Smoke Signals

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.

 

CONTENTS OF BLOG http://smokesignals2006.blogspot.com/

Most recent first, back to earliest in September 2006




NORTHERN CHEYENNE COMMENTS ON ENERGY DEVELOPMENT
From recent blog in Billings Gazette after Oct. 25 Northern Cheyenne Energy story




ISSUES TO CONSIDER -- BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT CBM DEVELOPMENT HEARINGS
Results of important hearings November 2004
http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbng/CoalCreek/AppendixE.pdf
Commentary concerning exploration and testing at 8 locations, 16 new and 2 existing wells
Appendix E Powder River Gas -- Coal Creek POD
Environmental assessment and MPDES
Public comments and responses
This section includes comments related to the scope of the EA; public or landowner involvement; and other procedural questions related to POD processing or EA preparation.
Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004


BOOK REVIEW, A NORTHERN CHEYENNE ALBUM BY MARQUIS, WOODENLEGS, AND LIBERTY
From Amazon.com
Early Cheyenne Reservation Life -- A Masterpiece, October 10, 2006
Reviewer: Bob Reece (Longmont, CO USA)


BLM REPORT ON NORTHERN CHEYENNE TRADITION BY JOE LITTLECOYOTE AND OTHERS
2002 Bureau of Land Management Report By Joe Littlecoyote and Others
http://www.blm.gov/search/?query=Northern+Cheyenne&adv=1&narrow=pr%3Adefault&pr=VALUE_HERE&dropXSL=yes
CHAPTER 2
AN OVERVIEW OF NORTHERN CHEYENNE CULTURE AND HISTORY
A long and detailed history of the tribe by Joe Littlecoyote and others



Thursday, November 02, 2006
TRADITIONAL NORTHERN CHEYENNE LAND AND WATER VALUES

TRADITIONAL BELIEFS AND RESOURCES
FROM DEAVER AND TALLBULL REPORT, BLM 2001
WATER --CEREMONIAL SITES ---GRAVES, BURIALS AND CEMETERIES--
THE TONGUE RIVER VALLEY ---CONCLUSIONS
FROM
http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbm/eis/NCheyenneNarrativeReport/Chap7.pdf.



IRRESPONSIBLE ENERGY DEVELOPMENT
Oil and Gas are not Coal and Methane but the same folks do it
And results are often the same.



October 30, 2006
IRRESPONSIBLE OIL AND GAS DRILLING IS DEVASTATING THE WEST


Wednesday, October 25, 2006
JUST SAY NO
Look Well. O Wolves. Look well, o Cheyennes!



Sunday, October 22, 2006
NORTHERN CHEYENNE ENERGY BATTLES 1977
RUBY SOOKTIS STATEMENT

This battle was being fought thirty years ago, more than a whole generation. Thanks to its courage, determination, and brilliant leadership the tribe won an amazing victory.



Sunday, October 22, 2006
ABOUT COLSTRIP UNITS 1, 2, 3 AND 4
Notes from Internet Dec 12 2005



Monday, October 09, 2006
NEW YORK TIMES
TRIBAL COLLEGES GRAPPLE WITH CHALLENGES OF SUCCESSBy Steven A. Holmes
Published: August 3, 1997



Monday, October 09, 2006
TONGUE RIVER RAILROAD AS OF 1998
By JIM ROBBINS
Published: December 13, 1998



Thursday, October 05, 2006
THE MOST IMPORTANT TRIBE IN THIS COUNTRY
In 1979 a very significant book was published. It was “The Rape of the Great Plains: Northwest America, Cattle and Coal,” by University of Montana history professor K. Ross Toole.
Ross Toole dedicates this book “To the dedicated and knowledgeable environmentalists in the Great Plains states upon whose persistence the fate of a great land depends.” He includes the Northern Cheyennes among them.



Monday, October 02, 2006
NORTHERN CHEYENNE BATTLES WERE NOT JUST WITH CAVALRY --
SOME OF THE BIGGEST HAPPENED DURING RESERVATION YEARS
Story of the Northern Cheyenne Unallotment Act of 1955. led by John Woodenlegs



Sunday, October 01, 2006
Gazette story on Marquis book of Northern Cheyenne photos
See comments -- lots of Cheyenne respondents on line.



Friday, September 29, 2006
SWEET MEDICINE'S PROPHECY

Sweet Medicine’s Prophecy

They will be powerful people, strong, tough. They will fly up in the air, into the sky, they will dig under the earth, they will drain the earth and kill it. All over the earth they will kill the trees and the grass, they will put their own grass and their own hay, but the earth will be dead -- all the old trees and grass and animals. They are coming closer all the time. Back there, New York, those places, the earth is already dead. Here we are lucky. It’s nice here. It’s pretty. We have this good air. This prairie hay still grows. But they are coming all thetime, turn the land over and kill it, more and more babies being born, more and more people coming. That’s what He said.

He said the white men would be so powerful. so strong. They could take thunder, that electricity from the sky, and light their houses. Maybe they would even be able to reach up and take the moon, or stars maybe, one or two. Maybe they still can’t do that . . .

Our old food we used to eat was good. The meat from buffalo and game was good. It made us strong. These cows are good to eat, soft, tender, but they are not like that meat. Our people used to live a long time. Today we eat white man’s food, we cannot live so lonng -- maybe seventy, maybe eighty years, not a hundred. Sweet Medicine told us that. He said the white man was too strong. He said hiis food would be sweet, and after we taste that food we want it. Chokecherries and plums, and wild turnips, and honey from the wild bees, that was our food. This other food is too sweet. We eat it and forget. . . . . .It’s all coming true, what He said.

FRED LAST BULL
KEEPER OF THE SACRED ARROWS
BUSBY, MONTANA
SEPTEMBER 1957



A NORTHERN CHEYENNE VOICE
from Tribal Heritage Program,
Western Heritage Center,
Billings
Keith Beartusk, Northern Cheyenne Tribe


Friday, September 29, 2006
COAL BED METHANE AND SOILS
CBM Water and Soils



Friday, September 29, 2006
COAL BED METHANE AND WATER



Friday, September 29, 2006
COAL BED METHANE WATER AND SOILS



Friday, September 29, 2006
COAL BED METHANE AND AIR QUALITY -- DESTROYS RETIREMENT DREAM



Friday, September 29, 2006
COAL BED METHANE AND AIR QUALITY: CBM Creates Dust Plague



Wednesday, September 27, 2006
New York Times Coalbed Methane Endangers Tongue River



September 12 2006
New York Times details coalbed methane extraction in Eastern Montana.
In the West, a Water Fight Over Quality, Not Quantity
By JIM ROBBINS



Wednesday, September 27, 2006
News From Custer Battlefield
NEWS FROM CUSTER BATTLEFIELD



Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Sources at Indian Country Today
Search for Northern Cheyenne at Indian Country Today newspaper
yielded many results as recent as Sept. 22 2006
http://www.indiancountry.com/search.cfm?category=8&category2=2&author=0



Monday, September 25, 2006
A BREATH OF FRESH AIR
FEATURE ARTICLE - January 20, 2003
A breath of fresh air
by Bob Struckman and Ray Ring



Monday, September 25, 2006
HOMELAND FILM
Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action is a film which can be seen by making arrangements with the Cultural Center at Chief Dull Knife College. It includes
***** Gail Small: The Coal Wars
Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Lame Deer, Montana
Evon Peter: The People and the Caribou Are One
Arctic Village, Alaska
Rita & Mitchel Capitan: Yellowcake, New Mexico
Navajo Reservation, New Mexico
Barry Dana: A People and Their River
Penobscot River, Maine



Monday, September 25, 2006
PARTIAL VICTORY 2005Current Developments
• Northern Cheyenne Tribe had a partial victory on February 25, 2005 when a federal judge in Billings, Montana ruled that a statewide environmental study by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of coalbed methane development in Montana was inadequate. This ruling comes from lawsuits filed in 2003 against BLM and the Department of Interior Secretary Gale Norton by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Northern Plains Resource Council.



Monday, September 25, 2006
THE COAL WARS
FOR full text of 2005 ARTICLE Gail Small: The Coal Wars
Northern Cheyenne Reservation,
Lame Deer, Montana
PLEASE ACCESS THE LINK POSTED VOICES FROM THE EARTH



Saturday, September 23, 2006
American Heritage Book of Indians 1961

p. 337 “Above all, the new world of the horse brought time and temptation to dream. The plains are afloat in mysterious space, and the winds come straight from heaven. Anyone alone in the plains turns into a mystic. The plains had always been a place for dreams, but with horses they were more so. Something happens to a man when he gets on a horse, in a country where he can ride at a run forever; it is quite easy to ascend to an impression of living in a myth. He either feels like a god or feels closer to God, There seems never to have been a race of plains horsemen that was not either fanatically proud or fanatically religious. The Plains Indians were both. “

NCrezwoman wrote on October 23, 2006 8:19 AM
Mr. Littlecoyote, needs to be removed, so do all the counsel memebers who voted for the coalbead methane. If I am to choose between the two evils I will go with coal developement..Not methane. Our question through out the rez was who is "Great Bear"? And another thing Mr. Beartusk needs to go back to Sheridan. Go ruin their water leave ours alone. Our spring by the Ashland divide is 99.7 percent spring water, with coalbed methan drilling we will not have any water.

VOTE IT DOWN! wrote on October 23, 2006 11:24 AM
CHEYENNE TRIBAL MEMBERS VOTE THIS PROPOSAL DOWN TO DEVELOP METHANE GAS! DANCE DOWN METHANE, VOTE FOR COUNCIL PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT SUPPORT THIS TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT. OUR WATER WILL BE DESTROYED, PEOPLE OF LAME DEER REMEMBER ALL THE WATER SHUT OFFS THATS HOW IT WILL BE NO WATER TO CLEAN UP OR DRINK THINK ABOUT IT!
 
 
n8tivelady37 wrote on October 23, 2006 2:15 PM
I agree with prospering the reservation. But remember to pay attention carefully when other's are saying "research the impacts FIRST". It's not that we want to keep our people oppressed. Make sure it is done RIGHT. Only fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Cross the 'T's' and dot the 'i's,

Busby Cat wrote on October 23, 2006 2:30 PM
Vote No on Coal/Methane Development!!
 
The Tribe has enough money wrote on October 23, 2006 3:52 PM
Who needs coal mines and natural gas wells the Tribe already has enough money. The people don't need either. Vote no to keep that money out of the reservation.
 
honeybee wrote on October 23, 2006 4:25 PM
Just a comment for whatever it is worth, if it even makes it on the blog. As long as we have crooks, gamblers, liars, and thieves as leaders we will never agree on a plan that will work to benefit all and I mean all tribal members. We don't know how to manage our money, and there's too much drugging and drinking and too many deaths resulting from car accidents due to drunk/drug driving. Terry Bear Tusk and his crones don't know what they are talking about. Do they really think that our lives will get better just because we will have more money? Get real! Look around there's a lot of work that needs to be done before we can become self sufficient and responsible people. I for one will be voting no to coal development and coalbed methane development on November 7, 2006. I will continue to work to support my family for as long as I have to.
 
BugJuice-on-NCrez wrote on October 23, 2006 8:27 PM
This has nothing to do with poverty, these people just want money so they can say they have some, money won't last forever, but our land will, the tribe is a corrupt bunch of people that are ignorant and naive so we cannot listen to them, we as a people have to decide! VOTE NO TO CAOLBED METHANE and COAL DEVELOPMENT
 
 
I have hope wrote on October 23, 2006 9:34 PM
that this is one time that Sweet Medicine will be wrong........come on Cheyennes, vote no!!!!!
 
VOTE NO WAY wrote on October 23, 2006 9:38 PM
Our tribe CANNOT function now with all the nepotism etc. coal/methane money will be mismanaged and fought over, then we will be even worse off. Remember we can't drink money, and we can't live without water! The companies will speak with a forked tongue until they have what they want, and what they want is all we have left. THINK ABOUT IT
 
Hawktrail wrote on October 23, 2006 9:41 PM
No matter how many different ways there are to extract coal-bed methane, the result is the same in the end. Polluted water or perhaps none at all. It might take years for the later, but it will happen. I had the opportunity to speak with a fellow Cheyenne lady who is attending South Dakota School of Mines and she was very adament and concerned about what will happen should the Cheyenne vote in favor of this Mother Earth poisoning method of having a little $$$$$ for a tish bit.I certainly don't think its worth destroying our homeland. ~
I appreciate the efforts that the "Gras
Corporations, businesses, industries all rise and fall with time, not even flashes in history. Look at the mines in Colstrip, around Butte, go out east and look at all the mines and mills that never even lasted 3 full generations of people. Culture makes a person strong; ethical, moral, disciplined, and respectful. If our people exercised their culture and our children learned and exercised their culture, it makes me ask: Would our reservation be that dirty? Would drugs and alcohol be destroying our community? Would we be having to destroy our home to provide for ourselves? A lot of NC people think you need to live on the reservation to be Cheyenne. Traditionally we lived in bands, different communities, and it was our discipline and principles that made us great amongst our allies and enemies. A lot of people think because they’re an enrolled member and they’ve got their education, even though they don’t know or practice Cheyenne ways and haven’t made a similar investment to learn from and actually be a part of the NC community, they know what’s best for the NC Tribe. It makes me ask what’s really in their heart, what they’re basing their view on, and if they really think that they’re speaking for real traditional people who want to protect their land and natural resources for the future of the NC people. I’ve seen both sides of the argument, both in the community and in the administration.
Because we’re Cheyenne and have our covenants which tie us to the land, what do we sacrifice? I’ve seen people talk about development because they are tired of being poor and just simply want to have money, “money” before a “job” if a job is even mentioned. I even heard one person say, “…our People are starving to death,” but yet no one I’ve talked to knows of anyone ever starving to death on the reservation; yet there’s more fast food than healthy food and no development of any tribal garden or wild game management to provide nutritious food for the elderly, low income, and diabetics-two ventures that could have easily been started as tribal programs.
Where’s the long term plan at? What’s being done to educate the NC people about investing, make them smart investors able to turn new money into old money for their descendents? What’s the plan to make community improvements and utilize all of our human resources; whether unemployed, in jail, or those just wanting to help and not being given the opportunity to make healthy community changes? Eminent Domain is something every U.S. Tribe is potentially going to be faced with. However, the international community is becoming more and more aware of Native Americans’ plights to address cultural genocide and their natural resource issues; land protection and preservation. Native People have spearheaded many of the international issues of today, especially that of natural resource protection.
Education is the key for our tribal members to become fully self-sustaining and preserving. The education of others to the important issues that effect the earth we all share is equally. I’m just as tired of seeing and being affected by poverty. But I’d rather make the right decision and know its who I am and where I come from that’s making the real change in my people’s way of life and my own (i.e. hard work based on identity and culture), not a quick fix that hasn’t even been strategized and is the gasoline to the alcohol, drugs, abuse, etc. issues that are still blazing. Our ancestors are looking down at us, at how we are living with what they have left for us, and some day we will be doing the same on our descendents. If that time has to come, I wonder how many real Cheyennes (especially military society soldiers and Chiefs) I’ll be standing with to protect our sacred land and water.
 
Busby Cat wrote on October 23, 2006 10:12 PM
Do be a sell out for our home, our land, it is our wealth in who we are, we are famous enough as the true protectors of the land, our cheyenne land, no one else can make the claim to our land,our cheyenne way of life, dont a sell out, and become crazy for money, be content with what we have, eat deer, buffalo, grow corn, pumpkin,restore our fishing holes for our kids and be happy do not give in to weak and desperate leadership who are being blinded by money-vote no to coal and methane development
 
k wrote on October 23, 2006 11:23 PM
After reading the majority of the comments...if you do nothing to help yourselves...why should any of us care? Responsible devlopement...not difficult...look into WY and see what coal and gas has brought..some hard things but many good things...pros and cons...learn to adapt and grow prosperous... do not talk about pollution...I see more pollution today on the reservation than I see off it in the methane fields or the mines...they are regulated and forced to be good stewards of the land...maybe they would be a good example.
 

21st Century Cheyenne wrote on October 23, 2006 9:48 PM
I grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. I am one of few young people who took to learning my identity; history, culture, spirituality, and have access to and learn the language. There are many things that make a nation and contribute to its survival, the most important is that of IDENTITY. Many see development as the answer to the NC Tribe's problems. It can bring opportunities, but it doesn't solve the problems and issues that the NC people can't solve themselves.
I come from both Little Wolf's and Dull Knife's band, and I've sat and listened to my grandparents and many other elders talk about what their parents and grandparents endured so the NC people could be close to home, our Sacred Mountain, and so the NC people could live on. A lot of blood shed. A lot of lives were sacrificed so we could be here today and have a home; land, water, air, all the elements along with the vegetation and animals we give thanks for in our prayers and our ceremonies. No matter what anyone says, for the NC Tribe, true sovereignty can only be achieved through culture and education.
Money comes and goes. Corporations, businesses, industries all rise and fall with time, not even flashes in history. Look at the mines in Colstrip, around Butte, go out east and look at all the mines and mills that never even lasted 3 full generations of people. Culture makes a person strong; ethical, moral, disciplined, and respectful. If our people exercised their culture and our children learned and exercised their culture, it makes me ask: Would our reservation be that dirty? Would drugs and alcohol be destroying our community? Would we be having to destroy our home to provide for ourselves?
A lot of NC people think you need to live on the reservation to be Cheyenne. Traditionally we lived in bands, different communities, and it was our discipline and principles that made us great amongst our allies and enemies. A lot of people think because they’re an enrolled member and they’ve got their education, even though they don’t know or practice Cheyenne ways and haven’t made a similar investment to learn from and actually be a part of the NC community, they know what’s best for the NC Tribe. It makes me ask what’s really in their heart, what they’re basing their view on, and if they really think that they’re speaking for real traditional people who want to protect their land and natural resources for the future of the NC people.
I’ve seen both sides of the argument, both in the community and in the administration. Because we’re Cheyenne and have our covenants which tie us to the land, what do we sacrifice? I’ve seen people talk about development because they are tired of being poor and just simply want to have money, “money” before a “job” if a job is even mentioned. I even heard one person say, “…our People are starving to death,” but yet no one I’ve talked to knows of anyone ever starving to death on the reservation; yet there’s more fast food than healthy food and no development of any tribal garden or wild game management to provide nutritious food for the elderly, low income, and diabetics-two ventures that could have easily been started as tribal programs. Where’s the long term plan at? What’s being done to educate the NC people about investing, make them smart investors able to turn new money into old money for their descendents? What’s the plan to make community improvements and utilize all of our human resources; whether unemployed, in jail, or those just wanting to help and not being given the opportunity to make healthy community changes?
Eminent Domain is something every U.S. Tribe is potentially going to be faced with. However, the international community is becoming more and more aware of Native Americans’ plights to address cultural genocide and their natural resource issues; land protection and preservation. Native People have spearheaded many of the international issues of today, especially that of natural resource protection. Education is the key for our tribal members to become fully self-sustaining and preserving. The education of others to the important issues that effect the earth we all share is equally. I’m just as tired of seeing and being affected by poverty. But I’d rather make the right decision and know its who I am and where I come from that’s making the real change in my people’s way of life and my own (i.e. hard work based on identity and culture), not a quick fix that hasn’t even been strategized and is the gasoline to the alcohol, drugs, abuse, etc. issues that are still blazing.
Our ancestors are looking down at us, at how we are living with what they have left for us, and some day we will be doing the same on our descendents. If that time has to come, I wonder how many real Cheyennes (especially military society soldiers and Chiefs) I’ll be standing with to protect our sacred land and water.
 
Urban Cheyenne wrote on October 23, 2006 11:30 PM
I agree. Mr. Beartusk - go back to Sheridan. You have been gone from the reservation all these years and you have lost the connection with our beloved reservation. Have people read the studies on coalbed methane. We won't have any water left for our beloved homeland. If we're going to develop - let's develop our coal. Our coal seams run adjacent to the seams to Peabody and Western Energy. There's a proven product there. The people need to be informed. Continue with the meetings. Bring in experts who know the dangers of coal bed methane development.
 
Hmmm wrote on October 23, 2006 11:58 PM
How is the Northern Cheyenne Tribe going to manage CD/CBM, when they can't even manage the Cheyenne Depot.
 
 
muddy cluster resident wrote on October 24, 2006 1:50 AM
The land will always be here,looks like greed is getting the best of some of the people on the rez.I grew up on this land that they talk of destroying I thought we were suppose to keep this land our ancesters faught and died for, forever.Throw a twenty dollar bill into the wind and see how long you can keep it in your sight, the only thing you will still see are the hills and the trees PLEASE vote "NO" there are other things we can try before they tear up our land and make our water worse..
 
the big kahuna wrote on October 24, 2006 8:07 AM
All the comments about the coal and methane are good. We as people need to stand up together and voice our opinions like this at the district meetings, not on blogs where no one knows our true identities. We know what it is we need to do...for the most part (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that we do not trust our leaders, and that is where the uncertainty comes from about this referdum vote we will be taking. OUr government leaders cannot govern, it is a "culture of waste", and we the people need to take a stand as one and tell our leaders what we want. Let us also learn from the coal leases that were signed in the late 70's where the Cheyenne's almost lost out on the coal prices becuase of not knowing what they were getting into. Any one remember that? President Carter had to sign into law cancelling the coal leases so we could get our land back. ALso, what does the BIA think? they have the trust responsibility in this over our land. But remember the coal leases in the 70's. Let's learn from that.
 
NCrezwoman wrote on October 24, 2006 8:21 AM
I am against Methane developement. I have read a lot of greedy people comments on this blog. I agree we do need to get away from the US gov't hand outs, but to sacrafice our land, our water. Come on, like its been said, money comes and goes, Our land will be here forever. Maybe a whole lot of you greedy people need to go to Oklahoma in January, put on some moccasins and be sure to take a very thin blanket and walk back to Montana. See what our ancestors went through for US!! For our homeland!
 
JackieT wrote on October 24, 2006 8:32 AM
I remember when my mother was approached to sign a lease allowing gas exploration and when she refused to sign the contract because royalties where not included in the agreement, she was overruled by the BIA. The company is now pumping gas from her land and her estate now earns about $300+ a year for the lease on the land AND the income from the gas. Is it worth it for the next 7 generations???
 
VotingCheyenne wrote on October 24, 2006 9:08 AM
This goes out to my people; I sure like your suggestions about how we could develop our reservation. Maybe we could develop some kind of bus tour to the black hills or maybe we could even develop a golf course and a truck stop on the divide. There are so many different opportunities that could be put in front of us all. It will still come back to the leaders of the tribe what kind of development do they have in store for their people? What about education is there anyway that we could build a learning center like CDKMC? So many open doors which one chould we enter!!
 
 
Margot Liberty wrote on October 24, 2006 9:16 AM
The Northern Cheyennes are one of the most famous and heroic tribes in the United States. They led the Sioux in defeating Custer and other military forces in 1876, and their outbreak from Oklahoma prison camp and return to the north in 1878-79 is one of the great epics of American history. More recently the tribe has had a very strong record of protecting their environment and denyting the irresponsible development of energy resources including coal. They stopped the sale of Cheyenne land to outsiders in the 1950s under the leadership of John Woodenlegs. 98% or more of reservation land (almost 500,000 acres) is thus under individual Cheyenne or tribal ownership -- unheard of among other reservations of the Plains, where 80% or more of reservation land is usually owned by Whites. When half the reservation was leased for coal development back in the seventies, they succeeded in overturning and cancelling the leases made by the Department of the Interior. Such a move was unheard of. They won a Supreme Court decision, the Hollowbreast case, guranteeing them control in perpetuity of their mineral rights. Most white owners of ranch land would die to be so lucky.
Under the leadership of Alan Rowland they won a Class One Air designation under the Clean Air Act of 1974, one of the very few such high designations in the country -- the others are mainly the National Parks. Most areas in the country are Class Two or lower. This designation very nearly stopped the construction of mine-mouth electricity generating units Colstrip Three and Four. Colstrip Three and Four were built, but with much more rigorous emission requirements than would otherwise be the case, since mine emissions blow over the reservation just 15 miles to the south.
Professor Ross Toole of the University of Montana in his book The Rape of the Great Plains in 1979 called the Cheyennes "The Most Important Tribe in This Country" because of their amazing record of resistance to strip mining and other environmentally disastrous development. Rubie Sooktis and Gail Small (at Native Action) have worked tirelessly to prevent such disasters. But today Tongue River on the east border of the reservation is so heavily affected by coalbed methane development nearby -- pollting the water with salt -- that it may soon be unusable for irrigation and livestock. Environmental damage from this cause is severe at nearby Sheridan, Wyoming. 30,000 methane wells in the area are projected for the near future. I have posted documents, background articles, and news stories on these matters at smokesignals2006.blogspot.com. Everyone is invited to visit and comment.
It would be tragic indeed if today's Northern Cheyennes sold out the achievements of their ancestors and more recent leaders like Woodenlegs and Rowland, for a dollar store. A strip mine at Birney would destroy not only the traditional Cheyenne community, but one of the few last unspoiled and beautiful areas of the country. There are drugs and other such problems in great plenty at Lame Deer and other reservation areas. Don't let's let energy development spoil this truly last, best place.
 
Northern Cheyenne Man wrote on October 24, 2006 9:35 AM
Our Non-renewable resources have always coveted by the Whiteman and his industry. In the late 70's, the Hollowbreast case allowed our tribe to reassume control of our land after the entire reservation was leased to development corporations. The erroneous leases were negotiated by the Bureau of Indian Affairs below market value and they were never processed through the constitutional referendum process. It is important to remember our Cheyenne history, culture, custom & language. They form the tie that binds us together as a people, a race, a nation, and as spiritual beings.
As Cheyenne, we must always remember the trails of our ancestors, we must always remember what trail we our currently on, and we must always remeber the trails to be forged by the Cheyenne yet to come. We must always pray to Mahaoe to help us remember in the times of stress and crisis, the two covenants given to us and what agreements they represent between the Cheyenne and Creator. We were given certain ways to ensure our survival. This way of making money by digging or draining our land is not Cheyenne.
If it is the Whiteman's money that Cheyenne's like Mr. Beartusk want, then they need to earn it through hardwork and sacrifice. If the creator wanted us to sell our non-renewable resources he would have put them on top of the earth, not below the surface! Thus, with the development of our non-renewable resources placed before us on the ballot, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe faces a crossroad. The left road leads to the digging and siphoning of the land and water. While the road on the right road leads to ecological preservation and individual self-sufficiency! Sweet Medicine prophesized about the time when the Cheyenne will no longer be Cheyenne...that we will forget our ways and become like the whiteman. Perhaps that time has come....
 
dhinNM wrote on October 24, 2006 10:17 AM
Vote it down, by all means, vote it down. Why should the Northern Cheyenne lead themselves out of poverty when they have the brainwashed (its all the white man's fault) youths writing letters asking the government to come fix the reservation? In a little while, "you people" will be there to fix the broken homes and to perpetuate the status quo. Don't lift yourselves out of poverty while solving energy needs. Bad idea.
 
