Belonging to the Algonquian linguistic family, the western-most member, the Arapaho were a trading tribe in the Great Plains. They were called "Cloud Men" by the Cheyenne and "Blue Cloud Men" by the Sioux. The Kiowa called them "Ahyato". It is believed that they migrated from the Red River of the North in the 17th or 18th century. Part of the tribe, the Northern Arapaho settled in present day Wyoming near the headwaters of the Platte River. The Southern Arapaho were to settle along the Arkansas River of Colorado.
Before coming to the plains, the Arapaho lived in villages and raised abundant corn crops near the headwaters of the Mississippi River. When they migrated they "lost the corn". They became nomadic buffalo hunters living in teepees because it was easy to erect and disassemble. They regulated their habits, tribal customs, and their religious rites to conform to the way of the buffalo.
After they acquired the horse, their lifestyle changed. They could travel further, carry more, and hunt buffalo more efficiently. Their lifestyle was typical of all the plains tribes following the great buffalo herds. The whole buffalo was used, the meat and fat for food, horn and bone for tools and utensils, the tanned hides for bedding, clothing, and shelter. They used rawhide for shields, buckets, and bindings. The men hunted and the women cleaned and cured the skins. Successful hunts provided not only food for everyone, it became a time for feasting, gaming and storytelling.
Tribes were made up of smaller bands and age societies. In the bands, membership was mostly determined by birth, but one could move into another band voluntarily. In the age societies, each society got its members from a different age group. Each band and society held different ceremonies and performed different functions in the tribe. They even had their own symbols, rituals and leaders. Together these groups led the warfare and maintained order in the camp.
Once a year, usually in June or July, the tribe came together including all the bands and societies. It was an eight-day festival during the long summer days before the annual hunt. This was known as the Sun Dance and was the greatest and most important ceremony to the Plains Indians. It offered a chance for the chiefs to meet together and time for the rituals of renewal. Each band raised their teepees in a circle and always with the opening facing east. The Sun Dance Lodge was constructed in the center of the camp, around the Sun Dance Pole (a tree felled for the occasion). The priests, the warriors and the pledger (sponsor of the dance because of a promise made) spent many days in preparation. When all was ready, the dancing began, to prescribed songs, with specific patterns of dance movement, even specific styles for body painting. Offerings and prayers were a part of the special gathering. The ceremony ended with rituals of purification. The Arapaho and the Cheyenne, their friends from the days of the Red River, were in their prime when they occupied the plains.
At the beginning when the white man arrived in the new world, there was kindness and cooperation between the cultures. But, as the years passed, and more and more settlers pushed west, more land was needed. The United States claimed the territory where the Indians had their villages, their hunting grounds, and even their burial ground to accommodate the ever expanding population. It made treaties with the Indians only to break them right after they were made.
Both the Cheyenne and the Arapaho were nomadic hunters on the Great Plains, but with the gold rush of 1858, Governor John Evans of Colorado decided to open up the hunting grounds to white development. Skirmishes between the tribes and military ensued. One of the final battles (or should I say massacres) was to be fought at Sand Creek on November 29, 1864.
After being assigned to the reservation by two different treaties, an 1869 presidential proclamation assigned the tribes to a new reservation along the North Canadian and the Washita Rivers in present day Oklahoma. Their numbers became reduced and downtrodden.
Source:
COLORADO, A HISTORY OF THE CENTENNIAL STATE; by Carl
Abbot, Stephen J. Leonard, and David McComb; Third Ed. pub.
University Press of Colorado 1994.
AMERICAN INDIAN CONCISE ENCYCLOPEDIA; by Bruce Grant,
1893; 1994 ed. pub. by Wing Books
"The Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho" at http://www.cheyenneandarapaho.org/
"NATIVE AMERICANS-The End of an Era" at http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/dorijoe999/awake.html/
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Southern Arapaho
Updated 01/16/2004
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