Northern Cheyenne Return to Montana

A Thousand Miles North:

How the Northern Cheyenne Got Back to Montana

The Country and the War

In 1876 the Northern Cheyenne, who call themselves Tsitsistas, lived between the Bighorn Mountains and the Tongue River, and the United States had put in writing that the country was theirs. The Fort Laramie treaty of 1868 designated the land north of the North Platte River and east of the Bighorn summits as unceded Indian territory ("Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline"). That promise did not survive the discovery of gold in the Black Hills. In 1875 Indian agents were told to order off-reservation Indians, among them many Northern Cheyenne, to report to agencies. When few complied, the matter passed to the army ("Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline").

Cheyenne warriors fought at the Rosebud and the Little Bighorn in June 1876. That November, troops under Colonel Ranald Mackenzie overran their main camp in the Bighorn country, and the survivors spent two weeks in the frozen mountains on little more than horse meat (Robinson). In 1877 they surrendered in two groups. Two Moons and White Bull led theirs to the Tongue River Cantonment, later Fort Keogh, near present Miles City. Little Wolf and Morning Star, whom the army called Dull Knife, led theirs to the Red Cloud Agency in northwestern Nebraska (Robinson).

Darlington

General George Crook at first told Little Wolf and Morning Star that their people could stay at Red Cloud. Washington then ordered them south to join the Southern Cheyenne in Indian Territory. Both chiefs opposed the move. Standing Elk, an influential leader who had surrendered with them, agreed to it and so committed 937 people (Robinson; Rose). Robinson reports that Crook and Mackenzie said the Northern Cheyenne could return north after a year if they disliked the place. Peter Wright records Dull Knife insisting that his band had been promised as much (142).

The column left Fort Robinson on May 28, 1877, and the army enrolled the Cheyenne at Fort Reno on August 5 (Wright 141-42). Darlington was hotter, more humid and more barren than the Powder River country, and its food supply was already thin. Measles and malaria spread through the camp and medicine ran out. Agent John D. Miles sometimes withheld rations from families that would not farm or send their children to school (Robinson). By the summer of 1878 the Northern Cheyenne were complaining that rations were scarce and poor and that medical care was inadequate (Wright 143). Between forty and fifty of them had died (Robinson; Rose). Miles refused their request to go north (Robinson).

September 1878

On September 8, Miles ordered the northern camp to move to the agency for a recount and said no rations would be issued until it did. He also asked for ten hostages, which the Cheyenne refused (Wright 144). Little Wolf had already told Miles and the commander at Fort Reno that he was leaving and wanted no blood spilled around the agency (Robinson). The next night the women drove in the pony herd and stripped the hides from the lodges. They left the poles standing and the fires burning, so the cavalry pickets watching from a distance saw nothing change (Wright 144). The army's count of the departing party was 92 men, 120 women, 69 boys and 72 girls, a total of 353 people (Wright 145).

Troops from four military departments were eventually put in the field (Monnett, Review 238). Little Wolf chose his ground. At Turkey Springs, in northern Indian Territory, the cavalry was pinned down on September 13 and lost three men (Robinson; Wright 147-48). On September 27, at Punished Woman's Fork in Kansas, a planned ambush failed when a young man fired too soon. Lieutenant Colonel William Lewis was mortally wounded and died the next day (Robinson; Wright 150-51).

Then came the part of the story that Cheyenne accounts do not hide. Along the Sappa and Beaver creeks in northwestern Kansas, young men of the party killed an estimated forty settlers and assaulted women and girls (Robinson; Wright 152). Little Wolf had told his warriors to avoid unnecessary killing and could not enforce it (Rose). In his old age he denounced the raids (Monnett, "Drunken Rage"). Robinson, a member of the Northern Cheyenne Nation, writes about these killings directly. Wright notes that they left Kansans with a fear of the Cheyenne that lasted for years (152).