Concerned wrote on October 24, 2006 10:46 AM
To a certain degree, I agree with "vote yes." However the key point is that you have the right to choose your life's journey. Terry Beartusk has been a strong advocate of self-help recovery for many years now and its sad to see that he now believes in the, as they say, easier softer way" which seems to be a band-aid approach to our community's economy. There is an excellent junior college right in the community that isn't utilized enough and individuals can get employment however you have to have motivation. Making choices to improve your life means hard work and dedication.... that's right...its your choice.
 
hadawada@yahoo.com wrote on October 24, 2006 10:52 AM
Just a quick story - our house in Lame Deer was broken into, obviously things were taken, the thief was positively identified. The thief was a brother to a dear friend. Inevitably tension over the situation ended the friendship. The mother of the thief started a character assassination campaign against the owner of the house. This is just one story of the realities of the reservation and where are values lay. There have been some very important points that have been posted. The one thing that I would add is that money will not restore pride and respect - for ourselves, others, and our homelands. We have become so conditioned to think less of ourselves and the relationship we have with all things has lost its meaning, that should we force a change that we are not ready for, then we have indeed become fully assimilated into America..."I wanna be rich..."
 
just another kid wrote on October 24, 2006 11:08 AM
I think all of you who want to vote for coal development and coalbed methane are all greedy!! I'm a kid in high school and can see that all anyone cares about is the money... well what about the land?? when it's all torn up then what are you future generations gonna be proud of?? money doesn't last long but land can last forever!!
 
Coal bed methane wrote on October 24, 2006 11:24 AM
Has anyone seen the way wyoming looks and smells right now. I,ve read environmental reports on how the wild life is avoiding these areas like the plague, which is basically what it is. Wyoming is currently suing the state of montana to have the water quality standards reduced to wyoming's levels. The water that wyoming is dumping into the Powder-river,the little Powder river, and the tongue has already begun to kill off certain types of fish along with decimating the plant life along the rivers. The salinity levels are toxic in this time of drought, many have stated that you can irrigate with this water and use it for livestock.
I for one would like impact statements from Wyoming now and in three years. We as cheyenne people cannot rush into anything this damaging with out looking at what we want to accomplish it is all well and good to say to combat povery, make us solvent etc. But at what cost, history has shown us that great life changes are always promised. Usually after we have been plundered the culprits have slunk off with their profits and we end up with the mess. All I would like is a clear picture of who will benefit, who will have access to the funds, when we can expect a profit, how much profit can we expect.
In business class they say it takes approx. two to three years to make any money off of a venture. In the past the cheyennes were burnt very badly by the Alantic Richfield company. We have had people give permission to drill on land without the owners permission or knowledge. Greed is one of the worst enemies we have now. I am not against solvency, progress or making a better life for us all. I just don't want to have our land destroyed in the process. I would not want to be like the Crow nation which only own the land around their houses and the bank owns the rest. Short term profit is not an answer neither is pillaging our only natural resource. In the end we will have to explain to our children what we did for them and the sacrifices we made. I hope we do as much for them as our ancestors did for us. p.s. Ask wyoming where all there deer and antelope have gone J
 
 
To dhnNM wrote on October 24, 2006 1:14 PM
It's always the one's whom have sold all that they own including their souls that want to decide how us land-owners should "get rid of" all that useless land. My mother was thinking ahead when she wrote her will, if any of her kids try to sell the land deeded to us then it automatically reverts to our children and so on and so forth. I for one would never sell my children's land. That is the way I think about it. I don't own it my grandchildren do as do their grandchildren. So dhnNM take your sarcastic, pompous, get rich quick attitude, buy some land, burn it, dig wells on it, scrape off the whole top layer of earth to get to your precious minerals, but don't ask us to do the same. We cheyennes know the true value of our land and resources. If you noticed the only cheyennes who are whole-heartedly for strip mining/ draining our aquifers are one's whom have no land and no respect for another person's land. J
 
cheyengineer wrote on October 24, 2006 1:29 PM
I am a member of the N.Chey tribe and an engineering student. I am also a landholder and am against the the development of coal on our homeland. VOTE NO!
 
NCrezwoman wrote on October 24, 2006 1:43 PM
Well said, Margot...Thank you!
 
Sick and Tired Northern Cheyenne wrote on October 24, 2006 2:31 PM
My heart is breaking. My ancestors gave their lives and generations of prayers for us to have this place of our ceremony and tradition. Our original instructions tell us to take care of our people. I believe that one way we do this is through our ceremonies. Our poverty and the impacts are about oppression. Economic and social theory indicate that essentially throwing money (even a massive windfall) at the issues perpetuatd by poverty will not solve them. They are systemic. WE must change them from the inside out, based on our cultural values and traditions, with thoughtful economic development for supporting the initiatives. Think about the $2000 windfall in the early 80s. How many people's lives did this move forward, really? That was a lot of money to my family back then. Didn't change a thing. We spent it and it was gone. The true "cost" of development may far outweigh the "benefit." There is not a long-range strategic plan for managing the magnitude of this kind of money. Will we even truly get a "fair" price for what we will continue to lose in culture and in our relationship to the land, which is what makes us Cheyenne? Should money like this go into infrastructure first and foremost or will greed get the best of individuals first? I applaude our President for being democratic. But, I ask that you think about what our grandparents have said and taught. Pray to Maheo that the right decision is made and think long and hard, critically about ALL the angles of implication.
 
 
Cheyenne Woman wrote on October 31, 2006 1:07 AM
I'm a young cheyenne woman. I see most of the tribal council in the casino; JUST GREEDY with their new cars and expensive trips. I want to be a teacher and give someone the younger children can look up to. All those kids have are those crackheads, dropouts, greedy councilmembers, selfish relatives, alcoholic families and they don't know what to do. Money is evil. CoalBedMethane will destroy our already-messed-up way of life. My children and grand children will be affected by this decision. My little cousin is against coalbedmethane, I am too. MONEY won't get us out of poverty. Poverty is a state of mind. Get OUT OF THAT STATE OF MIND! We as a people will have to fight for ourselves and our place just like our ancestors did. Being Cheyenne is all I know and I will die before I let some greedy bastard take that away from me and my children. Remember: GREED + SELFISHNESS = CBM PRO CBM = SELLOUT Nea'eshe Na'haaenhe
 


Very Worried wrote on October 24, 2006 5:18 PM
If Terry Beartusk is really concerned about fighting substance abuse, he should consider what will happen to substance abuse rates on the reservation when energy development happens. Look at the big time energy development communities in Wyoming. Does he really want Lame Deer to be like Rock Springs, and Busby like Pinedale? There might be money to triple the police force and build a five story jail, but is this the best way to go?
 

To I agree wrote on October 24, 2006 7:06 PM
And destroying the reservation, it's ground water and the plants and animals is the way to go. yes let us do that. So when every thing is gone we can sit on our pile of unusable dirt and roll in the pennies we will receive because either we will have rushed into this and didn't pay attention when we hurried to sign on that dotted line or the tribal council members will have divided it up amongst themselves. I,m not scared of change. I'm scared of Imminent domain, and the drilling companies coming onto my land and saying " we own this land now" which has happened too many times in the past. Ever hear that joke "why did man go to the moon"? because he thought indians owned land there. Take care people this is a precarious situation we are faced with. J

Busby Cat wrote on October 24, 2006 9:41 PM
Vote NO Coal/Methane Development!! Think its bad now around here...wait till were stinking rich and selfless with our loot...more drugs, fast cars, trashing more washers dryers...we can go buy a new wheels to park them anywhere, buy another one, we will be so rich that our history will be strewn with self less,dead, people who put money before true self and the good of the Cheyenne people.....
 
HELL NO!!!!!!!! wrote on October 24, 2006 11:41 PM
NO!!! NO!! NO!!!NO!!!HELL NO!!!
 


Concerned_Northern_Cheyenne wrote on October 25, 2006 7:37 AM
There comes a time in ones life when there is a major decision you make that will imact you for the rest of your life. These two issues, CBM & CD are two major issues that the Northern Cheyenne People will decide on November 7 that will do just this. The decision that the people make will determine the direction the tribe will take for generations to come. How will our future generations down the line look back on us, the decision makers, and view us. Maybe some will look back and say, "hey, they made an excellent desicion, we are now booming economically and continue to grow," or some might say, "I wish they had never allowed these companies to come in, we are now living amongst non-Cheyennes and we don't even control our own land."
Our ancestors fought, died, cherised and passed down to us this little speck of land given to us by the US governement out of millions of acres that were once under control of the Cheyenne. They wanted us to take care of this land. We have a responsibility, not only to our ancestors, but to our future generations to continue to take care of this land and pass it down to them the way it should be. CBM & CD are not the ONLY ways to get our people out of poverty have a sound economic base on the reservation. We can't be so selfish as to just think of money for ourselves. We have to think of both our past and future generations and include them in our decision making process. There are many pros and cons to both subjects, but I think in the long run the cons heavily outweigh the pros. As for me, I will vote NO TO COAL DEVELOPMENT AND NO TO COALBED METHANE. We are not ready for these. Perhaps in the future, when we have more capable people in our council who can manage and handle the deals and brockering with comapanies, that will occur when these deals go down, we can have something than; but for now we are not ready. Think hard, fellow Cheyenne, when you vote on these two issues. What we decide will have shock waves for generations to come.
 
TO FLETCHER wrote on October 25, 2006 8:20 AM
You have a lot of Guts! You can state your opinion on sell out our rez, but hey you don't even live on the rez so yeah vote yes to destroy us. Where are your roots, Sheridan?
 
NDN.. wrote on October 25, 2006 8:38 AM
me myself and I...well thats what it is i say do what you have to because GREED controls people and you all know that the younger generation will sell out!! All we will have is memories besides it will take years before we actully get money.


20UO0489 wrote on October 25, 2006 9:30 AM
I am a Northern Cheyenne Member who majored in Business and I think that before we develop coal or methane we first need to learn how to run a successful business. This, I believe, is the key that will lead the tribe to self-sufficiency. What we need to be voting on is amending the Northern Cheyenne Constitution that will form two councils, a business council (for the educated) and a tribal council (for the traditional) – a forum where politics can be separated from the money, or at least to a certain degree. At present, the Tribe can't even manage the Cheyenne Depot, can't even provide gas to its own people and it is the only gas station within a 20 mile radius - in all four directions. How are we going to manage a multi-billion dollar business venture? Get real. And do we truly believe that the Tribal Members will get this money in the form of a per capita? More like padding the council's travel accounts so they can pretend like they know what they're talking about in business meetings off in Washington, D.C. or else where – these people represent the tribe a whole - embarrassing. We are a very young nation, a young government and haven’t learned all the business savvy that is required to be successful in today’s business world – nothing is for free – and ignorance always comes with a major cost. So, keep our lands – give ourselves more time to educate our children who, perhaps one day, will do a better job than we have.
 
Cheyenne Native wrote on October 25, 2006 10:14 AM
Please vote NO for coalbed methane!
 
Mell wrote on October 25, 2006 6:36 PM
Well first and foremost I think that every avenue should be first carefully looked at with a magnifying glass and finetooth comb if neccessary, and "If" the cheyenne nation decide that they want to venture into such an agreement they better make sure they have a native lawyer who has the best interests of this particular nation at heart. Too many times in the history of non native investors have destroyed what precious lands we have left in our care and in our titles. All aspects of eithe one of these options needs to be dis-sected and carefully weighed out, what if any long term effects will either of these options have on the lands and natural resources of this specific area? Destruction, pollution, and contamination of any lands on any degree is detrimental to our way of life. I send my prayers to the spokes people of the Cheyenne nation that they be guided from above to make a sound decision that will effect all generations to come, before they sign anything that will be for obvious reason non-negotiable.
 

21st Century Cheyenne wrote on October 25, 2006 9:35 PM
There’s one path to true sovereignty for the NC Tribe, and it’s the one thing we don’t see consistently or enough. It’s education. Education is the NC Tribe’s path to sovereignty. It’s the only tool that will allow us to protect our homeland and provide consistently for future generations of Cheyenne. I often think, where would the NC people be if the majority of parents had a college degree, and most of all, the people knew and practiced their language, history, culture, and spirituality. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, money is the real issue here.
Yes, it is a tool. Yes, the NC people need to provide for the future of their people. But, there’s one question, how are there even going to be Cheyenne in the future if people aren’t even learning their identity and implementing it in their lives? Someone mentioned the prophesies of Sweet Medicine. His most powerful statement were in his last words, “Hold on to all I have taught you, for as long as you can.”
Assimilation has really had it’s way with us. I’ve seen that. I’ve grown up right alongside NC people who have no idea who they are and what Cheyenne is. I’ve seen NC people sell-out to get ahead and consequently take from the very people they’re suppose to be serving. I’ve even heard Terry Beartusk question and disregard why the Cheyenne worship the sun in the Sundance, and even talk down Cheyenne spirituality. Hopefully, he’s learned by now that the Cheyenne don’t have a “Sundance”-the literal meaning in the Cheyenne language is far from this-that it does not entail the “worshipping” of the sun, either, and it’s the way you live, believe, and think that makes you who you are.
The Cheyenne have a long history of fighting for their people. Our society use to be a highly altruistic society-I give my all for the benefit of my people. Remember the 2 Sacred Covenants. Our traditional leadership was once selected based on how they lived their life in accordance with Cheyenne beliefs and principles; they put the needs of others before their own. This type of attitude and morality is what the NC people need. Intuition and discipline are integral to keeping our Cheyenne people in the education system, enabling them to provide for their people and their family, no matter where they are on this earth. It’s hard to be Cheyenne today, cause there are so many more avenues out there to follow.
Do we need money to improve the education of our youth? No. Educated Cheyenne people should be working to improve the standard of education, and the newly passed Board of Regents is just that. Parents could focus on their child’s education, along with their own. Do we need money to clean up the reservation? No. Anyone can clean up, all they need to do is go out there and get busy. Sure, the Southern Ute has built an empire for themselves. But many more questions arise: So, after the methane is gone and they’ve already built up all these million dollar operations (i.e. dialysis center, hospital, academy, etc.) and after they have to begin digging into their reserve, what comes next? What are the cultural/spiritual impacts they have experienced (Do they even have any tribal covenants?)?
The Southern Ute rep talked a lot about what they have been able to do with their money, expanding into other markets; real estate being one. They drill, too. So, should we ask the anthropologists, archeologists, and museums to come and take our Tribal Covenants because we no longer want to be Cheyenne? Maybe we should get all the “yes” voters to get a delegation for this and move ahead with it. Maybe they can form their own “traditional government,” cause I’m sure the US will definitely give them the IRA stamp of approval with a nice big, “Hau noble savages. Make’em heap goot treaty. Smoke’em pipe. Great big’em future. Like shootin star, across da great big’em sky.” Maybe they can ask the US Gov for another round of assimilation-and ask them to take it up a notch, cause it’s working.
Margot Liberty made a lot of great comments about what the Cheyenne people have endured and fought for. Home, land, water, air, family, many powerful and integral parts of life. And to set the record straight PART OF OUR ORIGINAL HOMELAND, the Northern Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, and Lakota defended the Bozeman Trail and occupied the land that is now the Crow Reservation. The original Crow reserve was further west. If it was really the land the Creator gave to them, I think maybe they were put in another dimension during the Battle of the Little Bighorn and during the original Allied Force’s roamings and battles in “Crow country.” That medicine wheel that lies in the Bighorn Mountains comes from one of the original Cheyenne hunting ceremonies and is a territorial marker, not a shrine as people now treat it.
If anyone does their research, the Crow came from the Hidatsa and roamed lands further west of Billings, and when George Bird Grinnell asked the Crow about that Medicine Wheel they had no idea who made it, yet the Arapaho and Sioux knew and stated it came from the Cheyenne. The Cheyenne never sought to wipe out the Crow Tribe, as many people on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation can go back in their lineage to the time when the Cheyenne Nation captured 1/3 of the Crow Tribe-women and children who were integrated into the Cheyenne Nation. Perhaps you should read Pretty Shield and Two Leggings’ accounts of the Northern Cheyenne. The Crow can thank the US Gov, whom they never fought, for the lands the Creator “blessed” them with. Cheyennes can thank the US Gov too, for the fighting spirit they brought out in the Northern Cheyenne people who won a small fraction of their original homeland.
The Northern Cheyenne were the only tribe on the Plains to be displaced and then fight their way to get back home against insurmountable odds. As a Cheyenne, I have to think about my children and my grandchildren, and my great grandchildren, and theirs, all down the line. Our Chiefs use to exemplify in their decisions, the perpetuation of “the People.” It’s even a Cheyenne ethic. So, we extract our coal bed methane now and build corporations and businesses, make huge profits which we can set aside for future use, and eventually somewhere down the line extract coal to meet the demands we have set in place because of the businesses we created and are trying continue? There are tons more considerations to this, and anyone who has a background in business knows that demand and capital of businesses rise and fall with the community/population it serves and is dependent upon the related conditions of resources of the greater economy, the US’s and the world’s. And so, the path we have stepped on will ultimately lead to the destruction of our land
. While our land is being destroyed, from what will we draw of (natural resources) to worship and carry on the way of life we have been given through our 2 Sacred Covenants by the Creator? What use would it be to pray for the fertility of the earth while we’re destroying it? Isn’t it a Cheyenne ethic to not pray for anything you’re not going to do (i.e. don’t pray for your people to have good lives and then mislead and/or abuse them)?
Like so many Cheyenne elders I’ve listened to as they aged and gone home to join our ancestors, and those that we are blessed to still have here amongst the NC people: It’s your language, history, culture, and spirituality in practice that make you who you are. So many Cheyenne ethics and teachings, and many those of other Tribes have come to mind. Children and the land are the most integral parts of a Tribe’s survival, their health in all aspects is vital. Real strength and change, sovereignty, will come through identity and education. Children and the land are constant throughout them both, and they’ll always be together. Might as well make sure they’re in balance.
 

ISSUES TO BE AWARE OF

http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbng/CoalCreek/AppendixE.pdf

Commentary concerning exploration and testing at 8 locations, 16 new and 2 existing wells

APPENDIX E
POWDER RIVER GAS – COAL CREEK POD
ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT AND MPDES
PUBLIC COMMENTS AND RESPONSES
This section includes comments related to the scope of the EA; public or landowner involvement; and other procedural questions related to POD processing or EA preparation.
Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004

This appendix to the Decision Record contains the comments on the July 19, 2004 environmental assessment (EA) and the agencies’ response to those comments.

Table 1 – Commenter and Number.

National Trust for Historic Preservation
1 Montana Historical Society
2 Montanans for Responsible Energy Development
3 Miles City Area Economic Development Council, Inc.
4 Beth Kaeding
5 Terry Punt and Bones Brothers Ranch
6 Charlene M. Woodcock
7 Montana Preservation Alliance
8 Powder River Gas, LLC
9 Montana Environmental Information Center
10 Walter J. Taylor and Lila V. Taylor
11 Mark Fix
12 Michael Reisner, Northern Plains Resource Council and T&Y Irrigation District
13 Bill and Judy Musgrave
14 National Trust for Historic Preservation
15 Fidelity Exploration & Production Company
16 Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Office
17 Geri Small, President, Northern Cheyenne Tribe
18 William Walksalong, Northern Cheyenne Councilman
19 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 8
20 John Rogers
21 Wade Sikorski
22 Russell Blalack
23 Starshine

3. Comment: Why was the Tongue River Railroad (TRR) project not included in the cumulative projects? The EIS is on the TRR is supposed to be released to the public sometime soon. Surely, the BLM and the various Montana regulatory agencies know about this massive project. From examining maps of both projects it appears that there will be some "overlap" of these projects. The route of the proposed Western Alignment goes very close to two of the proposed wells. In this area the railroad proposes to move 1 million cubic yards of dirt per mile. The dirt moved in this area could very well make development in this area impossible. The cut and fills could very well consume all of this area and make it impossible to even build the water treatment plant as well as drill the wells in this area. The EA fails to mention the railroad or its impacts. The railroad and associated coal production will exacerbate air pollution, water pollution, and impacts to wildlife, the very same impacts BLM has ignored here. Will the BLM consult with the Surface Transportation Board and look at the studies done in the TRR EIS before making a final decision on development in this area? (5, 10, 12, 13)
Response: The TRR has been added to the Reasonably Foreseeable Future Actions, section 2.3.3, of the EA. Although the PRG project is near or adjacent to the proposed TRRC Four Mile Creek and Western Alignment routes, the two projects would not be constructed or operated simultaneously. The PRG exploration project would be completed within 6 months after project approval, which would be in advance of a final decision regarding the proposed Western Alignment route and any construction associated with TRR. Because impacts from the two actions would not occur in the same area at the same time, no cumulative impacts are anticipated to occur from the TRR and the PRG POD.
CBNG exploration can proceed in the project area independent of plans for the TRR. If the TRR project progress further; the FEIS analysis of the TRR Western Alignment would be expected to include consideration of CBNG activities, specifically the PRG proposal, as part of its cumulative impact analysis.

17. Comment: I would like to state for the record that the Northern Cheyenne Tribe is very disappointed and concerned with the coordination between the State of Montana and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management on this project. It was very unclear as to what the purpose of today's hearing actually was. The notice issued by the State Department of Environmental Quality indicated that the purpose of today's hearing was to collect public comment with regards to the proposed permit, the statement of basis and the Environmental Assessment. However, the
Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004
Coal Creek POD - Environmental Assessment 99
notice issued by the U.S. BLM indicated that today's hearing was to receive comments related to the State's proposed MPDES permit. (19)
Response: We apologize for any confusion. The hearing was scheduled by DEQ to receive comments on the MPDES permit and related documents. The EA is one of the related documents because it is the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) analysis of the MPDES permit in addition to being the BLM’s NEPA analysis of the operator’s POD. All types of comments on the EA and MPDES permit documents were accepted at the hearing.

33. Comment: The EA does not consider alternatives such as whether Powder River Gas could treat all of its wastewater prior to discharge into the Tongue River instead of treating some of its wastewater and mixing this clean, treated water, with untreated water. This cannot be the best available technology. Why not require all of the produced water to be treated using the Higgins Loop system? The treated water could be discharged without disturbing the existing quality of the river. Complete treatment would eliminate the need for a "mixing zone" in the Tongue River (a stretch of the river in which pollutants are diluted) and ensure no degradation of the Tongue River. If the water is treated to an EC of 1000 and SAR of 3 it will degrade the water quality in the Tongue. The standards are presently being violated at Miles City and these additional loads will only cause greater exceedence. I thought the BLM was requiring that the best available technology be used to deal with produced water. If it is feasible to treat most of the produced water, why isn't it feasible to treat all produced water prior to discharge? This alternative needs to be considered in the EA; based on recent studies, it is affordable. (5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 18, 22, 23)
Response: The feasibility of the Higgins Loop treatment system is still being demonstrated. The alternative to require complete treatment of all the produced water was considered but not analyzed in detail due to the limited amount of water that will be produced during the length of the exploration testing and because the quality of the proposed mixture of treated and untreated water will be protective of beneficial uses. This discussion has been added to the EA in Section 2.1.1.

Air Quality
57. Comment: On page 7 of the EA in paragraph 1.3.1 the statement is made that a MAQP permit is not required. Have the cumulative effects of all of the compressor stations and flaring in the nearby Fidelity field and Wyoming development been considered in the Air Quality monitoring? (12)
Response: The proposed project would not require a MAQP and ambient air quality modeling would not be required. Emissions from the proposed project would be minor and temporary. The air quality portions of the EA have been revised to include emissions from each of the alternatives considered. If future development (installation of compressor engines, generators, etc.) is proposed and the future project requires a MAQP, ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis would be required.
Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004

61. Comment: The Northern Cheyenne Tribe is very concerned that there has been no formal Air Modeling that has been performed as part of the Environmental Analysis for the proposed project. The Tribe is disappointed that the EA relies solely on the inadequate analysis of air quality in the FEIS when assessing the effects of future CBNG development on the Reservation's Class I increments. The present EA contains no modeling of the additional consumption of the Reservation's Class I increments for NOx and PM 10 that would result from reasonably foreseeable CBNG production activities within the project area. The EA for the current project should build on the Badger Hills analysis and include modeling that predicts the likely additional consumption of NOx and PM10 increment that will result from reasonably foreseeable CBNG production in the POD area. (18, 19)
Response: The air quality sections of the EA have been revised to include an emission inventory for each alternative considered. As the emission inventory demonstrates, emissions from the proposed project are minor. The project does not require a MAQP and MDEQ modeling thresholds are above the MAQP thresholds; therefore, modeling is not be required for the project. The minor source baseline date has not been triggered for any regulated pollutant in the project area because no PSD sources significantly impact the proposed project area. In addition, ARM 17.8.807 exempts concentrations of SOx, TSP, or NOx emitted from temporary sources, such as those associated by the exploration project, from consuming increment. If future development (installation of compressor engines, generators, etc.) is proposed and the future project requires a MAQP, ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis would be required.
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65. Comment: EA page 36, paragraph 1, Entire Section does not adequately address Air Quality impacts. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation is classified as a Class I Airshed and the Town of Lame Deer has been re-classified as a PM10 non-attainment area. The draft EA does not sufficiently identify and address the impacts to these two Federally designated standards. There is no discussion or analysis pertaining to regional haze impacts associated with the proposed development. There is no increment consumption analysis performed including proposed power project emissions. The project area is south of the NC Tribe PM10 non-containment area and the predominant winds come from the south. (18, 19)
Response: The air quality sections of the EA have been revised to include an emission inventory for each alternative and to identify the Lame Deer PM10 non-attainment area. As the emission inventory demonstrates, emissions from the proposed exploration project are minor and temporary and would not significantly impact the Lame Deer PM10 non-attainment area. The minor source baseline date has not been triggered for any regulated pollutant for the area of the proposed project because no PSD sources significantly impact the project area. In addition, ARM 17.8.807 exempts concentrations of SOx, TSP, or NOx emitted from temporary sources, such as those proposed to BLM, from consuming increment. Therefore PSD is not applicable to the proposed project and a regional haze and or an increment consumption analyses is not required. If future development (installation of compressor engines, generators, etc.) is proposed and the future project requires a MAQP, ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis would be required.

66. Comment: What is very concerning to the Tribe is the fact that the draft EA at page 37, paragraph 2, constitutes a "Passing of the Buck" with regards to conducting environmental impacts analysis. It does nothing for providing adequate analysis of impacts for the purpose of approving this project with regards to air quality modeling and impacts determination. The draft EA states that the MDEQ "is responsible for determining potential impacts from detailed development plans". In essence this tactic seeks to allow the authorizaf development activities without having to perform the required analysis under NEPA. (18, 19)
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Response: The EA correctly reflects that the MDEQ determines when an air quality permit is required and assesses the potential air quality impacts from that permit. The EA is a joint document with the MDEQ and their analysis of the need for an air quality permit, along with potential air quality impacts from the exploration project, have been included. The air quality sections of the EA have been revised to include an emission inventory for each alternative and to identify the Lame Deer PM10 non-attainment area. The proposed project does not require a MAQP and MDEQ modeling, thresholds are above the MAQP thresholds; therefore, modeling is not be required for the proposed project. The minor source baseline date has not been triggered for any regulated pollutant for the area of the proposed project because there are no PSD sources that significantly impact the proposed project area. In addition, ARM 17.8.807 exempts concentrations of SOx, TSP, or NOx emitted from temporary sources, such as the proposed exploration, from consuming increment. The proposed project would not require a MAQP and ambient air quality modeling would not be required. Emissions from the proposed project would be minor and temporary. The air quality portions of the EA have been revised to include emissions from each of the alternatives considered. If future development (installation of compressor engines, generators, etc.) is proposed and the future project requires a MAQP, ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis would be required.

