Some Neglected Data Bearing on Cheyenne, Chippewa, and Dakota History

HILE I do not wish to minimize the historical value of tradition W when it is carefully handled, we have frequent illustrations of the extent to which uncritical reliance on it may lead astray.A case in point is the circumstances surrounding the destruction of the old Cheyenne town on Sheyenne river, North Dakota, and the time when it took place.Mooney, relying on traditions reported by Williamson, supposed that the attackers were Dakota and so expressed himself both in his paper on The Cheyenne Indians in the Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association (Vol.I, Pt. 6) and the article on that tribe in the Eandbook of American Indians (Bull.30, Bur, Am.Ethn.).Will, in an article on The Cheyenne Indians in North Dakota (Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Hislorical Association, 7; 67-78), rejects this view in favor of a Cheyenne tradition in which the hostile party is represented as Assiniboin, and Grinnell in his elaborate work on The Cheyenne Indians, their History and Way of Life, (New Haven, 1923), follows him as to his general conclusion.Speaking of the retirement of the Cheyenne southward, he says: I believe that the Cheyenne tradition of their being driven south refers to early attacks on them by the Assiniboines, perhaps in company at first with the Crees and later with the Ojibwa.That there may have been occasional individual quarrels between Cheyennes and Sioux and between Cheyennes and Mandans is possible and even likely, but I believe nothing in the nature of a general war (p.23

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• From History to Prehistory in The Northern Great Plains

  Willie Strong, W M Duncan Strong•Plains Anthropologist•1972

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• Culture Sequence in The Central Great Plains

  Waldo R Wedel•Plains Anthropologist•1972

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