Two Roads in the Sand Hills

The party crossed the Union Pacific tracks west of Ogallala, Nebraska, on October 4 (Wright 152-53). Somewhere in the Sand Hills the two chiefs divided it for the last time. Little Wolf took roughly 123 people to winter in the hills before going on to Montana (Robinson). Morning Star was nearly seventy and had lost a wife, two sons and a grandson since 1876. He led 149 people toward the Red Cloud Agency, hoping they could be absorbed among the Lakota. He did not know the agency had been moved into Dakota Territory (Robinson). An army patrol met his band south of present Chadron and on October 24 escorted it into Fort Robinson ("Cheyenne Breakout").

Fort Robinson

The 149 were confined in a cavalry barracks. At first they could come and go. By late December they could not. Washington insisted on their return to Oklahoma, and the post commander, Captain Henry Wessells, was under orders to press them ("Cheyenne Breakout"). Robinson reports that Wessells stopped food and firewood on January 5, 1879, and water on January 8. Morning Star's answer was consistent: "I am here on my own ground, and I will never go back" (Robinson).

The women and children had hidden dismantled rifles on their bodies, and the Cheyenne reassembled them. On the night of January 9 they shot the guards and ran west along the White River through six inches of snow (Robinson). Those who got clear were hunted for two weeks. The last stand came on January 22 in a buffalo wallow on Antelope Creek, where most of the survivors were killed or captured (Robinson; "Cheyenne Breakout"). History Nebraska counts sixty-four Cheyenne and eleven soldiers dead. The Montana Historical Society timeline says 61 of the 149 Cheyenne were killed, and John Monnett's review puts the toll at almost half ("Cheyenne Breakout"; "Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline"; Monnett, Review 238). Morning Star and part of his family got away and reached the Pine Ridge Agency, the renamed Red Cloud Agency ("Cheyenne Breakout").

Little Wolf at Fort Keogh

Little Wolf's band left the Sand Hills in the spring, followed the Black Hills north, crossed the corner of Wyoming Territory, and reached the Powder and Yellowstone confluence in Montana. There it was found by scouts working for Lieutenant William P. Clark, an officer the Cheyenne knew as White Hat. Clark persuaded Little Wolf to surrender at Fort Keogh (Robinson; Rose). Rose dates the surrender to March 25, 1879. Fort Keogh was not strange ground, since Two Moons's and White Bull's people had been there since 1877 (Robinson). General Nelson Miles asked Little Wolf's band to fight the Sioux, and Little Wolf answered that he was tired of fighting (Rose). Many of his men became army scouts. Richard Little Bear, president of Chief Dull Knife College, describes scouting as a way to keep food on the table, done under pressure (Rose).

The newspapers had followed the flight, and Robinson notes that sympathy for the Cheyenne had grown by the time Little Wolf gave up. The two leaders did not keep their positions for long. Morning Star died in 1883 (Monnett, "Drunken Rage"). On December 12, 1880, Little Wolf, drunk, shot and killed a Cheyenne man named Starving Elk at a trading post on Two Moon Creek. Fort Keogh's commander told him he was no longer chief, and he lived apart on Rosebud Creek until his death in 1904 (Monnett, "Drunken Rage"; Rose).

A Reservation by Executive Order

The land question was settled in stages, and not by treaty. In 1880, with Sioux and Cheyenne crowded at Fort Keogh, Miles let Cheyenne families settle along the Tongue River and encouraged them to homestead. By 1882 the families remaining at the fort had moved to Rosebud and Muddy creeks, where they built houses and planted crops ("Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline"). Little Bear says Miles invited them to choose the reservation's location, though the area they proposed was much larger than the one they received (Rose).

On November 26, 1884, President Chester Arthur ordered a tract of southeastern Montana withheld from sale and set apart for the Northern Cheyenne "now residing in the southern portion of Montana Territory." It ran from the eastern boundary of the Crow Reservation, the 107th meridian, to a line twelve miles east of the Rosebud River. It excluded any land that settlers had claimed and improved before October 1, 1884 (Arthur 860). Robinson reports that Morning Star's survivors at Pine Ridge, and those of the nearly 600 who had stayed at Darlington who wished to, were allowed to settle there. On March 19, 1900, President William McKinley issued a new order that carried the eastern boundary to the middle of the Tongue River's channel and named the tract the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation (McKinley 860-61). Congress ratified both orders in 1903 ("Acts of Congress"). Little Bear points out that the reservation began as an executive order and not as an act of Congress (Rose).