67. Comment: EA page 47, paragraph 7, There is no analysis of PM 10 or PM2.5 impacts to the Northern Cheyenne non-attainment area. (18)
Response: The air quality sections of the EA have been revised to include an emission inventory for each alternative and to identify the Lame Deer PM10 non-attainment area. As the emission inventory demonstrates, emissions from the proposed project are minor. The project does not require a MAQP and MDEQ modeling, thresholds are above the MAQP thresholds; therefore, modeling is not required for the proposed project. The minor source baseline date has not been triggered for any regulated pollutant for the project area because there are no PSD sources that significantly impact the project area. In addition, ARM 17.8.807 exempts concentrations of SOx, TSP, or NOx emitted from temporary sources, such as the proposed exploration, from consuming increment. The proposed project would not require a MAQP and ambient air quality modeling would not be required. Emissions from the proposed project would be minor and temporary. The air quality portions of the EA have been revised to include emissions from each of the alternatives considered. If future development (installation of compressor engines, generators, etc.) is proposed and the future project requires a MAQP, ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis would be required.

69. Comment: EA page 48, paragraph 1, The Montana FEIS did not adequately incorporate all sources of emissions in its air analysis. Increment modeling has shown that the proposed Round-up Power Project alone would significantly impact the Northern Cheyenne Class I airshed. The analysis conducted on the Round-up Power Project does not even include increment consumption from CBNG developments. (18)
Response: It is incorrect to state that the proposed Round-up Power Project would significantly impact the Northern Cheyenne Class I Airshed. MDEQ, EPA, and the Northern Cheyenne tribe have had discussions on this issue and have agreed that the Round-up Power Project does not significantly impact the Northern Cheyenne Class I Airshed. In addition, all known sources around the proposed Round-up Power project at the time the analysis was conducted were included in the increment consumption analysis.
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measures to address surface water and air quality concerns. BLM ROD at 15. Specifically, the Interagency Working Group was to facilitate regional monitoring, analysis, and mitigation” of air quality impacts and to develop “regional cumulative impacts to air quality.” BLM ROD at 15. The MDEQ committed to establishing at least one regional-scale ambient monitoring station and that data used from the monitoring program will be used to model cumulative impacts. MDEQ ROD at 10. Please describe the monitoring plan developed by the Interagency Working Group for air quality and disclose the air quality monitoring data collected from such program. (13)
Response: The Interagency Working Group has been formed and they are currently working on determining exactly what monitoring data is available for the area. The MDEQ currently requires each potential source (that requires a MAQP), proposing to be placed in the FEIS study area, to conduct ambient air quality modeling that would include a NOx PSD Class I and Class II increment analysis.

74. Comment: The BLM has not done anything to address the impact that CBM development will have on global warming. In any realistic assessment of the impact of CBM development, the impact of global warming must be considered. (22)
Response: The MT FEIS analyzed and disclosed potential air quality impacts from the no action alternative and four action alternatives, including potential climate impacts. MT FEIS at 4-14. Additional analysis for the PRG exploration project on global warming is not necessary as it is within the scope of the MT FEIS analysis of potential climatic impacts.


Cultural Resources
75. Comment: The letter of June 28, 2004, states that a Class III Cultural Survey was completed in August 2003. It appears that information requested in the June 28th letter is being solicited somewhat after the fact. The survey should have considered the potential for both historic districts and traditional cultural properties (TCPs) in the project area, in addition to identifying individual sites such as those shown on the included map. Without the report itself, it is unclear whether an attempt was made to identify these types of properties early in the process and what resulted from that investigation. (1)
Response: The survey did consider the potential for historic districts. The issue of historic districts however, was not raised when the Montana SHPO reviewed the report in September 2003. BLM makes itself responsible for the Native American consultation rather than using consultants, which resulted in no TCPs, including plant-collecting areas, identified in the project area. BLM appreciates that several comments provided input about historic districts and will continue to include this consideration in future CBNG inventory activities and consultation with the Montana SHPO.

76. Comment: If this is the first attempt to carry out tribal consultation or to seek consulting parties, then we believe that this narrow scope is insufficient to satisfy consultation requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act or BLM internal procedures governing Tribal Consultation, such as BLM Manual 8160. Inquiry about the presence of TCPs should be made across the entire project area and not be limited to the two properties described in the letter and cited in the Ethnographic Overview. Since the sites about which you are specifically seeking additional information are associated with the Crow and Sioux tribes, a particular effort should be made to contact those tribes, and other tribes that may have cultural affiliation with the area. (1)
Response: The BLM is not seeking consulting parties. However, since both the Montana Preservation Alliance and National Trust for Historic Preservation expressed interest, we included them in the mailings sent out for Native American consultation. We believe the National Trust has misconstrued our intentions with the identification of the properties specifically identified in BLM’s June 28th letter. BLM did not think these were the only potential TCP’s in the area. However, we did believe additional information was needed since the Tongue River Canyon is a fairly large area and near the Tongue River dam is at best a vague reference. BLM conducted an on-site investigation with the Northern Cheyenne THPO. No plant gathering areas or TCPs were identified as a result of those efforts. BLM has not heard back from either the Crow or Sioux Tribes about the battlefield. The BLM has provided a reasonable and good faith efforts in seeking comment from these tribes; thus the consultation is considered complete.
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79. Comment: Our confusion about BLM plans for tribal consultation resulted in part from a line in the EA on page 35 (07/16/2004) that says, " BLM would again consult with the SHPO and included the results of [tribal] consultation." It was not clear when that would occur or why the EA was posted without that information in the first place. Since your call I understand that we should anticipate an opportunity to comment once you have consulted with the Cheyenne. But, does that also imply that the FONSI or other decision document will be set back until the Cheyenne, NTHP, NPRC, MPA and other parties of record have an opportunity to comment on the results of that Tribal and hopefully other identification efforts? (2)
Response: The BLM completed consultation with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe prior to signing the Decision Record/FONSI. Additionally, BLM again consulted with the Montana SHPO over additional findings made during the BLM on-site inspection with the Northern Cheyenne THPO and on some changes to the water distribution system.

81. Comment: BLM's responsibility for tribal consultation, and consultation with others, cannot be met by consulting with SHPO on the adequacy of an archaeological inventory report. (2)
Response: BLM is aware of the necessity for tribal consultation and knew additional work was necessary in order to complete consultation requirements. This fieldwork was delayed to take into account tribal input and updated inventory results.

83. Comment: BLM's June 28, 2004 correspondence to our office notes the existence of a spring in the LLC Coal Creek project area as identified in the Ethnographic Overview of Southeastern Montana. Tribes often regard springs as sensitive areas. BLM stated their intention to avoid the spring and that a BLM Hydrologist did not anticipate impacts to the flow of the spring.
However, in the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation Appendix, BLM Mitigation Measures -Under Alternative E of the statewide FEIS, the BLM states that "The Northern Cheyenne Cultural Commission would be consulted about the appropriate mitigation if culturally significant springs were located within the drawdown radius of the operator's proposed development."
Has BLM consulted with the Northern Cheyenne to determine if this spring is culturally significant? If a spring is found to be culturally significant, BLM stipulates that mitigation through tribal consultation will occur when a spring is located in a drawdown radius, which this spring is. The finding of effect to the spring by a BLM Hydrologist is irrelevant to the need to discuss mitigation through tribal consultation especially if effects may be indirect. (8)
Response: Actually, according to the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation Appendix, the hydrologic criteria is to be applied first to determine if the spring is located where it could have its flow altered by the groundwater drawdown. Springs with potential hydrologic impacts (changes in flow) then required tribal consultation to determine their cultural significance and the potential for associated cultural effects and appropriate mitigation. However, even in this case, BLM has consulted with the Northern Cheyenne THPO and found that the spring is not a TCP.
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84. Comment: BLM correspondence of June 28, 2004 also references two traditional cultural properties --. a Northern Cheyenne plant gathering area near the Tongue River Dam, and a battle site between the Crow and the Sioux on the Tongue River. Is BLM planning to meet with and formally consult these tribes to resolve questions regarding the location and significance of these sites, as well as the National Register eligibility and potential for adverse impacts to' these places? (8)
Response: The BLM has met with the Northern Cheyenne THPO on-site and found there were no Northern Cheyenne TCPs in the POD area. BLM has not heard from the Crow or Sioux Tribes. The BLM has provided a reasonable and good faith efforts in seeking comment from these tribes; thus the consultation is considered complete.

85. Comment: With the exact location and National Register eligibility of these places remaining unknown; it is impossible to determine potential -adverse impacts. According to the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation Appendix in BLM's FEIS, it is a "current requirement by BLM for "cultural resource contractors to demonstrate good faith consultation with the Tribe and make every attempt to include Cheyenne cultural resource specialists in all aspects of their work (p. CHE=19)." It does not appear that WLS or BLM properly followed through with this requirement. How does BLM plan to enforce this requirement for this project? (8)
Response: The BLM believes it has followed through on the requirements in the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation appendix and consulted in good faith with the Tribe and included their cultural resource specialist (THPO) in review of the operator’s proposal. We disagree that it is not possible to determine adverse effects. We believe the project would have No Adverse Effect to historic properties.

87. Comment: Chapter 2, Table 2.5-2, Page 26, "A spring is identified between wells 5-6F and 11-6F. This is a sensitive site type identified in the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Technical Reports and the Southeast Montana Ethnographic Overview": Does the Montana SHPO or BLM request that special attention be paid to spring sites, above and beyond normal examination? Archaeological survey crews from Western Land Services examined springs in detail, simply because of their inherent nature, that of good, probable site locations. (9)
Response: Yes, springs are considered important to many Native American groups and warrant additional attention. They may contain characteristics not readily apparent to some surveyors. The spring is 700 feet northwest (as measured off the Tongue River Dam 7.5 Min. Map) from the 11-6 Well. The BLM’s hydrologist is the person who conducted the hydrological analysis of potential impacts to the spring from CBNG development. The Northern Cheyenne THPO visited the spring and concluded it was not culturally significant.
83. Comment: BLM's June 28, 2004 correspondence to our office notes the existence of a spring in the LLC Coal Creek project area as identified in the Ethnographic Overview of Southeastern Montana. Tribes often regard springs as sensitive areas. BLM stated their intention to avoid the spring and that a BLM Hydrologist did not anticipate impacts to the flow of the spring.
However, in the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation Appendix, BLM Mitigation Measures -Under Alternative E of the statewide FEIS, the BLM states that "The Northern Cheyenne Cultural Commission would be consulted about the appropriate mitigation if culturally significant springs were located within the drawdown radius of the operator's proposed development."
Has BLM consulted with the Northern Cheyenne to determine if this spring is culturally significant? If a spring is found to be culturally significant, BLM stipulates that mitigation through tribal consultation will occur when a spring is located in a drawdown radius, which this spring is. The finding of effect to the spring by a BLM Hydrologist is irrelevant to the need to discuss mitigation through tribal consultation especially if effects may be indirect. (8)
Response: Actually, according to the Northern Cheyenne Mitigation Appendix, the hydrologic criteria is to be applied first to determine if the spring is located where it could have its flow altered by the groundwater drawdown. Springs with potential hydrologic impacts (changes in flow) then required tribal consultation to determine their cultural significance and the potential for associated cultural effects and appropriate mitigation. However, even in this case, BLM has consulted with the Northern Cheyenne THPO and found that the spring is not a TCP.
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84. Comment: BLM correspondence of June 28, 2004 also references two traditional cultural properties --. a Northern Cheyenne plant gathering area near the Tongue River Dam, and a battle site between the Crow and the Sioux on the Tongue River. Is BLM planning to meet with and formally consult these tribes to resolve questions regarding the location and significance of these sites, as well as the National Register eligibility and potential for adverse impacts to' these places? (8)
Response: The BLM has met with the Northern Cheyenne THPO on-site and found there were no Northern Cheyenne TCPs in the POD area. BLM has not heard from the Crow or Sioux Tribes. The BLM has provided a reasonable and good faith efforts in seeking comment from these tribes; thus the consultation is considered complete.

91. Comment: We [National Trust] were very puzzled to see that the EA was issued on July 19th, prior to the deadline for submitting our comments on cultural resource issues. Therefore, it is not possible that our comments could have been taken into account prior to the issuance of the EA. We request that you now consider the issues raised in our earlier letter, as they are responsive to Mr. Jaynes’ letter, and also responsive to this EA. (15)
Response: We have incorporated the Trust’s comments and concerns into the EA. We thank the National Trust for taking the time to comment. We will work to insure that confusing deadlines do not overlap or make this clear in our letters.
92. Comment: In walking the area I [Northern Cheyenne Tribal Historic Preservation Officer] did not observe any Traditional Cultural Properties in the area of development, and the spring in question was really over developed by the landowner, to be culturally significant. I am pleased that my office is being consulted and given a chance to visit the sites surveyed by WLS. I would like to encourage BLM to require construction monitoring when the ground disturbing activities start with a Cheyenne trained monitor, in case of an inadvertent discovery of human burials, so that work can be halted, a coroner contacted, removal and reburial can occur immediately after consultation with the affected tribes. (17)
Response: BLM appreciates the assistance of the Northern Cheyenne THPO. We have taken the suggestions for monitoring and incorporated them into the project as conditions of approval.

93. Comment: EA page 38, paragraph 1. There is mention of a surface water spring site located in the vicinity of the Well 11-6. Springs of varying types and subsurface origins are considered sacred to the Northern
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Cheyenne. What is the exact distance from Well 11-6 to the spring-site? Whom is responsible for demonstrating hydrological analysis of adverse affects to the spring resultant from Well 11-6? (18)
Response: The spring is 700 feet northwest (as measured off the Tongue River Dam 7.5 Min. Map) from the 11-6 Well. The BLM’s hydrologist is the person who conducted the hydrological analysis of potential impacts to the spring from CBNG development. The Northern Cheyenne THPO visited the spring and concluded it was not culturally significant.
94. Comment: EA page 38, paragraph 2. There is mention of "Northern Cheyenne Plant collecting area" and the required location of these areas as well as assessment of effects of the POD to their National Register Eligibility. There are a determined number of culturally significant wetland and riparian plant species that are important for maintenance and preservation of Northern Cheyenne ethnology. A list of these plants can be provided from the Tribe. Whom is responsible for locating these plant species in the project area and, furthermore assessing impacts resultant from the CBNG activity? (18)
Response: A review with the Northern Cheyenne THPO did not identify any traditional plant collecting areas in the POD area. BLM is aware of the importance of plants along the Tongue River to the Northern Cheyenne. BLM notes that lists of the plants important to the Tribe are listed in Appendix D of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Document, which is available on the Miles City BLM website. In the future, locating important plant species will be done in conjunction with the Northern Cheyenne cultural commission or the THPO.

95. Comment: EA-26 identified a spring as a sensitive cultural site to several Tribes in the area. The EA does not discuss whether drawdowns or development will adversely impact this spring. (13)
Response: The drawdown of the two wells would not adversely affect the spring. The wells are in coal seams below the scoria contact where the spring emerges. CBNG testing would not affect the spring flow. The Northern Cheyenne THPO visited the spring and concluded it was not culturally significant because the landowner had already developed extensively. The EA has been modified to include this information.

96. Comment: EA-35 concludes that the project may potentially impact cultural and historic resources including Native American Religious concerns. Therefore, the BLM must prepare an EIS (13)
Response: Based upon the cultural resource inventories, and an on-site visit with the Northern Cheyenne THPO, no TCPs or eligible sites were identified in the project area. The project would not affect historic properties eligible for listing on the National Register. The Decision Record/FONSI concluded that the approved POD will not result in significant impacts to the human environment (including impacts to cultural resources) and that preparation of an EIS is not required.

99. Comment: There are a number of culturally significant wetland and riparian plant species that are important for maintenance and preservation of the Northern Cheyenne culture and tradition. Many of these plants are associated with the Tongue River and associated wetlands. The draft EA in no way addresses impacts to these very important cultural resources. (19)
Response: Loss of culturally significant wetland and riparian vegetation is predicted to be minimal throughout the project area because the majority of the project is located away from wetlands, infrastructure corridors are along an existing two-track road near the wetlands area along the river, and the outfall would affect less than an acre. The one spring in the project area was determined not to be culturally significant.

105. Comment: The Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology has posted cautionary warnings on their website to warn field personnel of the methane migration danger, yet BLM mentions none of these impacts. The impacts that such migration may have on the safety of people living and working in the area mandates that BLM prepare an EIS. (13)
Response: A section on methane migration has been added to the EA. The potential for this project to cause methane migration which would pose a hazard to the safety of people in the area is extremely low due to the limited duration of the testing and the coal bed being tested.



113. Comment: I also see that "the operator has proposed a variety of potential beneficial uses for the treated water". What specifically are these uses? The EA is very vague about what specifically these uses will be. Are these speculative uses? Will the operator be granted water rights for this water? Since when did a mineral right convey a water right for the produced water? If the landowner can use the water, the landowner should be allowed to get a water right for water that they can put to a beneficial use. To give the methane companies the water rights allows them to become agents of this water and have the ability to sell it along with the methane; this should not be allowed in any circumstance. (6)
Response: Following the Higgins Loop processing, the treated water would enter the remaining pit chamber prior to discharge into the Tongue River. Primarily, the treated water would be discharged into the Tongue River; however the operator has proposed a variety of potential uses for a minimal portion of the treated water including, dust abatement, drilling activities, vehicle wash-downs, and during construction activities. Individual landowners could also file for beneficial use of the treated water for livestock or irrigation.
Mineral rights do not convey water rights. Under the Powder River basin Controlled Groundwater Area designation, “the withdrawal of groundwater associated with coal bed methane production will be under the prior jurisdiction of the Montana Board of Oil and Gas. However, water rights matters and hydrologic issues are not within the ordinary technical expertise and area of concern to the Board. These matters are ordinarily dealt with by the Montana Department of Natural Resources Conservation and the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. The Montana Department of Natural Resources may petition the board of hearings in regard to the production, use, and disposal of water from coal bed methane development wells that could affect existing water rights in the area based upon information gathered concerning water withdrawals.” (MT-DNRC, 1999). The groundwater belongs to the state (i.e. state water), thus the decision for whether or not to grant a water right is a determination that would need to be made by the state. If the produced water is put to a beneficial use, water rights would need to be obtained from the MT-DNRC as a separate issue from the permits for gas development.

114. Comment: Both surface and underground water supplies will be greatly degraded by the current proposal to mix clean with untreated water. This would introduce intolerable sodium and salinity levels into water essential to livestock, agriculture, and wild animals. (7)
Response: After the treated and untreated water are mixed, the resulting discharge would have an SAR of 3 and an EC of approximately 742 μS/cm (section 4.2.4 of the EA, and the surface water analysis has been modified to use these values). This discharge meets the surface water quality standards for EC and SAR set by the Montana Board of Environmental Quality at the end of the discharge pipe. As such, these discharges will not cause the standards for EC and SAR to be exceeded. As shown in Table 2.5-2, the maximum potential cumulative discharges at low monthly mean (LMM) flows would cause the SAR to increase from 1.23 to 1.28 (a 4% increase) and cause EC to increase from 737 μS/cm to 740 μS/cm (a 0.4% increase). These discharges would not cause sodium (as measured by SAR) or salinity (as measured by EC) to become intolerable for livestock, agriculture, or wild animals.
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117. Comment: The surface water model over predicts water quality effects in the Tongue River at Birney Day School. As described in the model calibration section, the model predicts water quality in the Tongue River at Birney Day School by simply adding an increase in EC and SAR to the results from the station below the dam to match the historical increases observed between these two stations under similar flow regimes. The present increases in EC and SAR of the Tongue River at the Birney Day School is principally due to the influence of Hanging Woman Creek, which contributes high TDS water to the Tongue River. Since the TDS of treated CBNG water is better than the tributary water in Hanging Woman Creek, a mixing analysis should show an improvement in downstream water quality with the addition of PRG's discharge. The model, however, does not do a true mixing analysis at this station, instead it simply assumes that the EC and SAR of the Tongue River at Birney School will increase by the same amount as the Tongue River below the dam. This incorrectly predicts downstream water quality changes. Although there is no indication of impacts using this analysis, the results do not accurately represent cumulative impacts from development of CBNG resources in the area. (9, 14)
Response: It is agreed that Hanging Woman Creek typically contributes water to the Tongue River which has a higher TDS and a higher SAR than the Tongue River below the dam; however the effects of Hanging Woman Creek are not explicitly modeled in this analysis. Rather the effects of the contribution of all tributaries are included in the analysis by using the changes in water chemistry observed on the main stem of the Tongue River. The Hydrology Technical Report has been modified to clarify this point.
In a simple mixing model, the discharge of water that has a higher EC and SAR than currently exists at a station upstream from the station being analyzed will cause the EC and SAR to increase regardless of the other factors that cause the water to have its current chemistry. This can be viewed as the mixing of three buckets of water; one for the Tongue River below the Dam, one from all tributaries, and one from the PRG project. The existing conditions at
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Birney Day School during low monthly mean (LMM) flows (Modeled Existing EC and SAR are 737 μS/cm and 1.23 respectively; see Table 3.4.1-2 of the EA) result from the mixing of the first two buckets. The PRG bucket has a higher EC and SAR than the existing conditions (EC=742 and SAR = 3.0); therefore, the addition of this bucket to the mix causes the EC and SAR to increase. If this water were hypothetically added to Hanging Woman Creek, it would cause the EC and SAR of Hanging Woman Creek to decrease; however the net result at the Birney Day School Station on the Tongue River would be the same.
For these reasons, the surface water model correctly predicts downstream impacts, and this technique gives an adequate representation of the cumulative impacts which may result from CBNG development in the project area.
118. Comment: There is a second concern with water quality calculations for the Tongue River at Birney School. The EC predicted for the 7Q10 flow is significantly higher than water quality records indicate for this historical flow regime. EC values reported for the Tongue River at flows less than 100 cfs are consistently below 1000 mhos/cm and average 813 gmhos/cm. The highest EC readings are at a flow regime of approximately 190 cfs. This may be related to the fact that the EC of the river is influenced largely by discharge from Hanging Woman Creek. During low flow periods, this tributary is dry or flow is minimal and therefore EC of the Tongue River is lower than at slightly higher flow regimes. We suggest revisiting the methodology used to project water quality at this station. (9, 14)
Response: The observed maximum EC value for the Tongue River at the Birney Day School station (1,080 μS/cm) was observed at a flow of 193 cfs; however this is just one data point. The data at Birney Day School is somewhat scattered; however the overall pattern of increasing EC and lower flows is apparent. There may be other factors which cause minor modification to this basic pattern; however, given the inherent uncertainty associated with such data, and the relatively simple power function used, the analysis is considered to be appropriate to depict water quality at this station. The Hydrology Technical Report has been modified to clarify this point.

130. Comment: On page 40 of the EA the modeled condition of the Tongue River at Birney Day School is an EC of 1157. This exceeds the numeric standard of 1000. How can any discharges be added since the existing modeled condition for low flow is already exceeding the standard? (12)
Response: The Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) Status Report (Tetra Tech, 2003) lists the historic average EC of 808 μS/cm with a maximum value of 1,080 μS/cm for this site. The 1157 μS/cm value in the Table is based on model results that tend to over predict the actual value. Modeling is necessary due to the lack of actual data at the 7Q10 condition. Since the 7Q10 is a short duration condition, the instantaneous maximum standard is considered to be the more applicable standard for comparison purposes. The instantaneous standard for EC is 1,500 or 2,500 for the irrigation season and non-irrigation season respectively. Accordingly, the proposed discharge will not result in a violation of either standard.

143. Comment: Hydrology Technical Report, Page 9, as stated in the second paragraph, "As such the Northern Cheyenne numerical standards do not have Clean Water Act standing;", therefore the proposed EC and SAR standards listed in Table 3 should not be included in any analysis for this permit application. If in the future, "Treatment as a state" is granted for water quality standards, the permit can be amended/modified to meet these proposed standards, if applicable at that time. (16)
Response: One of the NEPA criterion for significance is if “the action threatens a violation of Federal, State, or local law or requirements imposed for the protection of the environment” (40 CFR 1508.27-10). To evaluate this significance criterion, it is necessary to evaluate the resulting impacts against the Northern Cheyenne numerical standards, which represent a “local law…imposed for the protection of the environment” on the Reservation. While exceedence of such standards would not be illegal since these standards do not have standing under the Clean Water Act, their potential exceedance within the Reservation, without additional mitigation requirements, could affect the “significance determination” for the preferred alternative and whether a FONSI (Finding of No Significant Impact) could be signed.

171. Comment: How frequently will treated water discharged into the Tongue River be sampled for constituent levels? This is with regards to the sampling of the blended treated and untreated waters prior to discharging into the Tongue River. Assuming that the water entering the Tongue River was violating or contributing to a violation of maximum constituent levels, how long would elapse before the situation was discovered through sampling and well pumping was discontinued? Will there be any automatic monitoring and shutdown capabilities, perhaps using a SCADA system? (18)
Response: Sample frequency and type are specified in Table 1 of the MPDES discharge permit for the proposed project (MT0030660). The frequency ranges from instantaneous (continuous) for flow to daily, weekly or monthly for chemical constituents. Sample types are specified as either grab or 24-hour composite. Routine analytical results must be reported to the Department on Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) forms on a monthly basis. The permit requires that the permittee report any serous incident of noncompliance as soon as possible but no later than 24 hours after the time the permittee first becomes aware of the circumstances (Part II.I). Any violation of the permit limits is subject to this condition. A written explanation of the noncompliance is required within 5 days of discovery of the violation. The elapse time after a violation occurs and a Department action depends on the seriousness of the violation, past violations and other factors beyond the scope of this analysis. Under the Montana Water Quality Act, the Department has a wide range of enforcement options including revoking the discharge permit should sufficient cause exist.

