yellowstone River, which flows into the Missouri River. Many other smaller rivers and streams would also be subjected to a higher saline level.

Some vegetation for cattle -

a large industry in Montana -

would be affected by the salinity, but other vegetation has some tolerance. Salt will not leach into the ground easily if the ground is composed mostly of clay.

''On a worldwide scale, water is scarce and a lot of people are dying for lack of water: and the companies are saying allow them to destroy it,'' LaDuke said.

The northern portions of the Powder River Coal Basin, which is mostly located in Wyoming, are located under the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. There are more than 2,000 coal bed methane wells in Wyoming, mostly in the Powder River area; one of the largest surface mining of coal lies just west of the reservation in Gillette, Wyo.

It is estimated that 1.85 billion gallons of water are pumped to the surface daily to extract coal bed methane in Wyoming.

Anti-coal development sentiment has reached the young people of the reservation, and they have expressed themselves on the sides of building with graffiti. Anti-coal development graffiti can be seen on buildings throughout the communities, and even on a funeral home.

Cultural preservation is paramount to any consideration of coal development, according to Phillip Whiteman Jr.

''I'm upset because our ancestors fought and fought and died so we could be able to have a homeland,'' he said.

''There are human issues and changes to the Mother Earth; people have to be concerned with all the changes of Mother Earth. I would like to send a message to the people; be careful, the land that we leave for our children and grandchildren will be affected. We don't want to leave them with black water and grey skies and grey land,'' Whiteman said.

He suggested that some people are convinced that this development will mean new jobs, new stores and economic development.

The Northern Cheyenne have experienced this situation before. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the Northern Cheyenne brought in ARCO to dig exploratory wells. Land was leased for cents on the dollar and each tribal member received $1,000. The company left and the exploratory work was not reclaimed, according to Whiteman.

''These farmers and ranchers went into this and thought they would make some money. They don't have wells, they have tumors,'' he said.

A ceremony, the Arrow Worship ceremony, was conducted when ARCO came to the reservation to stop coal development. It asked for prayers for the people to reconnect, Whiteman said.

''That ceremony is still there; if we go against it we go against ourselves,'' he said.

Advocates for the development argue that full reclamation would leave the land in as good or better shape than before. The economic potential is also a major talking point, since the reservation has a very high rate of unemployment.

Bear Tusk said his purpose is to provide a middle of the road approach to the information. He is a supporter of the development, but also said the tribe should proceed carefully.

AAIR supports total tribal control over the operation that would leave the tribe as the owner and manager of the development and not contract with an outside company.