What Remained

The Cheyenne who came back arrived at a much smaller place than the unceded territory of 1868, and many of their relatives did not come back at all. Chief Dull Knife College was founded at Lame Deer in 1979. In 1993 the tribe repatriated the remains of twenty-six relatives from the Smithsonian Institution, seven of them members of Morning Star's band killed at Fort Robinson ("Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline"). Descendants of Little Wolf, Morning Star and those who traveled with them continue to mark the flight and the homecoming (Robinson).

A Note on Sources and Figures

The account follows the choices and losses of Cheyenne people. It relies on Northern Cheyenne authors and institutions (Robinson; the tribal histories compiled for the Montana Historical Society; Little Bear, quoted by Rose) alongside military and federal records. Where sources disagree, the discrepancy is noted here.

Some reference works give November 16 for Arthur's order. The order's text in Kappler, reproduced by the American Presidency Project, is dated November 26. Counts of those who left Darlington range from 284 (Rose) to 297 ("Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline") to roughly 350 (Robinson; Wright, who tallies 353). The 1877 removal party is 937 in Wright, Robinson and Rose, but 972 in the Montana Historical Society timeline. Little Wolf's band is given as 123 (Robinson) and 126 (Rose). Fort Robinson deaths are 61 to 64 of 149, and the eleven soldier deaths rest on History Nebraska alone. The March 25 surrender date rests on Rose alone, since Robinson and History Nebraska give only the spring or March. Morning Star's death in 1883 and Little Wolf's later years rest on Monnett's "Drunken Rage" alone, and the 1993 repatriation rests on the timeline alone.

Works Cited

Arthur, Chester A. Executive Order—Northern Cheyenne Reserve. 26 Nov. 1884. The American Presidency Project, edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, University of California, Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-northern-cheyenne-reserve-0. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026. Reprinted from Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, edited by Charles J. Kappler, Government Printing Office, 1904, p. 860.

"The Cheyenne Breakout." History Nebraska, Nebraska State Historical Society, https://history.nebraska.gov/the-cheyenne-breakout/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.

McKinley, William. Executive Order—Establishment of Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. 19 Mar. 1900. The American Presidency Project, edited by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, University of California, Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-establishment-northern-cheyenne-indian-reservation. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026. Reprinted from Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, edited by Charles J. Kappler, Government Printing Office, 1904, pp. 860-61.

Monnett, John H. "In a Drunken Rage, Chief Little Wolf Shot and Killed Another Cheyenne." HistoryNet, 15 Aug. 2017, https://historynet.com/drunken-rage-chief-little-wolf-shot-killed-another-cheyenne/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026. Originally published in Wild West, Aug. 2012.

Monnett, John H. Review of Holding Stone Hands: On the Trail of the Cheyenne Exodus, by Alan Boye. Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3, Summer 2001, pp. 238-39. DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln, https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2247. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.

"Acts of Congress: Northern Cheyenne." Montana Indian Law, State of Montana, https://indianlaw.mt.gov/fedstate/acts/cheyenne. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.

"Northern Cheyenne Reservation Timeline." Montana Tribal Histories Reservation Timelines, Northern Cheyenne Tribe, 2017. Montana Historical Society, https://mhs.mt.gov/education/IEFA/NorthernCheyenneTimeline.pdf. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.

Robinson, Gerry. "The Cheyenne Homecoming." WyoHistory.org, 25 Apr. 2020, https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/cheyenne-homecoming. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.

Rose, Christina. "Native History: Chief Little Wolf Surrenders, Establishes Reservation." ICT, 25 Mar. 2017, https://ictnews.org/archive/native-history-chief-little-wolf-surrenders-establishes-reservation/. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026. Originally published 25 Mar. 2014.

Wright, Peter M. "The Pursuit of Dull Knife from Fort Reno in 1878-1879." The Chronicles of Oklahoma, vol. 46, no. 2, Summer 1968, pp. 141-54. Gateway to Oklahoma History, Oklahoma Historical Society, https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc2124013/m2/1/high_res_d/1968-v46-n02_a03.pdf. Accessed 6 Oct. 2026.