175. Comment: EA page 40, paragraph 1, The EPA has been reviewing and working with the Tribe since 2001 in developing water quality standards for all Tribal waters within the Reservation. The Northern Cheyenne Water Quality Standards are currently a matter of Tribal law approved by the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council to provide protection of Tribal waters. The Northern Cheyenne Water Quality Standards were not only developed to protect agricultural uses within the Tongue River watershed, but also to protect native plant species that have cultural significance and are integral in ceremonial and traditional aspects of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. Indeed, the numeric criteria for SAR and EC in the tribal standards are more stringent to protect these indigenous vegetative communities and Cheyenne culture. (18)
Response: Section 3.4.1 has been modified to include this information.
176. Comment: EA page 41, paragraph 4, This section describes post-treated discharge water as having a SAR < 3.0. This is greater than the numeric SAR value of 2.0, as dictated by Northern Cheyenne Water Quality Standards. How will it be ensured that an SAR value of 2.0 is not exceeded by the discharge water, following EPA's approval of Northern Cheyenne's TAS? (18)
Response: If the Northern Cheyenne Tribe is granted TAS, and the Northern Cheyenne SAR standard is approved by the EPA, then the standard will have standing under the Clean Water Act and will be enforceable upstream. Should that occur, the MDEQ will need to re-evaluate all of its existing permits to ensure that they will not cause the applicable standards to be exceeded, and to reopen and modify the permits as needed. This MPDES permit contains a reopener provision which allows for modification of the permit if, "The water quality standards of the receiving water(s) to which the permittee discharges are modified in such a manner as to require different effluent limits than contained in this permit." The analysis in this EA indicates that the discharge of the treated CBNG water will not cause SAR values in the Tongue River to exceed the Northern Cheyenne standard of 2.0 at the southern Reservation boundary; however this is an impact analysis, not a regulatory determination.

178. Comment: The EA contains no surface water quality data for the Tongue River for any of these Parameters of Concern other than EC and SAR. Agencies admit that there is no adequate baseline surface water quality data for the section of the Tongue River that may be impacted by the Project. (13)
Response: It is recognized that monitoring will include additional parameters, therefore the MPDES permit requires this monitoring. Data on a wide variety of parameters, including all parameters of concern, is included in the MDEQ’s SOB, which is included in Appendix B of the Hydrology Technical Report.
179. Comment: The inventory of existing and proposed discharges into the Tongue River watershed is grossly incomplete and ignores hundreds of impoundments constructed in the intermittent and ephemeral tributaries of the Tongue River in Montana and Wyoming. Many of these in-channel impoundments are designed to discharge methane wastewater into such tributaries during storm events. These impoundments can also fail and discharge wastewater into these tributaries and create saline seeps downstream. (13)
Response: A discussion of cumulative level of CBNG development is included in section 2.3 of the EA. A more detailed discussion of how these cumulative actions affect the hydrologic analysis is included in Appendix D of the Hydrology Technical Report.
186. Comment: The description of methane development in Wyoming is inadequate. EA-Cumulative Projects states that “it is not anticipated that CBNG development in Wyoming will combine with the proposed action to create impacts to surface waters.” The EA admits that existing CBM development in Wyoming has degraded the Tongue River at the state line (see table in EA). The WDEQ has not permitted any direct discharges to the Tongue River yet the water quality at the state line has been degraded. The only possible source of such degradation is discharges from impoundments in Wyoming. As shown in Exhibit P, discharges from a single impoundment can impact surface water quality. The agencies need to complete an inventory of all such wastewater impoundments and consider the cumulative impacts of such impoundments on surface water quality. Exhibit Q is a partial inventory of such impoundments from the WDEQ files. (13)
Response: The difference between Historical Conditions and Modeled Existing Conditions in Table 3.4.1-2 is due to the addition of the existing 1,600 gpm discharge in Montana, which has been permitted by the MDEQ; not due to Wyoming CBNG development. As monitoring data has not shown any change in the water quality in the Tongue River, an analysis of these impoundments would not be appropriate at this time.

Indian Trust & Native American Concerns
193. Comment: The April 2003 Record of Decision for the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and Powder River Resource Management Plan (RMP) Amendment provides:
To protect Reservation groundwater the operator will be required to conduct geologic and hydrologic evaluations for CBM production wells to be located in areas that may have hyrdrologic connectivity with Reservation groundwater.
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For CBM` wells located in aquifers with hydrologic connectivity to Reservation groundwater, the operator will be required to conduct a geologic and hydrologic evaluation prior to field development that identifies the potential for CBM production to affect Reservation groundwater resources.
When the site-specific studies determine there will be an effect to Reservation groundwater, the operator must develop and apply measures to prevent the impact of groundwater withdrawal and monitor the effectiveness of such measures.
The proposed project is approximately 12.5 miles from the southern boundary of the Reservation, within the 14-mile drawdown radius predicted by two dimensional groundwater modeling and the 14-mile buffer area proposed by the Tribe in its August 2002 mitigation plan. No three-dimensional groundwater modeling has been conducted for the project area. Accordingly, the Tribe believes that site-specific studies are necessary prior to any CBNG production from the Coal Creek Project POD area. The EA should indicate whether BLM believes the aquifers subject to exploration to have "hydrologic connectivity" with the Reservation if so whether site-specific geologic and hydrologic evaluation will be required prior to field development. (18)
Response: The limited amount of groundwater pumping and methane extraction associated with the testing of these wells will not impact tribal resources. If PRG submits a POD for field development, a site-specific geologic and hydrologic evaluation will be conducted to determine whether production has the potential to affect Reservation resources.
194. Comment: On page 4-89 the FEIS states "Without site-specific information, it is impossible to predict the degree of drawdown to a neighboring aquifer. In the case of the Crow and Northern Cheyenne, it is conceivable that the reservations' groundwater would be drawn down to some extent along the boundaries by both state and BLM-leased development. The drawdown of groundwater within the reservation could result in impacts on shallow stock and domestic wells and some surface springs. These impacts would reduce water pressure and in some cases could render the complete loss of water from a well or spring."; while this is mentioned in conjunction with a non-preferred development alternative, it is still relevant in this case. The FEIS recommends that monitoring be undertaken to determine these site-specific data. Has site-specific hydraulic conductivity and storativity data for the specific coal formations in the project area been collected? (18)
Response: The groundwater pumping and testing to be conducted as part of PRG’s exploration POD will generate information on the aquifer properties of the coal beds to be tested. Such information will be useful in evaluating potential drawdown if PRG, or any other company, ever submits a POD for commercial production from these coal beds. It should be noted that while the FEIS recommends that these aquifer characteristics be determined via testing, it also emphasizes the need for regional coal seam groundwater monitoring (in particular see the conclusions of the 3D Groundwater Report; Wheaton and Metesh, 2002). The BLM is funding MBMG to conduct this monitoring is being done throughout the Montana portion of the Powder River Basin. The monitoring report for the first year of this project is available at http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbng/CBNG-Monitoring.htm.

197. Comment: The FEIS appendix CHE page 6 and also in the main text on page 4-8, 4-46, and 4-90 provides that analysis of the potential for methane drainage will be conducted on a case-by-case basis with site-specific data. Has an analysis been performed for this EA that determine the potential of methane drainage from Northern Cheyenne lands? (18)
Response: The nearest Northern Cheyenne lands are approximately 2.4 miles away (NW1/4 SW ?, Section 24, T. 8 S., R. 40 E.). A study completed by the Reservoir Management Group of the Casper BLM office indicated that the reservoir pressure would have to decline between 10 to 40 percent before gas would begin to desorb from the coals in the Powder River Basin. The initial pressure in the Wall coal (the shallowest being tested) is approximately 124psi to 275 psi. This means that the pressure in the Wall would have to be reduced by at least 12.4 psi and possibly as much as 27.5 psi before gas might begin to desorb. The Flowers/Goodale formation has an initial pressure of 480 to 630 psi. This formation would have to be drawn down by at least 48 psi, and possibly by as much as 63psi, before gas might desorb from the coal. The 20 foot drawdown radius within the coal beds being tested would extend only about 0.4 miles. This drawdown would result in a pressure decline of approximately 8.7 psi at 0.42 miles. Even the pressure decline of 8.7 psi at 0.42 miles is not enough to cause gas to desorb from the coals being tested. Because the nearest Northern Cheyenne lands are over 2 miles away (nearly five times the 0.42-mile distance), no methane drainage would occur.

198. Comment: EA page 42, paragraph 1. This entire section is inaccurate. Not all Tribal concerns have been addressed in this document: Air issues do not address PM10 and PM2.5 and there has been no air modeling done as part of this analysis. Additionally, there is no significant analysis of cultural issues performed in this document. There is no discussion of the degradation of Water Quality associated with the Tribe's water rights and potential reductions in the marketability of those water rights. (18) Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004
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Response: BLM and DEQ believe that they have addressed the air quality, cultural and water quality issues thoroughly in the relevant revised sections of the EA. Additional information and analysis has been incorporated into the document. It should be remembered that the project is only for exploration drilling and testing, not commercial production. The concerns presented in the comment will be subject to further analysis if and when PRG proposes a POD for commercial production.

199. Comment: EA page 42, paragraph 3, This statement is misleading and inaccurate. There are several communities, other than Sherdian, near the area to be developed. These other communities include Birney, Decker, Kirby, Busby, Ashland, and Lame Deer communities. Just because these communities lie within or near the Reservation does not mean that they have any less standing as a community than any other populated area in the region. (18)
Response: The EA has been corrected. Sheridan was the community discussed because it is believed to be the place from which most of the workers associated with the project will commute.
200. Comment: EA page 52, paragraph 4, ITMAs would be impacted. Marketability of Tribal water rights could be significantly reduced. The EA does not adequately address the impacts to either surface or groundwater from the proposed project nor does it account for the Northern Cheyenne Tribe's Water Quality Standards and Water Rights in the Tongue River. The document does not account or mitigate the loss of water from groundwater aquifers. Cultural Plants could be impacted by discharges and erosion associated with development. Air Quality, Cultural, and Wildlife impacts are not adequately addressed in this document. (18, 19)
Response: The Cultural Resources Section of the EA has been revised to take into account many of the concerns raised over cultural resource issues. No TCPs, including plant gathering areas, were identified by the Northern Cheyenne THPO. No sites were found in areas of direct impact and those that were located in the inventoried portions of the POD are not eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
Given the nature of the proposed water discharge, it is unlikely there would be an increase in erosion downstream from the project. The only riparian area to be directly impacted is the discharge point from the water treatment facility. This will result in less than an acre of effect and cause no major loss of riparian vegetation. As the analysis in the hydrology section of the EA demonstrates, there will not be any impact to water quality. The Tribe’s water quality standards will not be violated and there will not be any loss of Reservation groundwater.

205. Comment: the EA's analysis of the social and economic effects of the project on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation is superficial and inadequate. No consideration is given to the Tribe's exclusion from the large amounts of taxes, rents and royalties that will be generated by CBNG production in the project area. This disparity in treatment between State and local governments and Tribal government will exacerbate the already significant gap in the level of public services available on and off the Reservation. (18)
Response: The scope of the analysis is determined by the proposed action. In this case the proposal is only to drill up to 16 exploratory wells fifteen miles south of the Reservation. The temporary workers are expected to commute from the Sheridan, Wyoming area. There will not be any production taxes or royalties paid to the mineral owners or to the State. The project will not result in any disparity in revenue or impacts between the State and local governments and the Tribal government.
206. Comment: The environmental justice section should evaluate the fairness of a situation in which all of the economic benefits of a project flow to non-Indian communities while many of the risks and environmental impacts of the project will be experienced by an extremely poor Indian community. Mitigation in the form of impact funding should be evaluated to address this disparity. (18)
Response: The environmental justice section of the EA concluded there will be no disproportionate impacts to the Indian Reservations from the exploration project. This section of the EA has been revised to further explain this conclusion. Appendix CHE, page 15-16 of the Montana EIS discusses mitigation in the form of impact funding as suggested by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe and concludes that, “The BLM does not have the authority to require impact funding.”
207. Comment: The Environmental Analysis provided by the draft EA prepared by the U.S. BLM is cursory at best and deficient across a broad range of environmental areas. Of overriding concern, however, is the total lack of analysis required under Environmental Justice as part of the NEPA requirements for this document. Environmental Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004
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Justice requirements state that no minority population shall receive a disproportionate level of impacts from any development covered under NEPA. In this instance, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe as a whole will be impacted by the proposed project. The draft EA for this project states that the population of Big Horn County, where the project is located, is 60 percent Native American and slightly over 30 percent of the population of Rosebud County is Native American. It seems that a majority of the population within these two counties is Native American and will be receiving a majority of the impacts associated with the proposed development. This document in no way sufficiently meets the requirements of Environmental Justice review under NEPA. (19)
Response: The 1994 Executive Order on environmental justice is not limited to actions covered by NEPA, but includes programs, policies and activities of federal agencies. The Order requires that federal agencies identify, consider and address, to the extent practicable and permitted by law, disproportionally high adverse environmental effect on minority populations; but did not create any enforceable procedural or substantive right, benefit, or trust responsibility. The environmental justice section of the EA concluded there will be no disproportionate impacts to the Indian reservations from the exploration project. This section of the EA has been revised to further explain this conclusion.

214. Comment: The area below the Tongue River Reservoir dam was ruled too resource sensitive for the railroad to impact. The EIS developed for the TRR prohibited the building of the railroad in this section of the river because it was too environmentally sensitive. The river never freezes in this area and there are several species of wildlife that make their home in this area because they can remain there year-round. The Surface Transportation Board has already diverted development from this area. Because the river never freezes here, many wildlife and bird species use this area. It is vital to wildlife. How will this project be less devastating when it is fully implemented? The same exclusions should apply to the Powder River Gas proposal. (5, 6, 12)
Response: The magnitude and extent of the disturbance associated with PRG’s exploration POD will be much less than what would result from construction and operation of the TRR. If the railroad was ever approved in this area, it would cause major surface disturbances to the river corridor. The magnitude of the disturbance would be considerably more in terms of direct habitat impacts (loss of habitat, increase in wildlife losses from animal/train collisions), and indirect impacts (area avoidance due to the noise level and frequent passage of trains, increase human presence due to periodic track maintenance, etc.), than what will occur with CBNG development. The well drilling and road building will be in the uplands away from the riverine corridor, and the disturbance will be short-term during well drilling. After the wells are completed, and even if production follows, there will only be periodic visits to the wells, as most well monitoring would be accomplished remotely.
215. Comment: Contrary to the information presented on pg. 44 of the EA, the stretch of river where the proposed outfall is located does not freeze during the winter because of the warm water coming out of the Tongue River Reservoir just upstream and has not frozen historically since the dam was finished in 1939. In fact, the Tongue River seldom freezes for three miles below the dam. Because this is the only section of
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the Tongue River that does not freeze over, there is not "considerable alternative habitat' as stated on pg. 55 of the EA. Actually, it is a very important part of the Northern Flyway for waterfowl migration both spring and fall, and many ducks and geese winter over because of the open water. There are also over 100 breeding pairs of pelicans who utilize this part of the river in the spring with some staying throughout the summer. How will the CBNG polluted water affect the waterfowl, fish and aquatic life at and below the outfall location? Won't the disturbance also adversely affect the population of bald and golden eagles in the area, as they are also dependent on the Tongue River for their habitat and food source? (14)
Response: EA section 3.4.1 on surface water, section 3.10.4 on fisheries/aquatics, and section 4.2.10 contain a description of the direct and indirect effects to fisheries and aquatics; and for a discussion of water quality parameters and the potential effects on fisheries and aquatics. No polluted water will be discharged to the Tongue River and the impacts to fisheries and wildlife, including bald eagles and golden eagles, would be minor and not detrimental.

219. Comment: The list of impacts that are not addressed in. the EA include bald eagles. The fact that the bald eagle has nested next to a road does not satisfy me that there won't be impacts from development to the bald eagle population of the area. What mitigations will be required to avoid raptor electrocutions? The EA does not even Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004
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discuss the number of miles of new overhead power lines that will be constructed, much less discuss the impacts of such power lines for the bald eagles nesting at the active site or eagles wintering in the Tongue River canyon. (5, 10, 13)
Response: The EA specifically discusses impacts to the bald eagle nest in Section 4.2.10. Because of the nest located about 1/2 mile from the project area, the analysis in the EA concludes that there will be a “likely to adversely affect” situation resulting from the implementation of the project, which is discussed in the biological assessment and the biological opinion. Under the mitigation requirements in the ROD for the MT FEIS, it states, “all above-ground electrical poles and lines will be raptor-proofed to avoid electrocution following the criteria and outlined in the Avian Power Line Interaction Committee (APLIC) (1994) and APLIC (1996).” The operator, PRG, has proposed to use almost all underground power facilities in their POD. Above ground structures will be limited to the minimal amount of facilities necessary to “drop” power from the existing overhead power line to underground distribution lines. While this will eliminate almost all potential for raptor electrocutions, raptor mortalities do occur even with properly installed raptor protection devices on new or retrofitted existing poles. The poles also represent a collision threat to raptors. The mitigation measures will minimize threats to raptors by reducing as much as possible the probability of a raptor electrocution or collision. However, because the mitigation cannot guarantee that the threats to mortality will be eliminated, the proposed project will continue to “likely adversely affect”, but will “not jeopardize the continued existence” of bald eagles in the project area.

220. Comment: Currently the eagles coexist with the county road traffic of less than 25 vehicles per week. Can they adapt to the increased traffic, CBNG infrastructure and increased human presence? Will activities result in nest abandonment? (13, 14)
Response: BLM recognizes the potential for increased impacts on the bald eagle nest due to additional CBNG-related vehicle traffic above the level currently observed. Under the proposed action, it is anticipated that during the 12-day drilling and testing period, there will be six vehicles per day accessing the area. It is not anticipated that this level of vehicle traffic on the road will impact the birds. BLM’s biological assessment (BA) stated, “It is recognized there will be substantially increased vehicle traffic on the Tongue River Road associated with this project. There will be increased likelihood of impacts to bald eagles as a result of increased vehicle traffic from this project. With this background information, BLM concludes this project is likely to adversely affect bald eagles in the project area.” The USFWS responded with a biological opinion (BO), which stated, “The PBO (Primary Biological Opinion for the EIS) analyzed the effects on bald eagles associated with full-field CBNG development on BLM land in the Powder River Basin of Montana, of which the currently proposed project is a part. In the PBO the Service concluded that the bald eagle would not be jeopardized by the full-field development. After reviewing the current status of the bald eagle, the environmental baseline for the action area, the effects of the Powder River Gas POD at T.8S., R.41E., Sections 6 and 7 in Bighorn County, Montana as managed by the Miles City and Billings Field Offices and the State of Montana, and the cumulative effects, it is the Service’s BO that the direct and indirect effects of the project, as proposed, fall within the effects analyzed in the PBO and are not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the bald eagle. No critical habitat has been designated for this species; therefore, none will be affected.” This determination was made based on the requirement that certain terms and conditions will be met concerning mitigation and monitoring for this eagle nest as well as other wildlife species in the area (See the BO, included in the Wildlife Appendix, Volume II, of the MT FEIS). The minimum monitoring/mitigation requirements are presented in the Wildlife Monitoring and Protection Plan and is part of the operator’s proposed action.

224. Comment: On page 44 there is discussion of upland game birds. What will be done to prevent the wild turkeys from contracting West Nile Virus from mosquitoes in the ponds created by this project? (12)
Response: BLM is in consultation with researchers studying the dynamics of the spread of the disease and its effects in Montana. There is no evidence that treatment, either through the use of larvicides or malithion, on a site specific or basin-wide scale will have any effect on the overall spread of the disease. State agencies have not instituted, nor are they requiring treatment of mosquitoes at this time. Cumulatively, there are many sources of standing water beyond CBNG discharge that add to the potential for mosquito habitat. BLM will continue to monitor this issue in cooperation with the State agencies and researchers. If new information leads to the development of BMPs, corrective measures will be applied. Based on the current information, there is no evidence to definitely say this project would affect the spread of WNV in the area.

Table 1 – List of persons submitting written comments.
Commenter
Number
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
1 Northern Cheyenne Tribe (Jeanne S. Whiteing)
2 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
3 Northern Cheyenne Tribe (Jeanne S. Whiteing)
4 Northern Plains Resource Council (Michael Reisner)
5 Montana Environmental Information Center (J. Barber)
6 Tongue River Water User’s Association (B. Lindlief Hall)
7 Powder River Gas, LLC (Casey Osborn)
8 Starshine
9 Russell Blalack
10 Wade Sikorski
11 Charlene Woodcock
12 John Rogers
13 Russell Blalack
14 Henry Lischer
15 Bruce Rinnert
16 Fidelity Exploration & Production Co. (M. Bergstrom)
17 Watty Taylor
18 Diamond Cross Ranch (Phil & Denise Wood and L. O’Toole)
19 Matt Clifford
20 Eric & Nancy Thorson
21 Powder River Gas, LLC November 19, 2004
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Table 2 – List of persons submitting oral testimony at hearing.
Commenter
Number
Paul J. Mysyk (Powder River Gas, LLC)
22 Casey Osborn (Powder River Gas, LLC)
23 Mark Fix (NPRC)
24 Mack Cole (Montana for Responsible Energy Development)
25 Bill Courtney (Powder River Gas, LLC)
26 William WalksAlong (Northern Cheyenne Tribe)
27 Denise S. Wood (The Diamond Cross Ranch)
28 Terry Punt (Bones Brothers Ranch)
29 Art Hayes Jr. (Tongue River Water Users)
30 Gail Small (Native Action)


11. The permit does not take into account the Northern Cheyenne Tribe’s water quality standards which were adopted by the Tribe in June, 2002 pursuant to Resolution No. DOI-016 (2002). Particularly as to SAR and EC, the Tribe’s standards provide for a more gradual increase in SAR and EC than the standards referenced in the permit. Since the Tribe is immediately downstream from the proposed development and is most impacted by such development, the Tribe’s water quality standards, while not yet approved by EPA, should be treated as criteria against which impacts are determined. (4, 27, 31)
Response: The Department respects the Tribe’s right to set and enforce local ordinances to protect environmental quality. At this time, the Northern Cheyenne standards are not approved under the federal Clean Water Act. The downstream impacts were analyzed in the environmental assessment and this analysis demonstrated that the increase in concentration of EC and SAR would not adversely affect these values.
12. As indicated in the Tribe’ [sic] comments at the hearing, an issue of particular concern to the Northern Cheyenne Tribe is the fundamental question of the nature and right to water produced from CBNG development. Until this issue is resolved, DEQ should refrain from issuance of permits relating to such water. (4, 27, 31)
Response: State and federal regulations list the specific causes for which a permit issued under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) may be terminated or denied [ARM 17.30.1363 and 40 CFR 122.64]. In summary these ‘causes’ are: 1) noncompliance with a permit condition; 2) the permittee’s failure to fully disclose relevant information or misrepresentation of facts; 3) endangerment of human health or environment; and, 4) elimination of the condition regulated by the permit. According to the rules cited above, the Tribe’s claim of first right to the discharged CBNG water is not a “cause” for denying issuance of the permit.

37. The permit fails to address non-degradation requirements established by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe. The permit should satisfy these requirements. (15, 16)
Response: Tribal water quality standards are discussed in response to comment 12.

45. The applicant does not explain what it proposes to do with the CBM waste water as it comes out of the ground. (19)
Response: The water will be treated to reduce EC and SAR and discharged to the Tongue River under the terms of the MPDES permit.

46. Article IX, Section 2(1) of the Montana Constitution provides that “all lands disturbed by the taking of natural resources shall be reclaimed.” CBM development and the discharge of this water threatens lands in southeastern Montana with absolutely no plan to restore it. (19)
Response: The Water Quality Act does not address reclamation of CBM developed lands. The Board of Oil and Gas and BLM statutes address reclamation.

47. I do not want the permit to be granted for discharge of treated produced water from coal bed natural gas wells owned by Powder River Gas, LLC, to the Tongue River in Bighorn County, Montana. (21)
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Response: State and federal regulations set forth criteria for which a permit issued under the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) may be terminated or denied [ARM 17.301363 and 40 CFR 122.64]. Also, please see response to Comment 13.

IMPACTS OF ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

http://www.mt.blm.gov/.../NCheyenneNarrativeReport/Chap5.pdf -419K


From Norhern Cheyenne Tribe 2002
The Northern Cheyenne Tribe and its Reservation 2002: A Report to the US Bureau of Land Management and the State of Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation

CHAPTER 5
RESERVATION PROGRAMS, SERVICES AND FACILITIES
Chapter 5 of this report examines Reservation programs, services and facilities in
10 areas: (1) housing, (2) utilities, (3) law and order, (4) fire protection, (5) health, (6)
education, (7) social services, (8) employment and job training, (9) recreation, and (10)
transportation.


Vulnerabilities of Reservation Services and Facilities.

Because most Reservation services and facilities are so inadequate, they may be
vulnerable to even small social and economic impacts resulting from off-Reservation
development. These vulnerabilities are summarized below.

Housing.

The Reservation’s housing programs and facilities will be highly
vulnerable to off-Reservation development if such development results in any increase in
the Reservation population. There is already a severe housing shortage on the
Reservation. Further population increases will only exacerbate overcrowding and result
in accelerated deterioration of the existing housing stock. Reservation housing programs
are woefully inadequate to address the current housing crisis and certainly cannot respond
to any added demand for housing resulting from off-Reservation development.

Utilities.

The utility system on the Reservation will be vulnerable of off-Reservation
development if such development results in any increase in the Reservation population.
The water systems in Ashland, Birney and Muddy Cluster and the sewer systems
Reservation-wide are inadequate to keep up with current demand and will be further
stressed by population increases. Likewise, further population increases will only make
worse the Reservation’s serious solid waste problem. Although a fee is charged for water
and sewer service, these fees do not cover the cost of system upgrades or other
infrastructure improvements.

Law Enforcement.

The law enforcement system is highly vulnerable to the impacts
of off-Reservation development if such development leads to an increase in crime. The
law-enforcement system cannot handle any increase in crime and is especially ill-prepared
to handle increases in crime involving non-Indians, over which the Reservation’s law
enforcement system has no jurisdiction.


Fire Protection.

The Reservation fire department may be vulnerable to off-
Reservation development if this development results in any increase in the frequency of
spills of petroleum products and hazardous materials. The Reservation has no
contingency plan and is ill-equipped to respond to spill and other emergencies. The
Reservation’s emergency response program is currently unfunded.


Health.

The Reservation’s health system is vulnerable to off-Reservation
development if it places new unfunded demands on the Reservation’s overtaxed health
care system. Such demands are possible because the Tribe’s ambulance service includes
off-Reservation portions of the Tongue River valley in its service area and the
Reservation’s Health Center is the nearest emergency room to many off-Reservation areas
that may be the focus of energy development. Although the Reservation’s health care
system can bill non-Indians for the services it provides, collection may be a problem
especially if energy development companies do not provide health insurance for
employees and their families.
The Reservation health system will also be vulnerable if off-
Reservation development were to increase the rate of chemical dependency, violence, or
automobile accidents on the Reservation.


Education. The Reservation’s education resources would be vulnerable to off-
Reservation energy development if off-Reservation energy workers or their children were
to use the Reservation’s education resources. While the State provides basic support to
the Lame Deer School District on a per-student basis, the District has little tax base and
would be vulnerable if enrollments by non-Indians were to increase. The Reservation’s
community college is also vulnerable to these type of impacts, because the State subsidy
for non-Indian students is far below the college’s actual cost of providing educational
services to these students.

Social Services.

The Reservation’s social services system would be vulnerable to
off-Reservation energy development if the development induces Tribal members to return
to the Reservation but does not result in concomitant increases in employment. Although
funding for some social programs is based on need or program participation, this is not true
for programs such as general assistance, low income energy assistance, and food
vouchers. Increases in the number of unemployed may also result in increased rates of
child abuse and neglect, further stressing the Tribe’s already overtaxed child protection,
welfare, and foster care programs.

Employment.

The Reservation’s employment programs could benefit from off-
Reservation energy development if developers hire Tribal members as employees. History
has shown, however, that this is likely to occur only if programs are in place that require
developers to institute programs to provide training, work experience, and employment to
Tribal members.

Recreation.

The Reservation’s recreational resources may be vulnerable to off-
Reservation energy development if the development results in a decrease in regional fish
and wildlife populations or increases the number of non-Indians desiring to exploit these
resources. The Tribe lacks the funding to enforce its fish and wildlife laws on the
Reservation or even to monitor fish and wildlife abundance.

Transportation.

The Reservation’s transportation system would be vulnerable to off-
Reservation energy development if the development results in increases in traffic on
Reservation roads. Although many Reservation roads have been recently improved,
increased traffic could contribute to increases in already high accident rates. Additionally,
the Tribe has no legal authority to enforce its traffic laws against non-Indian workers and
contractors passing through the Reservation.

Early Cheyenne Reservation Life -- A Masterpiece, October 10, 2006
Reviewer: Bob Reece (Longmont, CO USA) - See all my reviews

Even though they're long gone, these Cheyenne people seem very alive as they stare back at you from across expanses of time through photos captured by Thomas Marquis. Not only their expressions, but their clothing, their actions, and their ceremonies are frozen in a brief moment to reveal life's heartbeat during the early years on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.

Well-known anthropologist Dr. Margot Liberty, who published Cheyenne Memories with John Stands In Timber, gives us an early Christmas present through her extraordinary book, A Northern Cheyenne Album that contains Marquis' black and white photos of the Cheyenne people. The vast majority of these photos have never been published, so as you turn each page you'll discover another fascinating surprise.

Marquis was serving as doctor and historian researcher of the Custer Battle in the 1920s when he traveled throughout the reservation in his Model-T with camera in hand. The Cheyenne people loved and trusted Marquis, so they allowed him to enter their homes and way of life while freely posing for his camera.

Each Custer and Little Bighorn Battle enthusiast understands Marquis' role in researching the Custer Battle. This book is important to each of them because it includes many photos of warriors who fought in the battle as well as some noncombatants. Along with their photos are accounts of Custer's troop movements north of the current Custer National Cemetery.

For students interested in cultural studies or the Cheyenne people this book provides a wealth of material. Cheyenne leaders caption each photo. The editors at the University of Oklahoma Press made the right decision when they chose not to edit the captions, so we experience the complexity, beauty, and sound of the Cheyenne language. Dr. Liberty provides an additional caption that adds historical context and cultural understanding to each photo subject.

The quality of these photos is superb. Each photo takes up nearly one page of a 9¼ X 9¼ size book. Contrast, brightness, and shadows are at exceptional levels; we practically look into the hearts and minds of the Cheyenne people. They seem to reach out to us from across time.

Most importantly, A Northern Cheyenne Album reveals just how well the Cheyenne people adjusted to early reservation life. We are invited to their rodeos, social gatherings, and religious ceremonies. We visit their schools and see children during recess playing basketball. We witness their pride and strength in family as the first generation from Little Bighorn Battle warriors are born and grow into adulthood. We learn how they work to make a living and how hard they play. The result is we finally, really understand why they sacrificed so many lives to escape their forced exile in Oklahoma in order to establish the current reservation in southeastern Montana.

We should be thankful for Marquis giving his time and resources to share with us the Cheyenne people in everyday life. We also owe Dr. Liberty gratitude for finally bringing the photos into the 21st century in the form of this book. Her labor of love and dedication to this project is truly a gift to us; she receives no royalties from the book to ensure its high-quality presentation. A Northern Cheyenne Album is a treasure that you will refer to over and over again.

Following is a list of Little Bighorn Battle warriors and noncombatants (NC) whose photos are included in A Northern Cheyenne Album:

Limpy
Kate Big Head (NC)
Sun Bear
Wooden Legs
Bog Tail Horse
White Wolf
Maud Arapaho Chief (NC)
Buffalo Hump
Iron Shirt
Stump Horn
Little Sun
Wolf Chief
Big Beaver
Isaac Black Bird (NC)

You can read an interview with Dr. Liberty and read her most recent paper about the Cheyenne at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, "Cheyenne Primacy", on the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield website [...].

DEGRADATION FROM DEVELOPMENT IS UNACCEPTABLE


From BLM Document, The Northern Cheyenne Tribe and Its Reservation
Prepared by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe April 2002

http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbm/eis/volume2/NorthernCheyenneMitigationApp.pdf

Introduction

The Bureau of Land Management would be responsible for monitoring possible damage to Northern Cheyenne resources from CBM development beyond reservation boundaries.

Damage from development on the reservation would be very much worse.

Mitigating measures were proposed by the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in a letter to BLM dated August 13, 2002.


Part I. Natural Resources

A 14 to 25 mile buffer zone to be required around Northern Cheyenne Reservation exterior boundaries , the minimum necessary to assure that Reservation groundwaters are not adversely affected by off-reservation CBM development.
Protection of Reservation groundwater -- buffer zone -- groundwater monitoring -- Federal development within buffer zone -- State development within buffer zone -- remedies for damage to reservation groundwater.
Protection of Reservation CBM Resources -- CBM Monitoring

Part II. Socioeconomic

Indian preference for employment-- training -- Business contracting preferences -- Law and Order -- Traffic -- Truckers -- Impact Funding.

Part III. Cultural

Buffer zone around off reservation Northern Cheyenne homestead sites -- Otter Creek and Hanging Woman drainages.
** See Tribe’s Narrative Report
Protect culturally significant plant gathering areas -- No permits within 3 miles of Poker Jim Butte -- Protect culturally important springs -- Protect grave sites --
BLM will support THPO, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, and support building of a tribal archive
Significant ground disturbance, all sites, roads pipelines etc.
Protect archeological sites, paint collection areas, baculite sources, earth lodges (sacred hills), bird habitats of species which participate in Cheyenne sacred ceremonies




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Chapter 2, An Overview of Northern Cheyenne Culture and History -- The Northern Cheyenne World View

By Deaver, Tallbull and Joe Little Coyote



At present the land-based culture of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe
is transitioning through an adaptation process to a new self-sufficient and independent
livelihood that will maintain the environmental and cultural integrity of its Reservation
homelands. This newly developing livelihood will be based on the sustainable
renewable energy resources of its own lands. In these regards, this overview of the
cultural history of the Northern Cheyenne people clearly shows that the continuing
commercial encroachments of the white man, as proposed in its coal-bed methane
development within the Tongue River region, will have a destructive impact to its
homelands, cultural resources, and its newly developing livelihood. In regards to the
proposed coal-bed methane development in the Tongue River region, the
Environmental Impact Statement process assumes that a certain degree of degradation
from such development is acceptable. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe finds these
assumptions to be unacceptable.

2002 Bureau of Land Management Report By Joe Littlecoyote and Others

To find search of BLM Northern Cheyenne documents go to

http://www.blm.gov/search/?query=Northern+Cheyenne&adv=1&narrow=pr%3Adefault&pr=VALUE_HERE&dropXSL=yes


******* This overview of the
cultural history of the Northern Cheyenne people clearly shows that the continuing
commercial encroachments of the white man, as proposed in its coal-bed methane
development within the Tongue River region, will have a destructive impact to its
homelands, cultural resources, and its newly developing livelihood.

******* In regards to the
proposed coal-bed methane development in the Tongue River region, the
Environmental Impact Statement process assumes that a certain degree of degradation
from such development is acceptable. The Northern Cheyenne Tribe finds these
assumptions to be unacceptable.


CHAPTER 2
AN OVERVIEW OF NORTHERN CHEYENNE CULTURE AND HISTORY

I. The Northern Cheyenne World View.

The Northern Cheyenne are the people of The Morning Star. They are the
caretakers of the Sacred Buffalo Hat, a sacred covenant with Maheo (Creator) brought
to the Suhtio people by one of their sacred medicine people Ho’ev’nehsti (Stands On
The Earth) at Toh’nihvoos (Stone Hammer Mountain) near the Great Lakes in what is
now known as the state of Minnesota. They are a kin people to the Southern Cheyenne
of Oklahoma. The Southern Cheyenne are the caretakers of the Sacred Arrows, also a
sacred covenant brought to the Tse’tsehese’stahase people by one of their sacred
medicine people Sweet Medicine at Bear Butte in the Black Hills area of what is now
known as the state of South Dakota. Wohehiv the Morning Star, is greeted as an
ancient old man each morning by the Keepers of the Sacred Covenants. (J. Little
Coyote, 3/3/02).

Cheyenne cosmology and worldview have been described by Powell (1969),
Campbell (1986), Moore (1974, 1979, 1984, 1986), Deaver and Tallbull (1988), Grinnell
(1972) and Hoebel (1960). However, the following description of the Cheyenne
cosmology and worldview is unique in that it was written by Joe Little Coyote, a member
of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.

The cultural life of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe is holistic in nature, i.e., the
elements of their economy, history, religion, language, sacred belongings, their health
and medicine, education, livelihood, their allodial existence with its cultural imperatives
in maintaining the environmental and cultural integrity of its land and water in particular,
their customs and traditions, their music and arts cannot be separated from the rest of
the elements that make up the culture. Although each particular element can be
analyzed, all elements are interrelated and must be addressed in that context if the
cultural concerns of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe are to be adequately addressed.
The Northern Cheyenne Reservation, near the frontier town of Ashland, in the
state of Montana, was created by Executive Order in 1884, is the homeland of the
Northern Cheyenne people. In spite of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe having allodial title
to these lands, this homeland was won at great cost. Many of their ancestors were
subjected to outright physical extermination and cultural genocide designed to wipe
them off the face of the earth. This human holocaust had to be stopped due to a great
outcry from the American public against these inhumane atrocities, and because these
genocidal practices were becoming too much of a strain on the financial resources of
the country. As an alternative, the federal government placed the Northern Cheyenne
people into confinement status on the Tongue River Reservation in southeastern
Montana Territory.

The Northern Cheyenne are an aboriginal people indigenous to the North
American continent, specifically comprising a culture based on the integrated traditions,
customs and beliefs of the Tsi’sti’stas and the Suhtio, who today constitute the Northern
Cheyenne Nation.

Tsi’sti’stas means: “like hearted people (Ruby Sooktis, 1984),” who were given
birth as a nation at their sacred mountain “Nowah’voos (Bear Butte),” near
Sturgis, SD., where they were given their Sacred Covenant.
Suhtio, which is a shortened version of “Issih’omih’tio (Henry & Julia Little
Coyote, 1958)” meaning: “people of the marsh waters that flow into the dark
brushy country,” who were given birth as a nation at their sacred mountain
“Toh’nih’voos (Stone Hammer Mountain),” near the Great Lakes in Minnesota,
where they were given the Sacred Buffalo Hat Covenant.
These two people – Tsi’sti’stas and Suhtio – are a kindred people having slightly
dissimilar languages, beliefs and traditions and customs, but are now integrated in their
religious ceremonial expressions and present way of life. The cultural standard of the
Tsi’sti’stas is based on their Covenant the “Sacred Arrow Lodge,” and the cultural
standard of the Suhtio is based on their Covenant the “Sacred Buffalo Hat lodge.” Both
these Covenants are not unlike the “Ark of the Covenant” of the Hebrew people of the
Old Testament in the Bible. Today, after a period of amalgamation, both these
traditions became integrated into one cultural expression of the Northern Cheyenne
Nation.
With these two Covenants the Cheyenne had power from Grandmother Earth to
obtain their food, shelter and clothing as well as the power of defense against their
enemies. In times when there was a threat to the nation, the buffalo shield was hung
from the tipi poles for protective purposes. This was called: Hova’noh’nistosti. This
cultural practice is still continued to this day. In addition, the sacred ceremonials
associated with these Covenants contain instructions regarding their creation, origins,
history, cosmology, their sacred language, traditions, customs, beliefs and values which
reflect principles of love and respect for one another, not to be wasteful, not to be
abusive toward life in general, not to marry into one’s family or extended family, not to
murder another Cheyenne, to be respectful toward one another and to share with one
another, to respect and care for the children and elderly, not to steal from one another,
and for the leadership to care for and protect the people first. Their system of sanctions
regarding violations of these principles were rehabilitative rather than punitive, other
than banishment for murder.

The Sacred Buffalo Hat Covenant is still with the Northern Cheyenne today and
continues to provide a tangible reference of who they are as a people. To some extent
the ways of this Covenant are evolving in carrying forward their original identity to give
purpose and meaning to the younger generations for today's times and conditions. It is
good and proper that the Northern Cheyenne people still live with their Covenant in the
old time way to “preserve their identity as a nation of people” for future generations to
come. In these sacred ways the ceremonial people believe that the Cheyenne people
will never disappear from these lands, with the assurance that the Tribe will in perpetuity
remain an aboriginal sovereign Northern Cheyenne Nation indigenous to the North
American continent.

And so today, this Covenant is still very much with the Northern Cheyenne
people and continues to be cared for in the traditional way of the tipi lodge of ancient
times. The Northern Cheyenne are situated in the southeastern part of Montana,
specifically in the Tongue River Valley region. Each and every morning the Keeper of
the Sacred Buffalo Hat Covenant takes a stick of wood and knocks on one of the tipi
door poles to signal to the people the beginning of a new day. He enters the tipi, a fire
of dry cottonwood is made and a sacred pipe and tobacco are used to make prayer
offerings for the well being of the people. This occurs every morning when the morning
star appears and again in the evening as the evening star appears. In beginning the
new day in prayer, in metaphysically relating to the morning star, he greets this star as
an ancient old man, calling him grandfather (Heh’nuhm’shim)!

Today, in continuing traditional cultural protocol, many Cheyenne people when
preparing to go on an extended trip outside of their homelands, stop by the Sacred
Buffalo Hat Keeper’s home where the Covenant is kept and cared for, bringing gifts of
tobacco and dry goods. They inform him that they are going to be gone for a period of
time. In this way the Keeper will keep them in mind in his prayers – asking for a safe
trip and return. In addition, people go the Keeper for prayers for their special needs,
e.g., health and well being of the family. Special protective prayer ceremonies are held
for young men and women who are leaving to serve in the Armed Forces of the United
States, and are given special protective amulets to wear while in service. In addition,
these protocols also continue to be used to provide a “cultural sanction” for positions
taken by Tribal leaders having to do with the Tribe as a whole. It is the belief that if
these protocols are used, whatever direction these leaders hold out for the future of the
Northern Cheyenne Tribe will be beneficially effective for all the people.

Although the contemporary Cheyenne understand scientific theories of the
elemental makeup of the universe and the earth as being inanimate, this in no way
diminishes their continuing metaphysical practices which relate to the physical elements
of the universe as being animate with spiritual qualities. The basis of this Cheyenne
understanding is in their belief systems as expressed in their sacred ways, which
maintains a spiritual connection to Maheo as the sacred creative essences that caused
the creation of the universe and of life itself. They believe that the white man has
become psychically disassociated from these original understandings of humankind.
Nothing seems to be sacred to the white man anymore in that his spiritual/metaphysical
understanding is now grounded in temporal considerations of his physical environment
with no real sense of care to maintain its life essences to maintain his own existence,
and that this comes at a time when the pollution caused by the unwise use of industrial
technology is beginning to have a noticeable destructive effect on the natural essences
which sustain all life.

The Cheyenne also understand that if they are not diligent in exercising due care
in modifying these elemental arrangements of creation there is a real potential for
upsetting the elemental balances within the environmental systems in which these life
elements are sustained. In these regards, the cultural practices of the Cheyenne are
geared to use only that which is needed to provide basic sustenance for their health and
general well being, leaving the rest to replenish Grandmother Earth in providing
sustenance to all other life beings in a manner that does not upset the environmental
balances which sustain all life.

In part, the medicine ways of the Cheyenne were adapted to be responsive to the
harsh realities of living a subsistence way of life in following the great buffalo herds and
to the dangers associated with it as they moved through territories inhabited by other
peoples. In being mindfully attuned to the natural rhythms of the universe in the
movement of star formations, through their sacred ways they were able to use the
morning star as it appeared to their advantage in a manner of providing for their well
being. So, it was for security reasons and to their advantage to be up and moving early.
The Cheyenne have a saying that: “we are just moving through, don’t tarry long.”
Today, in these prayer offerings, the leaders of the United States of America are
included (as well as other nations of the world) as it is acknowledged that not only is the
destiny of the Northern Cheyenne People caught up in the destiny of the United States,
but also that the health of Grandmother Earth is dependent on understanding and
peace among all the nations of the world. (Austin Two Moon, 1971, Sacred Arrow
Renewal Ceremony, along the Tongue River near the town of Ashland, MT).

In spiritually relating to the elements of creation, sacred tobacco is offered to:
Maheo, the sacred essence causing the creation of life itself, to continue to provide for
the care required for the well being of all life everywhere; to the Sun as their
Grandfather; to the Earth as their Grandmother; to the Moon as their Mother; to the
Stars as their Brothers and Sisters; to the four cardinal directions as the Sacred Spirit
Helpers who watch over their way of life; to all other creatures (plants, insects and
animals) which serve as the food and medicine of their Grandmother for their health and
sustenance; to the winged and the water beings, e.g., the rainbow colors of the shells of
fish that reflect the beauty of all the creation of Maheo; and to the watery vapor of the
Creator’s breath of life which is the essence and sustainer of all life. The Cheyenne
can’t believe that anyone would allow the destruction of the very essence that keeps
them and all of life alive, by not being mindful of what they are doing to harm the
environment. In conceptual terms in relating to these modern times, all this can be
translated into what is contemporarily called the “environment/eco-system.” Since
ancient times in the growing awareness of the sacred creation, the Cheyenne people
were told by their prophets of old, the sacred ancient ones, the grandfathers and
grandmothers, never to abuse it lest they perish from the earth.

The Cheyenne believe that their physical and spiritual beings were created from
these lands when they were given life by the Creator Maheo’s breath of life. This belief
forms the basis of their cosmology and identity as an indigenous people of these North
American earth lands.

The Cheyenne have a conceptual framework with which to understand their
world outlook. The terms for the four vertical levels of the Cheyenne world view are: (1)
the universe is Mah“oom,” and (2) the blue sky space is Otah’tah’v“oom,” and (3) the
middle sky space containing clouds of water vapor is Setov“oom,” and (4) the surface of
the earth is Tax’ta’v“oom,” and (5) the inner earth below is Nah’sto’v“oom.” The “oom”
of each of these levels refers to the “watery vapor of the Creator’s breath of life” in
creating the universe and all life. See Figure 2-1.

The Cheyenne are oriented to the eastern direction from which the sun rises,
which is why they face the camp lodges of their nation to the east, and also face east
when engaged in prayer. This is keeping in balance with the natural cosmological
rhythms of the universe and the earth. To have a complete understanding of this
horizontal outlook it can only be fully understood in the context of the Cheyenne’s cyclic
view of their universe in which the sun, beginning at its zenith in the Cheyenne new year
during the spring season, goes in a circle from left to right ending in the dead of winter
and then moving back to its zenith to begin yet another cycle:

(1) The Eastern direction from which the sun (Vo’ne’veshe) rises is the
direction from which they believe life comes. It is said a child about to be
born is journeying from the east to be with the people. This direction is
“Hessen” represented by “Hessen’ta’he” the animated name of this
eastern direction. Its power essence is “fog (Mah’ehn’o: the Turtle in
reference to its slow movement)” that has the power of blindness to hide
the people from danger. Its color is white.

(2) The Southern direction is “Soh’voon” to which the new life (child) grows to
become an adolescent and is represented by “Soh’voon’tahe,” the
animated name of this southern direction. Its power is thunder
(Noh’no’mah: in reference to its loud noise in shaking the earth to bring
things to renewed life and new growth) and lightning (Ho’e’tah) that has
the power of growth and destruction. Its color is yellow.

(3) The Western direction is “Onx’Soh’voon,” to which the life grows to
adulthood, and is represented by “On’soh’voon’tahe,” the animated name
of this western direction. Its power is the “Wind (Ha’hash’e)” and is at
times referred to by the old ones as “Max’ha’noh’vih’tan (the big trickster).”
Its color is red, representing the ripeness of natural fruit and the fullness of
growth to participate in the procreation of the Maheo.

(4) The Northern direction is “Noh’tohm,” to which a person grows old in going
back to the Creator from whence they came, and is represented by
“Noh’tah’moh’ta,” the animated name for this northern direction. Its power
is the “cold elements (Tsi’tohn)” with power to cull the infirm and to refresh
life for the spring season to come. Its color is black which is the symbol of
victory in having made it through the full cycle of life. The medicine people
sometimes refer to Noh’tah’moh’ta as “Ho’he’maha’kess’o: old man
winter,” or “Voh’kim: cold winter cloud person” in their ceremonial prayers
during the course of the winter.

Through the medium of their sacred spiritual ways in connection with
Grandmother Earth, the Cheyenne people believe they can harness the creative power
essences of the universe to benefit their physical existence on this earth. For instance,
United States Army accounts of battles with the American Indian are replete with events
where they couldn’t kill a warrior, such as Sauhsti (Bat) as he was known to his people,
and with great respect was known to the white soldiers as “Roman Nose.” He was
named after the bat because he seemed to fly like one in jumping from place to place
while fighting on the battlefield. After putting up a strong valiant fight for his people, he
finally fell on the battlefield when he didn’t have adequate time to properly prepare
himself through the sacred ceremony that gave him the power of protection from harm.
Also, the people were protected during the trek to their northern homelands from
Oklahoma Territory, in using the power essences of Hessen’ta’he for their protection.
These protective power essences are called: Hoa’ho’oh’doh’histosti. The medicine
people believe the Cheyenne people are the only ones blessed with these sacred
protective ways. Although these sacred ways didn’t win them the war, they sustained
them well enough to reach and regain their northern homelands that they are
determined to keep forever (Grover Wolf Voice, age 81, 1972). And, as long as they
continue in their sacred ways they will continue to sustain them in their own homelands
as a nation of Northern Cheyenne people well into the future times.

It has been told by one of the old people (Henry Little Coyote, 1958, age 83,
Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo Hat Covenant) that the Great Lakes Region is the center
of the universe (Seto’voh’heh) because that is the place where all the above described
powers work at once, i.e., a person can see and hear thunder and lightning, wind, hail
and fog during the course of severe storms that hit these great bodies of water.
Cheyenne territory naturally encompassed the migration pattern of the great
buffalo herds. They followed these herds from the Great Lakes and Missouri River
regions in the early spring, then to the south and west, then northward along the Rocky
Mountains in the late spring and early summer, along the Big Horns and up into Canada
during the course of the summer season, and across Canada eastward in the fall
season and back down into the Great Lakes and Missouri River regions for their
wintering grounds. It is said that these buffalo herds in their migration pattern, followed
the seasonal growth of their food supply. Although some anthropologists call this a
“buffalo culture,” given the changes in their way of making their livelihood, which also
included being fisherman, farmers and hunters of the buffalo, it would be more
appropriate to call it a “renewable cyclic culture based on the infinite rebirth of the
universe and the earth lands,” i.e., in the making of their earth symbols upon which they
make their altars, the Cheyenne are aware that the universe is infinite in its cyclic nature
of birth, death and rebirth. Cheyenne cosmology can only be fully understood in the
context of its cyclic nature – thereby making it whole and in balance.

For many millennia in which their sacred spiritual ways evolved from the North
American earth lands, the Cheyenne in their sacred construction of symbols
representing their universe knew that Grandmother Earth was spherical. In fact, the
medicine people conducting ceremonies use certain basic elements from the earth
rolled into a sphere (ball) in the reenactment of the creation of the human male and
female, and call on all the life beings and elements of the universe to be included in
these world renewal ceremonies. The earth symbols they use for their renewal
ceremonies can be found in the star formations of the universe.

The Cheyenne also tell of regions where they once lived, in following the great
buffalo herds and in their exploratory travels throughout the North American continent:
Their Northern Homelands in Northeast Canada between the Hudson Bay and
James Bay Regions they called: Noh’tom’his’toah’o’o’mihna (northern mountainous
regions of our origins).
The Great Lakes region they called: Sti’maxih’mih’sih’e’voo’ev (the place where the
great waters appear onto the land in a cloudy mist).
One of the most recent homeland regions of the Suhtio, which the Cheyenne refer to
themselves as being from, they called: Issih’oom’mih’tah (where the marsh waters
flow into the dark brushy country).
The Expanding Sand Hills Country near the Great Lakes they called:
Nih’o’mah’e’tanihn (the ceremonial term the Tsi’sti’stas (Cheyenne proper) refer to
themselves as is Nih’o’mah’e’taneo: Expanding Sand Hill People). It was a
common practice in those days for different bands of our people to refer to
themselves in being from a certain place and naming themselves after that place.
The Mississippi River Region they called: Maxea’yoh’he’e (Big River country).
The Missouri River Region they called: E’o’mih’tah (dark brushy country of the
Greasy River in reference to the foamy substance floating in the waters).
The Great Plains Regions of the west they called: Sti’max’e’toh’toah’ev.
The Black Hills Country they called: Mok’e’tahvo’honah.
The Nebraska and Colorado Territories they called: Nohm’hastoh’sti’max’to’toah’ev
(southern great plains).
The Rocky Mountain Region which included the Big Horn Mountains and the Glacier
Mountain Range going into Canada they called: Ho’hoe’nah’tsi’om’mohsti.
The Kansas and Oklahoma Territories they called: Ho’e’sti’xah’hote (the place of
the hot earth).
The Texas Territory they called: To’hoa’no’e’hoeva (the parched place with thick
earth cracks).
The Northwest Canadian Region they called: Sti’enoh’mah’eyah or
Mah’oom’sti’enoh’ma’eyah (where the ice sheet ends).
Lake De Smet near the town of Buffalo, Wyoming, they called: Max’e’ne’hanev
(where the ma’steheo’nih’taneo: Kiowa/Apache people moved into the great body of
water).
The Tongue River, Powder River and Otter Creek regions they call: Ho’ho’nah’shi’e
(shaley rock earth country).

Although at times in their exploratory wanderings throughout the North American
Continent the Cheyenne lived a sedentary way of life in the eastern sections of the
country and planted corn and squash, to a greater extent they followed the great buffalo
herds in their migration pattern. In so doing, they always stayed close to the many
water ways which provided them shelter from the cold elements, water, wood and grass
for their horses and good hunting. In other words, during their wanderings throughout
the vast territory of the North American continent, the Cheyenne at times evolved
different life styles in adapting to different lands and climates they encountered.
The Tribe didn’t live or move together as one group, but rather in Bands. Each
Band, based on the extended family systems, had its own names for it, which was
different from the main body and the other Bands, which numbered approximately ten.
The only time they came together as one Tribe was for Tribal level ceremonies.
Throughout the many millennia the Cheyenne came to know that being flexible and
adaptive to the differing lands they encountered empowered them to continue to survive
as a people. And so, they were naturally averse to anything that threatened this method
of adaptation in living in harmony with their natural environment as expressed in the
living creative spirit of the universe. Given that they were once a self-sufficient people,
after their defeat they have yet to be given adequate opportunity to adapt to present
times and conditions to attain a self-determined independent livelihood.
II. Northern Cheyenne History.

A. The Early Period.
According to academic historians, the Cheyenne (Tse-tsehese-stahase)
originated in the Great Lakes region. They began moving from Ontario and the
headwaters of the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota, southwest towards the
Dakotas during the early 1700s (Weist, 1977:14-16). There they became farmers who
lived in major river valleys and grew corn, beans and squash as their staple crops. The
Northern Cheyenne themselves tell a somewhat different story which Joe Little Coyote
recounts below.

Anthropologists have theorized from carbon dating that the Northern American
continent was first peopled through the Bering Straits land bridge about 30,000 years
ago. There are also some speculations by these same scientists that the North and
South American continents may have also been peopled by ancient seafaring peoples
long before that. In any event, our people have oral traditions that tell of a great flood;
fire coming out of hills; long-nosed beasts (Toh’seh’seheyoh/Mastodon?); the great
humming sound of large buffalo herds moving across the plains as far as the eye could
see; prior to the horse, the swiftness and great endurance of young men and women
that could run alongside the great buffalo herds in chasing them into pounds or over
cliffs; stories of white men living among them (could they have been Vikings left behind
that were absorbed into the Tribe?); of great ice sheets (12,000 years ago?); of other
human species quite unlike them (the old people telling Anthropologist George Dorsey
of hairy people); their children playing on the edge of the forest with the offspring of
large, hairy, human-like creatures; the mihn’e (large horned serpent like creatures that
live near springs and rivers); the disappearance and reappearance of the moon’s pet
star (Tah’esshe’his’toh’steo); and other stories too numerous to mention here.
Western anthropologists, linguistic genealogists and ethnologists identify our
Tribe as belonging to the Algonquin linguistic stock of aboriginal peoples who inhabited
the northeastern regions of what is now Canada. The old people called these regions
the northern homelands “Notum’histah’o’o’mih’nah,” in reference to the region where the
Cheyenne people broke off with the main body of other Algonquin speaking peoples
they were once a part thereof. In this respect one could say that was where they came
from, and where they came from prior to that is lost in the primeval mists of time, and is
left to the speculations of archeologists and anthropologists. It is said that in these early
times all the different tribes of people spoke and understood each other’s language.
During the 1400s and 1500s anthropologists speculate that our ancestors moved down
into the western parts of the Great Lakes Region, and southward into the Mississippi
River country (Maxeh’yoh’he’e: Big River), on to the Missouri River country and on to
the Black Hills country, etc. They report that around the 1600s their livelihood mainly
consisted of being planters of corn and squash, being fisherman, natural fruit and other
natural food gatherers, and hunters of small game.

The Cheyenne people tell of a legend of how they obtained their first sacred
foods that consisted of meat, corn, natural fruits and water. These foods, which are
prepared in an sacred ceremonial way, are considered healing medicine and are still
traditionally prepared and used in their ceremonials to this very day. Prior to partaking
of these foods, a small portion is given back to Grandmother Earth to ensure there will
be plenty for future times ahead (this is called: e’sti’nih’nistostiI). Throughout the
millennia the Cheyenne identity evolved through an adaptation process to differing land
conditions which required new methods of making a livelihood.

Beyond the 1400s and 1500s, these western scientists and ethnologists can only
speculate about the origins and pre-historic culture(s) of the Cheyenne. In these
regards, more accurate information about the pre-historic times of the Cheyenne can
only be found in their oral traditions passed down within their familial institutions. These
oral traditions tell of times prior to the 1600s living in the dark brushy country in the
Great Lakes region. Deep in the dark forests medicine people would visit other
medicine people of other tribal peoples. In addition to teaching each other about their
ways and beliefs, they learned about the white man (including the Black Robes) from
other tribal peoples that either had prior knowledge of him and his strange ways, and of
his steadily coming inland disrupting the tranquility and balance of things that had stood
for a long, long time. This new knowledge, in which the white man and his ways was
totally alien to them, was accounted for and found explanation in the psychic sphere of
their mythology. Over the many millennia, having highly developed psychic abilities to
see into the future, in knowing then that the ways of the white man were to be disruptive
to their environment and culture, the Cheyenne were able to extrapolate how this was to
affect them in the future. Pursuant to this, in knowingly anticipating these disruptive
effects, the Cheyenne began moving in a westward direction to avoid these anticipated
disruptive influences. These disruptive influences were the commerce and attendant
philosophical intrusions and expansions of the white man.

Beginning about 1600 to avoid contacts with these encroachments of European
colonists, the Tsi’sti’stas moved in a westward direction from the Great Lakes region to
the Missouri River region. In that region, some time around 1610-1620, while out
hunting during the winter season, a group of Tsi’sti’stas warrior societies suddenly met
up with a group of Suhtio who were also out hunting. They each thought the other were
from an enemy Tribe. While preparing to fight they shouted orders to their warriors and
discovered to their great surprise they could understand one another. They both stood
down in their preparations to fight and called out to one another inquiring about each
other. Finally, each group sent emissaries out to meet and told each other about their
Covenants and that they would go back and report to their respective camps on each
side of the Missouri River. After a time the Keeper of the Sacred Arrow Covenant sent
a formal invitation for a visit to the Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo Hat Covenant. Upon
arriving in the early morning with a contingent of warrior societies and their extended
families, the Keeper of the Sacred Buffalo was told to camp to the north of the Keeper of
the Sacred Arrows, and that a tipi would be erected at the center of the camp where
they would formally meet.

After visiting for about one moon’s time, in which their respective people’s visited
each other across the iced-over river, and learned that they had very similar beliefs,
traditions and languages, a bond was formed to be mindful of their kinship similarities to
one another, no matter where they might be. Before sun light, as the Suhtio Keeper
prepared to move back across the river, they discovered that the ice had broken and the
dangerous ice floes prevented them from moving back across. After a time, the
Tsi’sti’stas prepared to move on, as they knew the buffalo herds would move out from
the water regions to follow their migration pattern. The Suhtio Keeper, knowing that it
was dangerous without the main body of his people, moved off under the protection of
the Tsi’sti’stas hoping that one day they would find the rest of their people. It is
speculated that the main body of Suhtio moved into what is today called Canada, never
to be heard from again. After a time of getting to know one another and in integrating
their beliefs, traditions and customs into one cultural expression, and being provided a
place in the northwest camp circle of the Tsi’sti’stas, the Tsi’sti’stas and the Suhtio
Keeper’s people became one Cheyenne Nation.

From accounts of western ethnologists spanning the time around 1640 to around
the 1830s, we know that the Cheyenne engaged in commerce with Europeans as the
Hudson’s Bay Company and other trading companies began to trade in fur pelts in
surrounding regions. The Cheyenne were entrepreneurs in their own right, trading
outright or brokering deals between these companies and other Tribes. They were
shrewd traders in bartering to meet whatever their needs were at that time, and in
meeting other friendly peoples they exchanged ideas and other kinds of useful
information.

About 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition also made contact with the
Cheyenne people, telling them that there were great numbers of white people coming
into the country and nothing could stop them. They were given gifts of tobacco and dry
goods and were also told about the great and wonderful blessings the white man’s
civilization would bring to this country. (Henry Little Coyote, 1959).

On July 4, 1825, while living in the Missouri River and Black Hills regions, a small
group of Cheyenne, not representative of the entire Cheyenne Nation, were approached
by the Federal government and induced to sign a “friendship treaty” which provided for
recognition of the sovereignty of the United States and its right to regulate trade with
them. The government considered it legal and binding to the entire Tribe. The
Cheyenne did not realize that this treaty meant giving power to the United States to
interfere in their future affairs.

Sometime in the 1830s the Cheyenne Nation, because of personal preferences,
began splitting into northern and southern Branches. The Southern Cheyenne
preferring the amenities of trading and living in the southern regions, primarily
encompassing the southern part of Colorado Territory. The Northern Cheyenne
preferred living close to their Lakota relatives and the mild climate of their northern
homelands encompassing the Black Hills, the Powder River, the Yellowstone River and
the Tongue River Regions in the Dakota and Montana Territories.

B. Conflict and War.
In the 1800s an increasing number of Euroamerican settlers and gold seekers
moved into southeast Montana and other part of the Great Plains region. The settlers
brought diseases that ravaged large numbers of Indian people and whiskey which
undermined relations between Tribal leaders and warriors. European cattle began to
disrupt the grazing and migration patterns of the buffalo. Especially on the Central and
Southern plains, war began to break out due to these commercial encroachments which
did not respect the territorial interests of the Cheyenne and other Indian people.
In the late 1840s, the United States government established military outposts and
an Indian agency in the Upper Platte River valley. In an attempt to control the
relationships among the various Plains tribes and between the white settlers and the
Indians, the American government convened a treaty council at Fort Laramie in 1851
which included the nations of the Sioux, the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Crow and
Shoshone. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 assigned the Cheyenne and Arapaho to
lands south of the North Platte River and north of the Arkansas River, from their
headwaters eastward to the forks of the Platte (in present day Wyoming, Nebraska,
Colorado and Kansas). The area north of the North Platte River was assigned to the
Sioux. However, there were both Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho bands
living in the Sioux territory. The government hoped that by assigning territories to the
Cheyenne and the Arapaho, all out warfare could be averted. However, the Cheyenne
and Arapaho were allowed to continue to live and hunt north of the Platte with the Sioux
(Weist, 1977). The informal geographic division between the Northern and Southern
Cheyenne bands began to take on political significance with this treaty action. The
bands living on the Northern and Central plains, north of the South Platte River, became
known as the Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho, while those living between the
South Platte and Arkansas rivers became known as the Southern Cheyenne and
Southern Arapaho.

The Tribal territories assigned by the 1851 treaty were essentially ignored. From
the 1850s onward, the Cheyenne and other Plains tribes came into increasing conflict
with Euroamerican settlers which led to escalating violence. In 1861, the Southern
Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho entered into the Treaty of Fort Wise of 1861, which
set aside a small reservation in southeastern Colorado Territory for the Southern
Cheyenne and Arapaho where the Federal government promised them that they would
not be attacked. The government had tried to get the Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho
to recognize the government’s authority and settle onto this reservation, but they
refused. They preferred not to abandon their traditional hunting grounds on the Central
Plains, and continued their raids along the North Platte, resisting the commercial and
military intrusions into what they considered to be their territories (Weist, 1977: 49, 53).
During the Civil War, United States government troops were sent south from the
Plains and the settlers were allowed to form volunteer militias. The Colorado Volunteer
Militia led by Colonel John M. Chivington, a Methodist minister, waged a campaign of
extermination against the Cheyenne which culminated in the 1864 Sand Creek
Massacre, in which a peaceful Cheyenne village led by Chief Black Kettle was attacked
and 137 Cheyenne were massacred, mostly old people, women and children. Nellie
White Frog, who was an adopted German girl, told how the soldiers would throw live
babies into the burning fires of their lodges. Chief Black Kettle had been given an
American flag and was instructed to raise the flag in the event there was danger from
U.S. soldiers. He attempted to raise the flag along with a white flag when he saw the
soldiers of the Colorado Volunteers. After the massacre, Colonel Chivington and his
troops paraded into the town of Denver, proudly displaying and waving the private parts
of the Cheyenne who were massacred at Sand Creek. The Sand Creek Massacre led to
a period of all-out warfare between the United States government and the Northern
Cheyenne and other Plains tribes.

In October 1865, the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho signed the
treaty of the Little Arkansas, by which they obtained new reservation lands in southcentral
Kansas and north-central Oklahoma Territories. In 1869, President Grant
signed an executive order establishing a permanent reservation for them in western
Oklahoma.

In 1865, the Federal government once again tried to end the hostilities between
the United States and the Northern Cheyenne and Sioux nations by convening a treaty
council at Fort Laramie. Even though the Northern Cheyenne initially signed the treaty,
final negotiations broke down when it was learned that during the process of these
negotiations, United States military forces were being sent into the Powder River
country to build a series of forts to protect immigrants along the Bozeman Trail, in the
continuing commercial encroachments of white settlers throughout Northern Cheyenne
territory. And so, hostilities continued.
These hostilities led to the Fetterman Fight of December 21, 1866, in which an
eighty-one man contingent of United States troops under Captain William J. Fetterman
from Fort Kearny, sent out to aid a wood train, and were wiped out by the Northern
Cheyenne and Sioux under the leadership of Two Moon, Little Wolf, Crazy Horse and
Buffalo Hump. Prior to this, Fetterman had bragged that with eighty men he could ride
through the entire Sioux nation.

Finally, in 1868, the Federal government attempted to end hostilities by
convening yet another treaty council at Fort Laramie. In the Fort Laramie Treaty of
1868, the Federal government acceded to the demands of the Northern Cheyenne,
Northern Arapaho and Sioux nations, and established the Great Sioux Reservation in
South Dakota. An “unceded Indian Territory” was provided for in this treaty,
encompassing the lands north of the North Platte River, from east of the summit of the
Bighorn Mountains eastward to the Missouri River, to be held in common by all the
Tribes. The United States also pledged to abandon its forts guarding the Bozeman
Trail.

The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 failed to bring a lasting peace. Hostilities
continued as a result of the encroachments by gold prospectors into territories set aside
for the Tribes by the Treaty. The Federal government tried to purchase the Black Hills
after gold was found. The Tribes refused. The government also attempted to buy the
mineral rights, but this was also refused and hostilities continued. Government officials
felt the only way to resolve this problem was to force the Tribes living and hunting in
their traditional territories of the Powder River, the Tongue River and Yellowstone River
countries onto the Sioux reservation and keep them contained there.

In 1874 the U.S. Army led by General George Armstrong Custer invaded the
Paha Sapa, the Black Hills, sacred to both the Sioux and the Cheyenne. This land had
been guaranteed as Indian land in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. The gold miners
followed the army and soon were coming and going at will. The Indians retaliated. In
August of 1875, a government commission, through promises and threats, got the
Chiefs of the Great Sioux reservation to surrender the Black Hills and other lands,
comprising approximately one-third of the reservation, and all the unceded territory in
the Powder River country. In December of 1875, then President Grant ordered that all
Indians must move onto reservations by January of 1876.

On March 17, 1876, General George Crook directed cavalry under the command
of Colonel J. J. Reynolds to attack the Cheyenne camp led by Two Moons. Two
Moons’s camp was a large village containing 105 Cheyenne lodges, Minneconjous, and
Oglalas located at Thompson Creek near present day Moorehead, Montana. The
Oglalas camped with Two Moons were followers of the headman He Dog, a close
associate of war chief Crazy Horse. The Indian survivors of Reynolds’s attack moved
up the Powder River to join Crazy Horse's camp. On March 27, 1876, Crazy Horse’s
people took in the refugees from the Reynolds attack. They gave them all the supplies
and clothes they could spare but they did not have enough to go around. Consequently,
in April, Crazy Horse moved his people north to the Chalk Buttes area where Sitting
Bull’s band was camped on Blue Earth Creek (Moeller and Moeller, 1987:90; Gray,
1976:323-325).

Warrior ceremonies were held, sweat lodges were set up for purifying
ceremonies and Crazy Horse was made war chief for life. Word spread of the war
council and many more Oglala and Cheyenne along with Minneconjous, Hunkpapa,
Sans Arc, Santee, Brule and Blackfoot Sioux came to join the camp. The Cheyenne
warrior Wooden Leg also reports returning to this area after the Sioux and Cheyenne
success at the Battle of the Little Bighorn (Marquis, 1931).
Eventually this led to the Battle of the Rosebud on June 16, 1876, where the
Cheyenne woman warrior “White Buffalo Calf Woman” saved her brother. On June 25,
1876, the Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Sioux all battled at Little Bighorn. The Crow
were allied with Custer while the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were allied against the
United States Army and fighting to avoid placement on reservations. In the end, Custer
and his entire contingent of 225 men of the United States Seventh Calvary were wiped
out by the combined Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho. Prior to this, General
Custer visited the Cheyenne camped along the Washita River in Colorado Territory,
talking to them about need for peaceful relations. He was invited into the Sacred Arrow
lodge to smoke the pipe with the Cheyenne. After smoking the pipe, he was warned by
the Keeper Stone Forehead not to bother the Cheyenne anymore, or he would end up
as the ashes that were being emptied on the heel of his boot. General Custer promised
that he would do everything possible to bring peace to the Cheyenne.

In January of 1877, a group of Northern Cheyenne led by Two Moons, and a
group of Oglalas led by Crazy Horse, fought a detachment of the Fifth Infantry,
commanded by Colonel Nelson A. Miles (Noah’koh’sti’nih’heh’nah: Bear Coat Miles), in
the valley of the Tongue River. The Battle of the Tongue River, also known as the
Battle of the Wolf Mountains or Belly Butte Battle, was fought on the east bank of the
Tongue River, just south of the mouth of Hanging Women Creek, 18 miles northeast of
the Tongue River Dam. A single rock cairn marks the location where Big Crow, the only
Cheyenne killed in the battle, died (Stands In Timber and Liberty, 1972:22n). Hostilities
continued until the surrender of Two Moons to General Miles at Fort Keogh at the
confluence of the Tongue River and Yellowstone rivers in April of 1877.
The losses suffered by Two Moons and his band at the Battle of Tongue River
forced the last off-reservation band of Cheyenne’s to move to Fort Keogh in April, 1877
(Weist, 1977:76). The Northern Cheyenne at this time had split into four groups: Coal
Bear and his people went to their Arapaho relatives in Wyoming, Little Chief and his
people went to Oklahoma to their relatives, Chiefs Dull Knife and Little Wolf and their
people went to the Great Sioux reservation in South Dakota to their relatives, and Two
Moons and his people went to Fort Keogh to serve as scouts for the U.S Army. Two
Moons and his warriors later returned south to their village at the mouth of Deer Creek
on the Tongue River (Powell, 1969:180).

In 1877, a group of 972 Northern Cheyenne under the leadership of Chiefs Dull
Knife (Vo’he’hiv: Morning Star) and Little Wolf were taken to Oklahoma to live with the
Southern Cheyenne. In 1878, finding the hot and humid climate to be inhospitable, and
suffering from disease, they decided to go home to their northern homelands in the
Tongue River Valley region, where they knew the environment was more healthy for
them. After their request to the government to be allowed to return north was rejected,
about 300 Northern Cheyenne under the leadership of Dull Knife and Little Wolf, defied
the government and escaped to journey north, knowing full well that they would be
attacked and possibly wiped out by the United States soldiers. They walked over two
thousand miles home in the freezing cold, being hunted and harassed by at least two
divisions of soldiers along the way. This was their trail of tears, but they were
determined to go home, rather than die in this hot and humid climate without at least
trying to make some effort to get back to their northern homelands.
In their trek home, they relied on their sacred cultural ways to sustain them, with
an old medicine woman by the name of Northern Woman: Notah’mih’heh, divining the
safe directions in their trek home. By using sacred ceremonies, she told the people
what to do, (such as, lying on their backs in the face of tornadoes hitting them), shielded
and hid them with the powers of Hessen’ta’he in which soldiers thought they were small
herds of buffalo when they came close to finding them, and showed which directions
were safe to go when they were faced with other obstacles. (Woodrise, 1972).
In northwestern Nebraska, the Cheyenne split into two groups. Chief Dull Knife’s
band decided to try and reach their Lakota relatives at the Red Cloud Agency on the
Great Sioux reservation. Chief Little Wolf’s band decided to continue on home to the
Tongue River homelands. On October 23, 1878, Chief Dull Knife and his band were
found by soldiers from Fort Robinson and surrendered. The government decided to
send them back to Oklahoma under armed escort. Upon their refusal they were
confined without food or water. On January 9, 1879, deciding it was better to die at Fort
Robinson rather being sent back south, they broke out and were slaughtered in the
snow by the soldiers. Out of the 149 that were imprisoned at the Fort, 61 were killed.
Many of the survivors were wounded. The survivors were sent to the Pine Ridge
Agency and were allowed to stay with their Lakota relatives.

In early 1879, the Northern Cheyenne were divided into four groups. Those
under Little Wolf were at Fort Keogh in Montana; those under Dull Knife were at Pine
Ridge; another group remained in Oklahoma under Little Chief and Wild Hog; and some
were living in Wyoming with the Northern Arapaho. Shortly afterwards, in January
1881, with the intercession of General Nelson A. Miles, all of the Northern Cheyenne
were sent to Fort Keogh and were eventually allowed to move south and take
homesteads near the Tongue River and on Rosebud and Muddy Creeks under the
Indian Homestead Act of 1875. The Northern Cheyenne were finally back together in
their Tongue River Valley and Otter Creek homelands. There they continued to live
their traditional culture and began to develop a new way of making a livelihood for
themselves based on the western agricultural industry of farming and ranching.
After disputes arose between the Northern Cheyenne and white ranchers who
had settled in the area, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered a special
investigation in 1883. This investigation led to a recommendation that the Northern
Cheyenne be permitted to remain where they were and a reservation established.
(Feeney, 1986:3-6).

As Joe Little Coyote recounts:
Around 1878, while Chief Two Moon’s people were serving as scouts for
the U.S. Military at Fort Keogh (near the present town of Miles city,
Montana), pursuant to the Indian Homestead Act of 1875, which afforded
Indian people benefits similar to those of the Homestead Act of 1862,
General Nelson Miles had Captain Ezra Ewers (known to the Cheyennes
at Fort Keogh as White Hat) take a number of the Cheyenne Scouts out
into the country south of Fort Keogh to mark out the territory where they
could stake out their homesteads. They were instructed to ensure they
built their homesteads 160 acres apart from one another. This territory
encompassed an area beginning from Fort Keogh east along the
Yellowstone River to the mouth of the Powder River, up the Powder River
to the Big Horn Mountains near Sheridan, WY, west along this mountain
range to the Big Horn River, down north to the Yellowstone river and back
down to Fort Keogh. The reservation, which was to be their permanent
homeland, comprising approximately 447,000 acres, was finally created
by Executive Orders of 1884 and 1900, with the middle channel of the
Tongue River as its eastern border, near the frontier cow-town of Ashland
in southeastern Montana Territory.

C. Establishment of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
In 1884, during the peak of the range cattle industry, President Chester A. Arthur
created, by an executive order, the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation on
unsurveyed lands north of Tongue River. This outraged many of the settlers in the
Tongue River and Rosebud Creek valleys. Some ranchers in the Tongue River valley
were probably less than enthusiastic about the creation of a Northern Cheyenne
Reservation on lands they considered open range. The order stated that the claims of
“bona fide settlers” would be recognized. As a result, there was some activity to file on
lands before the deadline. In any event, the Reservation boundaries excluded 46
Northern Cheyenne families who had been encouraged to homestead along the east
bank of the Tongue River and along Otter Creek. At the same time, 46 white
homesteads, both legal and illegal, had been established within the boundaries of the
Reservation. (National Archives Record Group 75, Special Case File 137; Deaver,
1988; Brooke, 1981; Weist, 1977).

There were several attempts in the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s to
dissolve the boundaries of the Tongue River Reservation. Tongue River Indian Agent,
R. L. Upshaw, stated in 1889 that “a strong effort is being made by the citizens of
Custer county to have these Indians removed from here, and many arguments are used
in favor of the removal.” (Department of the Interior, 1889:236). Special Indian Agent
George Milburn’s October 28, 1884 report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs
recommended the Tongue River Reservation be established on the Rosebud, but he
also suggested a better solution was to remove the Northern Cheyenne to an existing
1 Letter of Commissioner H. Price, Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, to George Yoakum Sept
9, 1882; and Report of E. D. Bannister, US Special Agent, Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs,
June 11, 1885

reservation. By June of 1884, Milburn was the attorney representing the Miles City
cattlemen opposed to establishing a Northern Cheyenne Reservation. He worked to try
to get the Northern Cheyenne homesteaders to move onto the Crow Reservation.
In 1893 a military post was established to maintain order. In 1899, Indian
Inspector James McLaughlin went to investigate the possibility of removing the Northern
Cheyenne from their Reservation and moving them into the southeast corner of the
Crow Reservation. McLaughlin reported that the Northern Cheyenne and the Crow both
vehemently opposed such a proposal.

The Cheyenne representatives had several letters from government officials
assuring them that they could remain on the Tongue River Reservation undisturbed.
(Department of the Interior,1899:3-4). One of the letters was from General Miles, dated
June 1889:
... in regard to the proposed removal of the Indians [Northern Cheyenne],
there is no good reason or justice in doing so. They have fulfilled their
part of the compact [to remain at peace], ... they have an undoubted right,
legally and morally, to remain where they are now located (Department of
the Interior, 1899:4).

There is some confusion over which homesteading statutes were applied to the
Northern Cheyenne homesteads on the east side of the Tongue River. According to the
Department of the Interior 1889 report to the Commissioners, the Tongue River Indian
Homesteads were originally taken up under the Homestead Act of March 3 18751. It
was the guidelines of this Act that Special Indian Agent Milburn explained to the
Northern Cheyenne in March and April of 1883. The Tongue River valley was not
included as part of the original reservation boundaries. According to Newell it was
reserved for Indian homesteads under the Indian Homestead Act of 1886 by the
Secretary of the Interior (Newell, 1980b:9-10).

In 1889, three years after the enactment of the Indian Homestead Act, Agent R. L.
Upshaw stated that:
at least half of the Northern Cheyenne were homesteading
along the Tongue River . . .about half of them on the
Rosebud River and its tributaries, Lame Deer and Muddy
Creeks, and the other half [the Northern Cheyenne] on
Tongue River from the mouth of Hanging Women Creek
down to the mouth [of] Stebbin’s Creek ... (Department of the
Interior, 1889: 234).

Negotiations for a proposed extension of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation
east to the Tongue River were then considered in order to present “the most favorable
resources for the permanent settlement of the Northern Cheyennes” (Department of the
2 - 19
Interior, 1899:6). This required the government to remove 46 white settlers (15 ‘bona
fide’ legal settlers, five equitable rights settlers, 18 illegal squatters, and 8 ‘legal
owners’) (Department of the Interior, 1899:15-16) from the west side of the Tongue
River and 46 Cheyenne families from the east side.

During negotiations, some of the Cheyenne chiefs representing their people
sought to prevent the removal of Cheyenne homesteaders by extending the eastern
boundary of the reservation to the divide between the Tongue and Powder Rivers.
Cheyenne soldier chief, George Standing Elk stated: "We want the reservation
extended to the divide east of Tongue River. We do not need the boundaries fenced;
mounds are sufficient. We can irrigate from Rosebud and Tongue Rivers." (Department
of the Interior,1899:89). Chief Medicine Bear stated “... leave us here that we may live
and die in a country in which we were born.” (Department of the Interior, 1899:87).
James McLaughlin’s reaction to the Cheyenne testimonies was negative. He
responded:
[I] advise you to cheerfully accept the tract of land described, bounded on
the east by Tongue River, as it will be utterly useless for me to
recommend that your eastern boundary be fixed on the divide east of
Tongue River, which would place it midway between Tongue and Powder
rivers (Department of the Interior, 1899:90).

The current reservation boundaries were established in 1900. (Weist, 1977). In
1901, the white settlers on the newly expanded reservation lands in the Tongue River
valley were ordered to leave. (Newell, 1980b:11). The Federal government paid the 46
white settlers $150,445 for their “improvements” (buildings etc.) on the west side of the
Tongue River and compensated the 46 Cheyenne families with only $1,150 for their
homesteads on the east side. Descendants of these families believe that because the
government never paid fair value for these homesteads, the land is still theirs. (Feeney,
1986; Deaver,1988; Department of the Interior, 1899:15-16).

Even though it is commonly reported that the white ranchers wanted the
Cheyenne removed from the Tongue River and Otter Creek areas, according to Joe
Little Coyote:
. . . some of the white ranchers and towns people were sympathetic to
their plight and cause in trying to establish a permanent homeland in the
Tongue River and Otter Creek areas, which has not been reported. In
fact, a number of the ancestors of the early Cheyenne and white ranchers
in area are still friends from the days the Cheyenne would work for these
white ranches in response to their need for help. They have a lot of
respect for the Cheyenne who worked for them, and still tell of how they
were dependable hard workers. When the government in cooperation with
the missionaries prohibited Cheyenne traditional sacred cultural practices,
some of the white ranchers living in the Otter Creek areas provided for
these ceremonies to be held on their lands, providing line-riders to assist
with security and also cattle to help with food requirements.

The Cheyenne people were befriended by a number of poor white people
that moved into the Ashland area, sharing some of their food with them in
the early 1900s. Many Cheyenne still tell funny stories about each other
when they worked for the white ranchers. The Cheyenne also tell of how
some of their people actually married into some of the families of these
white ranchers, although it was kept quiet because of the popular
sentiment among the general white population that thought “intermarriage
of the races” was wrong and should not be allowed.

D. Early Reservation History.
Once moved onto the Reservation, the Northern Cheyenne became dependant
on the United States government rations for survival. As detailed in Historic Research
Associates’ historic overview of the Tongue River region (1980:67-68), efforts to
acculturate the Northern Cheyenne to the economic and social values and practices of
their white neighbors intensified at the turn of the century.
In the early days, Indian reservations were regarded by many as interim
solutions, necessary only until the cultural assimilation process worked itself out.
Becoming impatient with the slow if presumed inevitable disappearance of the Indian
tribes, however, and anxious to more fully appropriate the natural resources on the
reservations into the expanding United States economy, early reservation administrative
policies became startlingly repressive by today's standards.
The reservations in the late nineteenth century and early decades of the
twentieth century were run, under the unfettered and often arbitrary rule of the Bureau
of Indian Affairs (BIA), as oppressive institutions of forced enculturation. Regulations
prohibiting traditional ceremonies, prayer, councils, and even the wearing of native
clothing, were promulgated and enforced through Courts of Indian Offenses. Indian
people were discouraged from gathering for social events. Whole families were
punished through the withholding of rations (essentially meaning starvation) if one of
their members aroused the ire of the BIA agent. Children were ripped from their
families and sent to boarding schools where they were subjected both to harsh
discipline, and too often also to sexual and physical abuse. All of these conditions were
made worse, by the corruption of Indian agents into whose hands the fate of the Indians
had been placed and who often enriched themselves and their friends with resources
appropriated to keep their Indian wards alive.

Conditions became so harsh on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation that the
population of the Tribe, already decimated by decades of warfare, continued to decline
precipitously as a consequence of semi-starvation and disease, and perhaps despair,
during the early Reservation years. These conditions persisted until well into the early
mid-century era.
Education was thought to be one of the primary means in acculturating the
Northern Cheyenne. The government established a day school in Lame Deer in 1887
and a boarding school in Busby in 1904. A contract school was established at St. Labre
in 1884, which was run by the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. Ironically, in 1889
the St. Labre School was temporarily closed:
. . . on account of an unreasonable demand on the part of the Indians that
the parents should be compensated for allowing their children to go to
school; and it was deemed expedient to close the school for a season in
order that the Indians might realize their loss and true position
(Department of the Interior, 1889:236).

Acculturation also included efforts to discourage traditional medicinal practices in
favor of western medical treatments. R. L. Upshaw noted that these efforts met with
limited success. In 1889, he stated:
. . . they are too impatient, and if the remedies of the physician fail to give
immediate relief they fly off to their own old medicines or a sweat-house,
often times destroying the effect of remedies scientifically administered.
The habit of submitting themselves to the old doctors is still strong among
them ... (Department of the Interior,1889:234).

To remedy these perceived problems, attendance at Indian schools was made
compulsory and the Bureau of Indian Affairs Police was charged with rounding up truant
children. Families that did not cooperate had their rations cut. In these boarding
schools, Cheyenne children were forbidden to speak the Cheyenne language, required
to cut their hair and wear western clothes, and segregated from their families. In
addition, the Sun Dance and other native ceremonies were prohibited. (Feeney,1986:3-
7).

Farming and ranching operations were encouraged on the reservation. In 1899,
Indian Inspector James McLaughlin noted that:
numerous white settlers told me that they employed the Cheyenne Indians
in their harvest fields in preference to the white laborer, but apart from this
work for neighboring whites they have had very little opportunity ... other
than the cultivation of small garden patches, which, without irrigation in
that arid region, seldom amount to anything (Department of the Interior,
1899:7).

James McLaughlin mentioned that the irrigation of small tracts of bottom lands
along the Rosebud, Muddy and Lame Deer Creek valleys could be done at
comparatively small expense.
The cost of taking out ditches along the Tongue River would be much
greater ... yet the greater quantity of land susceptible of being brought
under irrigation along the west side of Tongue River might justify the
outlay; but this can be done by individual Indians as they advance and
recognize the benefits they would derive from the same (As quoted
McLaughlin in Dept. of the Interior, 1899:8).

While Northern Cheyenne farming and ranching activities were restricted to the
reservation, land elsewhere in the Tongue River valley was being settled almost
exclusively by whites.
“Efforts by whites to establish ranches and to develop available resources have
been mirrored by similar attempts on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation”
(Newell, 1980b:67). In 1903, the Northern Cheyenne received 1,000 cows and 40 bulls,
and in 1907 received another 1000 head of cattle as a result of earlier congressional
appropriations (Weist, 1977:161). By 1909, Indian Superintendent J. R. Eddy reported
that stock raising was the “natural business” for the Indians of the Northern Cheyenne
Indian Reservation, by which name the Tongue River Reservation came to be known.
Eddy stated that:
During the year a shipment of four year old steers was made for the
Indians running stock on the reservation and it developed that the
shipment included the heaviest range steers shipped to Chicago during
the year, and that the prices paid were practically the highest offered
during the season (Eddy in Weist, 1977:161).

By 1912, Northern Cheyenne ranchers owned a total of 12,000 head of cattle and
15,000 horses. (Feeney, 1986: 3-8). According to Joe Little Coyote, the Cheyenne
“found this to be a culturally appropriate way of making a livelihood which was
compatible with living off the land as they had always done in the past as fishermen,
farmers, hunters of small game and natural food gatherers, and hunters of the buffalo in
the Great Lakes and the Plains regions of North America. “
The Bureau of Indian Affairs then began a program to reduce the size of the
Northern Cheyenne horse herds and place the Cheyenne cattle herds under communal
ownership. This policy led to the destruction of the Cheyenne ranching economy. By
1929, the Cheyenne had only 3,000 horses. As a result of BIA mismanagement, the
communal cattle herd declined to 4,200 by 1924 and was then sold or slaughtered to
provide government rations. The Bureau then leased the best grazing land on the
Reservation to white ranchers. (Feeney, 1986:3-8).

Drought years began in 1917. The drought of 1919 encompassed the eastern
two-thirds of the state. With the drought came other problems, such as grasshoppers,
fires and high winds. In the Tongue River region, the years 1919 to 1920 saw a
shortage of water for irrigation purposes along the river. (Malone and Roeder, 1976;
Malone et al., 1991; Lamphere, 1935). For example, by 1920, the Cheyenne irrigation
ditch at Birney, originally built in 1910, had been abandoned and 500 acres of promising
irrigation lands had been ruined by alkali seepage. (Weist, 1977:164). A general
economic depression followed the drought, accompanied by declining wheat and cattle
prices. This economic climate affected Indian as well as white farmers and ranchers.
Another drought cycle began in 1929, accompanied by economic depression.
Although Cheyennes were never to bear arms again after being subdued, it is
noteworthy that many Cheyennes fought and died for the United States in the great
wars of the 20th century.

According to Joe Little Coyote:
The Federal government in 1918 came to the chiefs of the Tribe
requesting them to allow their people to serve in the United States Armed
Services. This was symbolically accepted by the Chiefs kissing the
American flag at a ceremony that was held near the hill where Head Chief
(who was about 28 years old), and his friend Young Mule (who was 13
years old and a student at one of the Christian Mission schools.) had
charged down the hill to meet their deaths rather than be dealt with by the
white man’s justice system. Their families being desperate for food, they
had killed a beef and upon discovery by one of the white men who called
them ‘dogs,’ Head Chief shot him. Upon learning that the agency police
were coming after them, they elected to fight the soldiers stationed at the
Lame Deer Agency. This incident happened at the east forks four miles
east of Lame Deer in September of 1890. In any event, on a per capita
percentage basis, more Cheyenne people than any other ethnic group in
the United States have served in the wars the United States has been
involved in since World War I. A number of Cheyenne have lost their lives
in these wars, which is a matter of record with the United States
government.

Joe Little Coyote summarizes this early period of Reservation history in powerful
language:
After surviving outright extermination and being placed into confinement
status on the Tongue River Reservation in southeastern Montana
Territory, the Christian Missionaries with the cooperation and financial
support of the Bureau of Indian Affairs undertook behavioral modification
programs and religious indoctrination programs for the purpose of
civilizing the Northern Cheyenne people through a process of western
education and Christianization which was designed to wipe out their way
of life, to take their remaining lands away from them and to assimilate
them into the mainstream of white American society. With these cultural
genocidal programs the native language of the Northern Cheyenne was
prohibited and the way these programs were administered subjected the
children to harsh physical punishment for speaking it in school. The
children were forced to attend Christian Mission and government boarding
schools -- otherwise their parents were taken by the agency police to the
government agency for sanction, e.g., they did not receive their food
rations or had to do hard labor. Our religious ceremonies were outlawed
by the BIA at the insistence of Christian Missionaries, our Cheyenne
language was prohibited and we received severe punishment for speaking
it in the schools our children were forced to go to. The children were
forced to go through a type of education that frustrated their abilities to
learn at our best levels of achievement in that, as defenseless children,
they were mercilessly subjected to harsh, inhumane, cultural-genocidal
practices in the intentional psychic destruction of their identity as a
Cheyenne people.

The damage inflicted by these genocidal practices thrust the children into
a profound state of uncertainty as to just who or what they were. The
consequent despairing effects of this needless violence against the
Cheyenne people, coupled with their continuing, desperate, impoverished
conditions, are still being experienced in higher than normal rates of selfdestructive
behavior on the Reservation, when compared to the dominant
society of America today.

Many of these sad facts are well known due to the personal experiences
of a large number of contemporary Cheyennes having gone through the
Christian Missionary and government boarding school experience, still
bearing the emotional trauma and scars of being torn from the love and
care of their families, being publicly ridiculed and humiliated for speaking
our native language, made to feel embarrassed of their old people and our
heritage, and silently having to take beatings that created fearful and
submissive children. There was a favorite saying among these purveyors
of western civilization: kill the Indian and save the child for God and
Country.

This so-called civilizing process had a profound harmful impact on the
humanity of the Northern Cheyenne people, and the trauma resulting from
this has been carried over into these modern times. This trauma must be
addressed through some healing process that reorients us to knowing that
we are Cheyenne (because no matter what we do we can’t be anything
else than what we are) and understanding our world and our place in it,
i.e., the Cheyenne Way is to re-center ourselves and thus make keener
sense of our lives (Dr. Frank Rowland, 2001). In spite of what happened
to us, we find the spirit of who we are as a people still intact. Now that
there is some developing recognition of our “allodial rights to existence as
an indigenous people in our homelands,” [and] being a resilient people our
spirit will ultimately serve to provide the driving force in finding a way to
survive today and into the new millennium. (Little Coyote, 2001:6-8).
When the federal government in cooperation with the Christian
Missionaries prohibited the Cheyenne religion. Those who practiced their
ceremonials were reported to the authorities. They were taken to the
government agency and sanctioned to do hard labor in subzero weather.
When some of the old medicine people were caught doctoring they were
physically whipped with horse quirts and beaten by the agency police,
sustaining injuries some never recovered from (according to old agency
records that were not completely destroyed in a fire sometime in the latter
1950s. BIA, pre-1950). The agency police would rope their sweat lodges
and ceremonial tipis and drag them apart.

In addition, the Cheyenne people were subjected to methods of mass
punishment. When the old Medicine people were caught performing their
prayer ceremonies the whole family also had to suffer the consequences
of having their food rations withheld, and were relegated to the end of the
line in other benevolent dispensations (designed for behavior modification)
bestowed upon them by the government agents. As a result, the conduct
of their ceremonies had to go “underground” and were performed out in
the hills, in secret. The Missionaries preached that the religious
ceremonial ways of the Cheyenne were unclean and of the devil. This
was used to influence government policy in the prohibition of their sacred
ways.

Today, this fear of retaliation is still present to a great extent in the psyche
of many contemporary Cheyenne, and to some extent this fear continues
to be reflected when the Cheyenne conduct their ceremonies. As a result,
there is a lot of confusion and misinformation about the traditional
medicine ways, and many of the present Medicine people who were
properly educated and trained in these ways continue to be subjected to
much undue criticism. Somehow, this has to be corrected if we are to
have true religious freedom of expression in the practice of our sacred
ceremonial ways.

In spite of the terrible things that happened to them, the Cheyenne people
themselves are beginning to find that the spirit of who they are as a people
is still intact. Now that there is some developing recognition of their rights
to an integral existence as an indigenous people in their homelands, being
an adaptable and a resilient people, the Cheyenne cultural spirit will
ultimately serve to provide the driving force in finding a way to survive
today and into the new millennium.

On September 8, 2002, Kevin Gover, the Assistant Secretary of Indian
Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior, on behalf of the Bureau of
Indian Affairs, at the ceremony acknowledging the 175th Anniversary of
the establishment of the BIA, issued a formal apology to the American
Indian for its historical role in the genocidal acts perpetrated against them,
and in accepting this legacy of racism and inhumanity, it also accepted the
moral responsibility of putting things right, and vowed that the BIA would
never allow this to happen again. The Cheyenne people will wait and see
if these promises will actually be kept.

E. Later Reservation History.
Although Congress adopted the General Allotment Act in 1887, 39 years passed
before Congress adopted an allotment plan for the Northern Cheyenne Reservation
which assigned a 160 acre parcel to each enrolled tribal member, 44 Stat. 690 (1926).
Actual allotment did not commence until 1932 and Congress terminated the allotment
policy two years later with the enactment of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934
(IRA). As a result, virtually all of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, both allotted and
unallotted lands, remains held by the United States in trust for the Tribe or Indian
allottees. (Chestnut, 1978; 4-5).

In 1936, the Northern Cheyenne enacted a Constitution which was approved by
the Secretary of the Interior under the terms of the IRA. The Constitution established an
elected Tribal Council as the governing body of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe as well as
a Tribal Court. (Feeney, 1986: 3-9).

In 1954, a paved road was completed through the Reservation and electricity
was installed reducing the Reservation’s isolation. The Reservation economy remained
impoverished, relying primarily on ranching and the subsidies from the Federal
government. Land claims litigation against the United States brought in a $3.8 million
settlement during the 1960s which was distributed to tribal membership and used for
Tribal economic development and education programs. (Feeney, 1986: 3-9).

According to Joe Little Coyote:
Beginning with the allotment policies in 1926, and the termination policies
of the 1950s, the federal government undertook policies to break up the
reservation lands in an attempt to get individual allottees to sell their lands
into fee status and to terminate the federal status of American Indian
Tribes. Fortunately, in the latter 1950s, the John Wooden Legs
Administration, instituted a Land Acquisition Program which had the effect
of holding the Tribal Land Base together. Otherwise the reservation lands
would have been broken up to compromise the sovereign integrity of the
Northern Cheyenne Tribe. And, even though these policies were
repudiated with the self-determination policies of the 1970s (Pub.L. 93-
638), beginning with the Allen Rowland Administration in the latter 1960s,
the Tribe has had to fight costly modern day legal wars to protect its
reservation homelands from the continuing commercial encroachments by
energy-related corporate instrumentalities of the United States.
F. History of Coal Development on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
The substantial coal resources of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation have long
been recognized. A 1928 Senate report on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation found
that:

The entire [Northern Cheyenne] Reservation is underlaid with a thick vein
of coal. There are frequent outcroppings. This coal seems to be a cross
between lignite and bituminous coal and is of fairly high quality. . . The
Coal on the [Northern Cheyenne] Reservation cannot be developed
commercially at this time, owing to lack of rail facilities. There is no doubt,
however, that some time the coal will prove a valuable asset. [U.S.
Senate, 1928: 12848 in Chestnut, 1978].

The Northern Cheyenne Tribe was also aware of the valuable coal resources
beneath the Reservation. In 1925, the Tribe petitioned Congress to allot the
Reservation’s agricultural lands to individual Tribal members but asked Congress to
“reserve all mineral, timber and coal lands for the benefit of the Northern Cheyenne
Tribe, said tribe to have absolute control of the same.” See Northern Cheyenne Tribe v.
Hollowbreast, 425 U.S. 649 (1976).

In the 1926 Northern Cheyenne Allotment Act, Congress provided that timber,
coal and other minerals would be reserved for the Tribe’s benefit and could be leased
by the Secretary of the Interior with the Tribe’s consent. However, Congress provided
that coal, oil and gas and other mineral underlying allotments would become the
property of the respective allottees or their heirs after 50 years.

In 1965, the Tribe first received expressions of interest from mining companies in
the Reservation’s coal reserves. In 1966, the Tribe asked BIA officials to draft the
necessary documents for a public sale of Reservation coal leases. The BIA prepared a
form of mining permit to be offered for bid by adapting an official form previously in use
under Interior Department regulations. The official form provided for an exclusive
prospecting permit, with an option to lease only a portion for the acreage covered by the
permit. However, on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, the option language was
substantially expanded to give the permittees an option to lease the entire acreage.
The terms and conditions of the coal lease options were established at the time of the
offering of the permit when the Tribe and the BIA were uninformed as to the nature and
value of the coal reserves covered by the leases. The primary financial terms of the
lease options turned out to be far below fair market value. (Chestnut, 1978:11-12).
The first coal sale took place in 1966. Only one bid was received resulting in the
issuance of a prospecting permit to the Peabody Coal Company with mining lease
options covering 94,000 acres of Reservation land. Additional lease sales took place in
1969 and 1971, resulting in mining lease options being issued for another 260,000
acres of Reservation land. Thus, by 1971 lease option were held by mining companies
to virtually the entire unallotted portion of the Reservation. (Chestnut, 1978:12).
At the about same time, the Tribe began to fear that individual Tribal members
would attempt to lease allotted lands for coal development and lobbied Congress for
legislation that would clarify that ownership of the Reservation subsurface belonged to
the Tribe. In 1968, at the request of the Tribe, Congress terminated the grant of mineral
rights to the allottees and reserved the mineral rights on the Reservation “in perpetuity
for the benefit of the Tribe.” However, the termination was expressly conditioned upon
a prior judicial determination that the allottees had not been granted vested rights to the
mineral deposits by the 1926 Act. In 1976, the United States Supreme Court held that
the allottees had no such vested rights and the Tribe formally regained control of all of
the mineral rights underlying the Reservation. Northern Cheyenne Tribe v.
Hollowbreast, 425 U.S. 649 (1976).

In 1972, the Tribe received an unsolicited offer from the Consolidated Coal
Company to lease 70,000 additional acres of Reservation land and rights to mine at
least one billion tons of coal. The company wanted to construct four coal gasification
plants on the Reservation. In exchange for these rights, Consol offered to pay the Tribe
royalties and bonuses substantially higher than those provided in the lease sales
offered by the BIA. In addition, the company offered an up-front donation of $1.5 million
for construction of a new medical facility for the Reservation. (Feeney,1986:2-10).
2 The discussion in this section is adapted from S. Chestnut, The Fighting Cheyenne (2000).

Due to the substantially enhanced financial terms, Tribal leaders began to
suspect that the previous lease agreements were inadequate. In addition, they began
to realize that the scale of planned coal development was much larger than they had
anticipated. The Tribe hired legal counsel to review the lease documents and
numerous violations of Federal regulations were found. (Feeney, 1986: 2-10). In
particular, these regulations set an acreage limitation of 2,560 acres on leases and on
permits incorporating options to lease. The actual lease options exercised under the
prospecting permits were far larger and ranged from 15,300 to 71,550 acres. In
addition, the BIA had failed to conduct any kind of environmental impact analysis before
issuing the leases. (Chestnut, 1978).

In 1973, the Tribal Council unanimously decided to petition the Secretary of the
Interior to cancel the lease agreements. In 1974, the Secretary issued a decision which
suspended coal development on the Reservation until environmental impact studies
were completed and the Tribe’s consent to the expanded lease acreages was obtained.
This decision effectively blocked development although it did not formally terminate the
leases. (Chestnut, 1978). In 1980 Congress enacted legislation establishing a
framework for either mutually agreeing to cancellation of the leases, or failing such
agreement, automatic cancellation. Through this legislation, cancellation agreements
were made with several large coal companies and other smaller leases were cancelled
automatically. (Feeney, 1986:2-11).

***** Joe Little Coyote summarizes the Tribe’s attitude toward coal development as
follows:

The Tribe has been under tremendous pressure to develop its vast
fossilized energy resources to address its impoverished conditions. In
spite of this, the Tribe has chosen not to exploit these resources due to
the uncertainties of potential impacts to the environmental and cultural
integrity of its homelands and its people. As an alternative it has chosen a
developmental direction of a land-based sustainable renewable energy
resource development, with primary focus on solar, wind and bio-mass to
energy conversion resources.


G. The Northern Cheyenne Response to Off-Reservation Coal
Development.
Beginning in the 1970s, a consortium consisting of Montana Power Company
and several major Washington and Oregon utilities, launched a plan to build two 750
MW coal-fired powerplants at Colstrip. The Tribe became concerned that, because of
prevailing wind patterns, air pollution from these massive plants would pollute the
Reservation airshed. Under prevailing legal standards, the powerplant was not obliged
to minimize such pollution.

In an unprecedented move, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe took action which
changed the legal standard. The Tribe decided to become the first unit of government
in the Nation – Federal, state, local or tribal – to voluntarily raise the air quality standard
within its territory to the most pristine standard under law. Specifically, the Tribal
Council moved to raise the Reservation air quality standard to the highest permitted by
law – Class I – a standard which theretofore applied only to National Parks and
Wilderness Areas. This Class I re-designation was legally challenged by the Colstrip
utilities and others. These challenges were rejected by the United States Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals.

This strategy enabled the Tribe to force the Colstrip utilities to negotiate with the
Tribe on a variety of issues. That negotiation was successful – the most stringent air
pollution control technology was installed, a company-funded program for Tribal
monitoring of Reservation air quality was established, a major employment preference
program for Tribal members was established at the powerplants, a company-funded
four-year college scholarship program for Tribal members was established, and modest
financial assistance was provided by the companies.

In 1982, Secretary of the Interior James Watt held the largest Federal coal lease
sale in the Nation’s history. He offered for lease by public auction massive amounts of
Federal coal in the Powder River Coal Region of Southeast Montana and North Central
Wyoming. The tracts offered in Montana encircled the Northern Cheyenne Reservation
to the north, east and south.

In a serious breach of his trust responsibilities, the Secretary formulated the sale
in violation of his obligations under the Federal Minerals Leasing Act, the regulations
controlling the Federal Coal Leasing Program, and the National Environmental Policy
Act and its implementing regulations. Before the sale, the Tribe brought these concerns
to the attention of the Secretary and to companies known to be interested in bidding at
the sale. However, the Secretary and the companies disparaged and refused to
address the Tribe’s concerns.

The Tribe was therefore left with only one option – litigation. The Tribe
commenced suit, seeking a declaratory judgment and injunction. It asked for a
declaration that the Tribe’s claims of breach of trust and statutory and regulatory
violations were valid and for an order voiding all leases issued in the sale. This included
leases which would support new mines in the Tongue River Valley, immediately east of
the Reservation, and smaller leases which would merely extend existing mining
operations at Colstrip and Decker.

The Tribe prevailed on all of its claims. Federal District Court Judge James
Battin entered a declaratory judgment vindicating all Tribal claims and declaring all
issued leases void. Perhaps the most enduring benefit of that decision was a
declaration that, in fashioning Federal coal development in areas adjoining Indian
reservations, the Secretary has special trust responsibilities to identify and mitigate
adverse impacts on affected tribes.

In post-decision proceedings, Judge Battin permitted the Colstrip leases to be
mined during the pendency of an appeal by the United States. However, the Tribe
appealed that post-decision adjustment and prevailed. On remand to Judge Battin for
further proceedings, all leases for new production tracts were again terminated and a
settlement was reached with Western Energy, the holder of the mine-extension leases
at Colstrip.

In the settlement with Western Energy, the company agreed to a special program
for enhancing employment opportunities for Tribal members in all Colstrip operations,
an enhanced college scholarship program for Tribal members, and $1,000,000 in
impact funding to the Tribe. In addition, as prevailing party in the litigation, the Tribe
sought and obtained a very substantial award of all attorneys fees and expert witness
fees and costs incurred in the case. In recognition of the Tribe’s success on the merits
in the case, Judge Battin issued an award which fully covered all of the Tribe’s fees and
costs throughout the nine years of litigation at both the trial and appellate levels.
Among its principal purposes, the 1982 Powder River Coal Sale was intended to
launch major new projects to mine Federal coal in the Tongue River Valley. As
described above, this goal was not achieved because of Tribal legal intervention. At the
same time, however, another major new coal mining project – the Montco Mine – was
being planned in the Tongue River Valley on private and State coal.
The Montco Mine would lie across the Reservation’s eastern boundary, the
Tongue River. Because private and State coal were involved, the Federal role was
minimal; the State of Montana was the major player. The regulatory key to the Montco
Mine project was its mining permit, issued by the State and rubber-stamped by Federal
authorities.

Because the Tribe’s resources are limited and litigation is expensive, for a
number of years, the Tribe did not actively oppose issuance of the Montco mining
permit, while others (Northern Plains Resource Council and Native Action) sought to
block issuance and renewals of the permit. Those efforts were unsuccessful.
In 1996, the Tribe joined the fray, focusing (jointly with Northern Plains Resource
Council and Native Action) on a proposed extension of the Montco mining permit.
Taking a lead role in administrative proceedings on the proposed extension, the Tribe,
in cooperation with its allies, contended that the mining permit could not lawfully be
extended under the applicable state permitting statute. These efforts persuaded the
Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation to deny the extension.
Montco immediately brought suit in State District Court and prevailed.

The Tribe and its allies appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, with the Tribe
again taking the lead role. In a case of first impression in the Nation, the Tribe and its
allies prevailed. The Montana Supreme Court agreed completely with their position,
holding that the Montco project could not lawfully obtain an extension of its mining
permit and that the mining permit was therefore terminated. Montco has not applied for
a new mining permit and its future is doubtful. If Montco should apply for a new mining
permit in the future, before the State could act it would have to prepare an entirely new
environmental impact statement addressing the concerns of the Northern Cheyenne.

H. Northern Cheyenne Culture Today.
The early reservation policies of the federal government were mistaken and
disastrous. Among other failures, Indian cultures did not as a whole disappear, as
policy makers presumed and planned, and tried their best to hasten. Some particular
Indian cultures did perish, often through the actual demise of all or most of their
members, but a great many more did not. Thus, by and large, Indian culture (as
opposed to Euroamerican culture) did not in fact die out as policy makers presumed and
planned. In particular, the following section on contemporary Northern Cheyenne
culture makes the persistence of Native culture quite clear as regards the Northern
Cheyenne and, as we just noted, it therefore remains central to any consideration of
contemporary socio-economics on the Reservation.

Indian children ripped from their homes and put in boarding schools did not
become "just like everyone else." Outlawing Indian religions did not destroy traditional
belief and experience of the spiritual. The famous strategy of the well-meaning liberal
reformers of US Indian policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
summed up in the phrase, "kill the Indian, save the man," did not work because the
"man" was the Indian and vice versa.

Culture went far "deeper" than the Euroamerican mind of that era could imagine.
Further, the policies implemented to "kill the Indian" were in fact killing actual people,
and subjecting those who survived to inhumane and intolerable conditions. As Joe Little
Coyote explains in this concluding section, Northern Cheyenne culture although still
dealing with the legacy of the past never-the-less remains vital today:
The Cheyenne people still have to contend with the exploitive institutional
vestiges of a colonial system that is inherently discriminatory to them. The
Cheyenne people are becoming fully aware that these paternalistic
colonial relationships debase the humanity of both the colonized and the
colonizer, and must be broken to clear the way in the rebuilding a selfsufficient
independent nation. The vestiges of the Missionary schools
continue to push a hidden assimilation agenda that prepares the
Cheyenne youth to leave the reservation to go out into the mainstream
American society. Although the Cheyenne really have nothing against
this, they feel that their children ought to be also prepared to enter back
into own tribal society. The vestiges of these continuing cultural genocidal
practices serve only to hinder the self-determination of the Northern
Cheyenne Tribe in meeting its own developmental needs.

The Northern Cheyenne people did not realize that the white man in taking
over this country was driven by strange ideas of Manifest Destiny that
were very destructive to all American Indian Tribes. For the Northern
Cheyenne this has resulted in disequilibrium with their cosmological
outlook based on these earth-lands. Given the opportunity, only they can
put things back in balance by their own enlightened self-determined
initiatives in their present on-going cultural adaptation processes.

The present impoverished conditions of the Northern Cheyenne can be
likened to a defeated nation in a post-war development situation in
attempting to rebuild a nation in the context of the American Economy, yet
bringing the cultural stone strengths of their past with them into the
present. Its culture is still intact and well-meaning people and their
institutions don’t need to keep trying to frustrate it and/or replace it with
European cultural-based religious philosophies. They still live with the
earth-lands that created their own cultural philosophies of who they are as
a people indigenous to the North American Continent.

Although the educational institutions founded by the Christian Missionaries have
been forced to be more humanistic in the education and handling of Cheyenne children,
in more sophisticated and deceptive ways they continue to push and agenda that is in
many ways antithetical to Cheyenne cultural beliefs. To the extent they’ve used the
Cheyenne culture in the education of these children, it is done in such a way that
continues to send a message to the Cheyenne children that the culture of the Cheyenne
people is of no real significance. Consequently, many Cheyenne children do not know
anything of real substance about their culture, history and contributions to America.
They are made to feel like the Cheyenne people don’t really count for anything of real
importance.


As Joe Little Coyote further explains:
Today, even though many Cheyenne people have to some degree
adopted the many different persuasions of the Christian faith, it is done in
such a way that it is added to their own traditional beliefs, and not as a
replacement of their own traditional sacred ways. Traditional Cheyenne
people have always been open to almost any other belief if it is presented
to them as being sacred and beneficial; the white missionaries never
understood this. That is why Cheyenne people will pray with anyone
willing to pray with them, regardless of religious persuasion. The only
ones who have a problem with this are the representatives of the various
Christian churches that apply man made doctrines requiring a complete
replacement of Cheyenne beliefs.

Today, the Northern Cheyenne people still carry on their traditional sacred
ways. Annually, they hold tribal-level renewal ceremonies. In addition,
individual ceremonies of fasting (vision quests), piercing (rawhide-pulling
ceremonies), and other ceremonies are held during the ceremonial
season which starts around the time the Beaver Star Formation (Cygnus)
appears in the southeastern direction in the early spring. They begin with
purification ceremonies in which their medicine bundles and ceremonial
instruments are purified through a sweat lodge ceremony. In response to
individuals pledging to go through ceremonies, after accepting their
requests for help, preparations are made by the societal institutions in
deciding where and when such ceremonies are to be held.

Every effort is made to hold these ceremonies in secluded areas of the
reservation. The ceremonies are heavily dependent upon water sources:
rivers, streams and springs. These water sources are used in a
ceremonial way for washing off the sacred earth paints used in these
ceremonies. Offerings of prayer cloths and tobacco are made at a
number of these springs which are held to be sacred. They also use this
water for their sweat lodge ceremonies, for cooking and other domestic
uses during such ceremonies. Given off-Reservation restrictions, which
encompass a number of their traditional use areas, some efforts are
underway to secure rights to continue using such places for their
ceremonies, e.g., Bear Butte and other State and Federal lands. The
American Religious Freedom Act to some extent provides for this, but
arrangements still need to be made with these jurisdictions in the
development of policies acceptable to the Northern Cheyenne.
Although the ceremonies of the Northern Cheyenne people have to some
extent adapted to the societal constructs of an ordered American society
(e.g., holding ceremonies to take into account a person’s employment
schedules), the traditional substance and focus of their beliefs have not
changed in maintaining their identity as the Cheyenne people. Ceremonial
people have altered the times in which ceremonies are held so as to
accommodate their need to make a livelihood in today’s economy.
Today, many Cheyenne also continue to go to the traditional use areas
and sacred sites on the United States Forest Service lands (e.g., the
Custer National Forest just east of the reservation in the Tongue River
Region) to hold some of their ceremonies. Although the Tribe and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs maintain lists of these areas that are sacred to the
Cheyenne, they are not to be distributed by anyone and are not to be
made public, and may be divulged only on a need-to-know basis to
authorities responsible for managing such areas. And, although some of
the ceremonial people know of other areas lying on private lands off the
reservation in the Otter Creek and Birney areas, they often refrain from
going to these areas to hold their ceremonies because of the hostility of
some of the landowners in these areas. The burial sites of the ancestors
of the Cheyenne people that lived in these areas are considered part of
their sacred belongings and should not be disturbed by anyone. If they
are disturbed, there is recognition among the Cheyenne people that only
qualified ceremonial people can appropriately provide for the required care
and handling of these matters. The earth lodges, a number of which are
in the area of Otter Creek, are very important sources for health and
revelation.

The ceremonial, cultural and burial sites are considered sacred belongings
of the Cheyenne people and are not to be disturbed by anyone, because
they are part of an intimate relationship the Cheyenne have with
Grandmother Earth, similar to the nurturing care relationship between a
child and its mother. These burial sites contain the spiritual essences of
the sacred life cycle of birth, death and rebirth, i.e., as provided in the
creation of life with a physical and spirit form from Grandmother earth and
the breath of life of the Creator Maheo, their physical form returning back
to the earth and their spirit journeying back from whence it came. There is
the belief that to disturb these essences can have terrible consequences
that circumvents the process of the cycle of life, and a person’s spirit can
wander about the earth not able to make it back from whence it came. In
any event, it is not the civilized thing to do in going about disturbing the
graves of anyone, Native American or otherwise.

Among the present life of the people in their homelands, the young people are
discovering that the sacred ways of their ancestors have meaning and purpose for
today’s times and conditions. They are finding that these sacred ways are the source of
their identity as a people, and that they also have healing value for restoring balance
and harmony with their cultural based humanity. Presently, at the Chief Dull Knife
College, Cheyenne language restoration programs are being undertaken. And, coupled
with education that prepares the young to enter back into their own Tribal society, it is
believed that this healing process will finally allow for the Cheyenne people to become
all that they can be, individually and collectively, in today’s times. The only obstacle that
has to be overcome to clear the way to the development of a self-sustaining socioeconomic
livelihood is the conditioned dependency mentality. Around the early 1970s,
after over the next ten years, the Sundance ceremony was revived and it has been held
regularly ever since. At that time there were probably only about three people that had
sweat lodges on the Reservation. Today, you will find at least forty families that have
sweat lodges, and it is not unusual to find at least six sweat lodge ceremonies going on
every evening of the week in the Reservation districts. Traditional prayer ceremonials
are being held every weekend of the year. And, beginning with the ceremonial season
in the early spring and lasting all summer long, many of the people and their families are
going out into the hills, on and off the Reservation, to hold individual ceremonies. The
culture of the Northern Cheyenne is still very much alive today and every effort if being
made to sustain it far into the future.

In conclusion, although the Northern Cheyenne have aboriginal and allodial title
to their ancestral homelands in the Tongue River region, they had to go through terrible
sufferings of outright extermination and cultural genocide to regain their homelands and
in addition, they paid for these homelands through off-sets from their land claim
settlement in 1964. At present the land-based culture of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe
is transitioning through an adaptation process to a new self-sufficient and independent
livelihood that will maintain the environmental and cultural integrity of its Reservation
homelands. This newly developing livelihood ***** will be based on the ***** sustainable
renewable energy resources of its own

TRADITIONAL BELIEFS AND RESOURCES
FROM DEAVER AND TALLBULL REPORT, BLM 2001

WATER
CEREMONIAL SITES
GRAVES, BURIALS AND CEMETERIES
THE TONGUE RIVER VALLEY
CONCLUSIONS

FROM
http://www.mt.blm.gov/mcfo/cbm/eis/NCheyenneNarrativeReport/Chap7.pdf.

Water.

Springs, rivers, swamps and ground water are living beings with spirits.
According to the 2001 Northern Cheyenne Reservation Survey on Traditional Economy
and Subsistence, over 97% of the people believe that springs have spiritual value.
Furthermore, over 90% recognize that water is very important to their social, economic
and spiritual way of life. “The conceptual meaning of water to us would be the physical
manifestation of the essence of life, of life itself, the fabric of life.” (Little Coyote,
1/8/02). The Sacred Buffalo Hat “came to us out of the waters” [of the Great Lakes
Region]. (Little Coyote, 1/8/02).
The Northern Cheyenne communicate with these spirits. The ongoing traditional
cultural importance of these water locations can be seen in the respect shown to these
locations and in the offerings made at these locations. Routine archaeological survey
on the reservation always takes into account water sources relative to the survey
boundaries. A good contemporary example of this is the current widening of U.S. 212
east of Lame Deer. A survey documented the ongoing use of three springs for
traditional cultural purposes and design changes were made to avoid affecting these
properties/areas.
The Northern Cheyenne Natural Resources Department is conducting a survey
of springs on the reservation. This work will include not only the physical characteristics
of these springs but also their ongoing traditional cultural uses and the medicinal plants
that are often associated with springs (Rollofson, 1/8/02, Appendix F).
Water is also associated with the turtle. The turtle is good to eat and is always
associated with ceremonies. Some of the sweat lodges are patterned after the turtle
and its longevity. These sweats are made for long life (Little Coyote, 1/6/02).
The traditional water drum is still used by the members of the Native American
Church. “When you take those drums apart after ceremonial use, the breath of life
comes out of them.” (Little Coyote, 1/6/02). Water drums must be taken apart after
every ceremony. The water must be disposed of in a ritually specific fashion. (Little
Coyote, 1/6/02).
Swamps are filled with many spirits and may be dangerous due to the
accumulation of power at these localities. The Northern Cheyenne recognize the
spiritual qualities of ground water also. There are special prayers for digging wells.
Ground water represents the quiet nature of the earth. It should not be disturbed.


Graves, Burials and Cemeteries.

There are a minimum of 65 known locations where people have been buried on
reservation lands. Many of these locations are the final resting-place of several
individuals. All graves are accorded respect by the Northern Cheyenne. None should
be disturbed. People visit graves to pray and make offerings. Traditionally, the
Northern Cheyenne view death as a process rather than an event. Death marks the
2 This is the first compilation of the cultural resource data for the Northern Cheyenne reservation. It brings
together information from numerous limited distribution technical reports. Since this information is difficult
to access and is not available in any single source, all of reviewed technical reports are listed in Chapter 8
even though they are not directly cited in the text. This will allow future work in this area to start from the
2002 baseline.
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separation of the spirit from the body but the spirit/the person remains a part of the
Northern Cheyenne Community. (Strauss, 1978). Consequently, the respect shown to
graves is part of the respect shown to spiritual beings.


Ceremonial Sites.

Forty-eight cultural resources have been recorded which have ceremonial
functions. The recorded ceremonial sites include vision questing/fasting sites, sweat
lodges, memorials such the Head Chief/Young Mule Fight Site and a stone memorial to
a CCC worker who was killed while working on a reservation project. Other ceremonial
sites are locations (trees, springs, rock art, rivers, etc.) where offerings were/are made,
Medicine Bundle opening locations, a Medicine Wheel, Sundance Lodges, Piercing
Trees, Mennonite and Catholic churches and missions, Peyote Meeting locations and
Ghost Dance locations. The diversity of ceremonial sites reflects the complex
theological history of the Northern Cheyenne.
Preferred localities for fasts are high and isolated, cliffs, hills or buttes. Physical
features associated with the Cheyenne fasting sites are the preparatory sweat lodges,
fasting beds—low rock structures, usually open to the east, and/or stripped poles with
an associated buffalo skull, rock art and medicine wheels. According to John Stands-
In-Timber, many men who went out to fast for power would draw pictographs of their
visions—the Sioux Chief Crazy Horse made one on Reno Creek after the Custer Battle.
(Stands-In-Timber and Liberty, 1967:104). The usual practice was/is for men to go out
alone to fast. However, group fasts have been reported. Both the Crow and the
Cheyenne interpret the Bighorn Medicine Wheel as resulting from group fasts. (Deaver
,1982a, 1982b; Stands-In-Timber and Liberty, 1967; Medicine Crow, n.d.).
On the Northern Cheyenne reservation...there is a large site about 10 feet
in diameter and about 3 feet high where it has been related that seven
Cheyenne men fasted simultaneously. This multiple fasting practice
seems to suggest that the famed Medicine Wheel on the Big Horn
Mountains...was perhaps originally structured as a mass fasting
place...(Medicine Crow, n.d.).
The results of a successful fast for the Cheyenne include the accumulation and
continuing use of the personal medicine bundle.
Unrecorded ceremonial sites (for example, umbilical cord trees and medicine
bundle locations) probably far out number the 48 formally recorded ceremonial sites.
These sites are private and accorded respect. Respect includes not talking about them
to non-participants in the ceremonies. Further, many of these sites were used during
periods when traditional ceremonies were suppressed by the U.S. government.
Consequently, people are extremely reticent to share such information with non-
Cheyenne.


Cultural Resources of the Tongue River Valley.

The Northern Cheyenne recognize the spiritual nature of water. (Deaver,
1988:29-30). Rivers have spiritual qualities that become associated with the people
who live around them. All surface waters are alive, ever moving, and are life giving.
Three kinds of spirits live in springs. Swamps are filled with many spirits and may be
dangerous due to the accumulation of power at these localities. Ground water
represents the quiet nature of the earth and should not be disturbed.
There is a spiritual and cultural tie between the Northern Cheyenne and the
Tongue River. (Deaver and Tallbull, 1988:9-10). Offerings of cloth and tobacco are
made to the Tongue River. Important ceremonial events, such as fasts, sweats and the
Sun Dance, Sacred Hat and Ghost Dance ceremonies, have been performed in the
Tongue River valley. (Stands In Timber and Liberty, 1972; Marquis, 1978; Murray,
1974; NCPO, 1981a). Ceremonial locales have spirits who remain in place and must
be treated with respect. (Deaver and Tallbull, 1991:8).
In 1990, when the Tribe was considering test well locations in Section 24 T5S,
R42 east, Birney Community members and the Culture Committee expressed concerns
about damage to the spiritual qualities of the area. In this area, the cottonwood grove
along the Tongue River floodplain was used as a camp from at least the 1800s until
1930. Religious ceremonies, including the annual renewal of the medicine bundles
took place at this camp. (Keller, 1990d:1)
An issue raised by George Elkshoulder, and previously by Bill Tallbull, is the
concern that exploration for methane gas may be in opposition with general religious
principles that call for respect of the land. More importantly the exploitation may be in
direct conflict with direction received in an Arrow Ceremony to avoid coal development
on the Reservation. Because the methane gas is associated with coal seams, any
drilling through these seams to extract or even test the gas could be considered a
violation of this direction. (Keller, 1990d:2-3).
The people of Birney Village, one of the most traditional settlements on the
reservation, acknowledge a close relationship with the Tongue River. They pray to the
east and fast in the hills overlooking the Tongue River. Birney Village residents use the
river for watering horses, watering gardens and washing hides. Basic wild food plants
are dependent on this water source. Medicinal and ceremonial plants are collected
along the banks of the river. (Deaver and Tallbull, 1991:9-10).
Since the Tongue River valley has been home to the Northern Cheyenne since
at least early historic times, the people have developed a relationship with the river and
the valley in terms of everyday activities, as well as in a spiritual context.
7-27
“Grandmothers ensure that babies born away from the reservation will know their home
by hanging part of the child’s afterbirth from a tree near the river.” (Deaver and Tallbull,
1988).
The Northern Cheyenne value the Tongue River valley because of the
vegetation and wildlife it sustains. The wild plants and animals of the Tongue River
region continue to contribute to Northern Cheyenne subsistence. About 57% of Birney
residents and 84% of Ashland residents supplement their income by hunting, fishing,
and gathering wild plants and herbs. (NCPO, 1981b:91). These subsistence sources
remain important today. (Little Coyote, 2001). Some of the edible plants collected
along the Tongue River include chokecherries, currants, ground plums, mushrooms,
prickly pear, rose hips, sage, scurfpea, snowberries, sunflowers, wild mint, and wild
turnips. Supplemental food sources in the Tongue River valley include antelope, deer,
elk, rabbit, duck, goose, grouse, pheasant, catfish and northern pike. Income from
selling the pelts of badger, beaver, coyote and river otter is also important to the
economic base of Northern Cheyenne living along the Tongue River. (NCPO,
1981a:13).
Plants of the Tongue River region are also valued by the Northern Cheyenne for
their medicinal properties. Some of the plants currently used by the Northern
Cheyenne for medicinal purposes include big sage, chokecherry, common sage,
curlycup gumweed, dandelion, globe mallow, golden aster, goldenrod, juniper, lichen,
manroot, milkvetch, phlox, plantain, rabbitbrush, ragweed, scurfpea, sunflower, sweet
medicine, white sage, wild mint, wild rose, willow, yarrow and yucca. Big Medicine, a
rare and important medicinal root, is collected along the east side of the river, as well as
along Poker Jim Creek. (Strange Owl, 1986 in Deaver and Tallbull, 1988; Deaver and
Tallbull, 1991; Stands In Timber and Liberty, 1972:109). These plants can be
extremely powerful and must be used with caution. Each plant has special rules
concerning its procurement and use. This is specialized knowledge available only to
those who have the right to use these plants. (Deaver and Tallbull, 1988).
The plants and animals of the Tongue River valley have spiritual significance for
the Northern Cheyenne. For example, Moore (1979:2) noted that the Northern
Cheyenne consider cottonwood trees sacred because their roots extend into the Deep
Earth from the Earth-Surface Dome. The valley is also home to eagles, go-betweens
between the people of the valley and the Blue-Sky space. (Tallbull and Deaver,
1991:10).
The Tongue River region also retains a critical cultural significance for the
Northern Cheyenne as a sanctuary and homeland. During the late 1800s, the Northern
Cheyenne came very close to extinction. The Tongue River area was their last refuge
and is still recognized as the place where they were able to survive and come together
as a people. The reservation is viewed as a last sanctuary where the Northern
Cheyenne could retain their unique cultural identity. Consequently, protecting the
environmental surroundings of the Reservation is viewed not only as a spiritual
7-28
responsibility but also as being necessary to ensure the survival of the Northern
Cheyenne as a people. (Deaver and Tallbull, 1991:9).
Not only do the Northern Cheyenne have an ongoing spiritual relationship with
the plants and animals growing along the Tongue River and the river itself; they
recognize spirit persons who inhabit the valley. These spirits must be treated with
respect. They can take different forms (human, animal and light) when they appear to
people. Some spirits are benevolent while others are dangerous.
Particular spirits live in springs in the Tongue River valley (Deaver and Tallbull,
1988):
... certain springs have certain spirits in them. Like you go to Birney and
see all the offerings hanging there. Their life depends on that water and
they give thanks by putting the things there. Each spring has
watermakers. ... There’s one ... back up the coulee there’s a spring. A
small spring. You can hear him, he calls you. (Bill Tallbull, 10/30/92).
Mr. Tallbull describes another spirit, named Icky-wicky [sic], who lives in a hill near the
Tongue River south of the reservation near the Tongue River Reservoir.
There’s some sites that people never bothered because they are too
powerful, spiritually powerful. Stay away from them. Not too far from
there, for instance, there is a hill. A red-shaled hill. In there is a spirit that
used to walk among the camps along Tongue River. He had face on both
sides. He had two faces. He had a necklace of ears of people. ... Okay,
then he came down to the camps of Cheyenne. He really didn’t bother
the Cheyennes much. They never bothered him. But the ancient warriors
said that he came and took the ears of his people. Then one young man
went down along the creek and got [box elder mushrooms]. And he put
strings through there and wore that thing. And it looked like ears of
people, so he went and talked to him. When that spirit saw the necklace,
the same necklace, that he was wearing, they started talking to each
other. The man said, how would I return these if they ask for them? The
man [spirit] told him. Well, he wasn’t supposed to tell. But when he saw
that this guy had the ... mushroom, box elder mushroom, then he divulged
that information. So, he went home. He told the medicine men, I know
how Icky-wicky get the return of those ears. And so they got, they
returned them in with some ceremony they had to go through. (Bill
Tallbull, 10/30/92).
Mr. Tallbull went on to explain contemporary experiences with Icky-wicky:
That spirit is still there because it has taken Cheyenne. It took old man
Strange Owl and his wife when he went to Sheridan, the Sheridan rodeo,
on a wagon. Then when my people came the next day, these two had
7-29
moved on. But when my people moved in there, they looked to that hill
there and they saw that old man and his wife standing there. Their spirits
were already taken. They were already in that mountain, and they saw
them. Then later on, a few days when he got to Sheridan rodeo, both of
them passed away suddenly. His grandson, he has a grandson, that had
a car wreck not very far from there. ... So it probably ... his grandson is
there too. So these people that are compatible with that ... we are going
to that direction where the spirit hid. He said when he comes through
camp he doesn’t bother anybody because he knows that we have a way
of ... we have a way of taking care of him. All we have to do is give him
something. So they knew how to treat that. (Bill Tallbull, 10/30/92).
The Tongue River Valley also contains spirit trails by which the spirits visit each other.
(Tallbull and Deaver, 1991:11-12).
Again, this discussion of sites important to the Northern Cheyenne is not
exhaustive. It is only as complete as the survey and consultation work has been up to
January 2002. Future work in the Tongue River Valley will, no doubt, document other
sites with traditional cultural significance to the Northern Cheyenne as well as
continuing relationships between the valley and the Cheyenne.


Conclusion

The Northern Cheyenne reservation, where the Tribe and its individual members
control 99% of the landbase, is the last refuge where the Northern Cheyenne can retain
and continue to live their unique culture. The Northern Cheyenne have a sacred trust to
protect their remaining homeland. To this end the carefully husband the land and its
resources.
The land and the associated resources are not simple inanimate properties to
the Northern Cheyenne. Rather they are living beings, relations of the Northern
Cheyenne, who deserve respect, nurturing and careful consideration. Consequently,
for the Cheyenne it is appropriate to take only what you need and safeguard the rest.
Taking everything you can is both a shortsighted foolish waste of resources and an
immoral act.
Chapter 2 recounts Northern Cheyenne history and explains why every piece of
Northern Cheyenne correspondence and report title page includes the statement, “Little
Wolf and Morning Star-Out of defeat and exile they led us back to Montana and won
out Cheyenne homeland that we will keep forever.” The continuing health of the
reservation land and resources is crucial to the continuing survival of the Northern
Cheyenne.
In this Chapter, the Tribe’s cultural resources are described. Here, the Northern
Cheyenne unique view of the world is made apparent from the beginning. The very
definition of cultural resources includes water, plants, animals, Great Birds, fish,
7-30
minerals as well as the more routinely described archaeologically defined sites. The
spiritual characteristics of natural resources are important to the Northern Cheyenne
because they give meaning to the landscape in which the live. Past peoples’ imprint on
the landscape of southeastern Montana is important to the Cheyenne because it is a
pervasive reminder of their connection to their homeland.
Since places, localities, landforms, and more narrowly defined archaeological
sites are seen as having both physical and spiritual characteristics, evaluation of
cultural resources, on or off-reservation, must consider both types of characteristics to
address Northern Cheyenne cultural concerns. Consequently, compliance with section
106 of NHPA requires systematic and consistent consultation as well as routine cultural
resources surveys. This is applicable to off-Reservation as well as on-Reservation
cultural resource work. As documented in this chapter, the Northern Cheyenne
maintain a continuing relationship with the natural resources beyond their current
political boundaries. Further, they have important historical and ceremonial ties to
archaeological sites through out the region for the proposed energy development.
As noted throughout this chapter, graves are sacrosanct. They should never be
disturbed, i.e., always shown respect. NAGPRA is the relevant legal statute for the
treatment of graves when they are on trust lands on the reservation or federal lands
when off-reservation.