Hotamétaneo'o - The Dog man society or Dog soldier

 

“The Dog-Man (Dog Soldier) Society was organized after the organization
of the other societies, by a young man without influence,
but who was chosen by the great Prophet. One morning the young man
went through the entire camp and to the center of the camp circle,
announcing that he was about to form a society. No one was anxious
to join him, so he was alone all that day. The other medicine-men had
had no difficulty in establishing their societies, but this young man,
when his turn came to organize, was ridiculed, for he was not
a medicine-man, and had no influence to induce others to follow his
leadership. At evening he was sad, and he sat in the midst of the whole
camp. He prayed to the Great Prophet and the Great Medicine Man
to assist him. At sunset he began to sing a sacred song.
While he sang the people noticed that now and then the large
and small dogs throughout the camp whined and howled
and were restless. The people in their lodges fell asleep.
The man sang from sunset to midnight; then he began to wail.
The people were all sleeping in their lodges and did not hear him.
Again he sang; then he walked out to the opening of the camp-circle,
singing as he went. At the opening of the camp-circle he ceased singing
and went out. All the dogs of the whole camp followed him, both male
and female, some carrying in their mouths their puppies.
Four times he sang before he reached his destination at daybreak.
As the sun rose he and all the dogs arrived at a river bottom which was
partly timbered and level.

The man sat down by a tree that leaned toward the north.
Immediately the dogs ran from him and arranged themselves
in the form of a semi-circle about him, like the shape of the camp-circle
they had left; then they lay down to rest; as the dogs lay down,
by some mysterious power, there sprang up over the man in the center
of the circle a lodge. The lodge included the leaning tree by which
the man sat; there were three other saplings, trimmed at the base
with the boughs left at the top. The lodge was formed of the skins
of the buffalo. As soon as the lodge appeared, all the dogs rushed
towards it. As they entered the lodge they turned into human beings,
dressed like members of the Dog-Men Society. The Dog Men began
to sing, and the man listened very attentively and learned several songs
from them, their ceremony, and their dancing forms.

The camp circle and the center lodge had the appearance of a real camp
circle for three long days. The Dog Men blessed the man and promised
that he should be successful in all of his undertakings and that his people,
his society, and his band would become the greatest of all if he
carried out their instructions.” Later, the Cheyenne discovered the camp.
But “as they came into view of the wonderful camp the Dog lodge
instantly disappeared and the Dog-Men were transformed into dogs.
The medicine-men and warriors were by this time very sorry that they
had refused to join this man’s society—and the next day,
according to instructions of the Great Prophet,
he again asked the warriors to join his society,
and many hundreds of men joined it. He directed the society to imitate
the Dog Man in dress, and to sing the way the Dog-Men sang.
This is why the other warrior societies call the warriors of this society
'Dog-Men Warriors’.” So much for the fabulous origin of the organization.

 George A.Dorsey
(The Cheyenne Ceremonial Organization, 1905)

Dedicated to all Cheyenne and Arapaho sisters and brothers

The Sand Creek Massacre was an atrocity in the Indian Wars
of the United States that occurred on November 29, 1864,
when a 700-man force of Colorado Territory militia attacked
and destroyed a village of friendly Cheyenne and Arapaho
encamped in southeastern Colorado Territory, killing
and mutilating an estimated 70–163 Indians,
about two-thirds of whom were women and children.

The Sand Creek Massacre resulted in a heavy loss of life,
mostly among Cheyenne and Arapaho women and children.
Hardest hit by the massacre were the Wutapai, Black Kettle's band.
Perhaps half of the Hevhaitaniu were lost, including the chiefs
Yellow Wolf and Big Man. The Oivimana led by War Bonnet,
lost about half their number. There were heavy losses
to the Hisiometanio (Ridge Men) under White Antelope.
Chief One Eye was also killed, along with many of his band.
The Suhtai clan and the Heviqxnipahis clan under chief
Sand Hill experienced relatively few losses.
The Dog Soldiers and the Masikota, who by that time had allied,
were not present at Sand Creek.....

I saw the bodies of those lying there cut all to pieces,
worse mutilated than any I ever saw before;
the women cut all to pieces ... With knives; scalped;
their brains knocked out; children two or three months old;
all ages lying there, from sucking infants up to warriors.
By whom were they mutilated? By the United States troops!
(John S. Smith, Congressional Testimony of Mr. John S. Smith, 1865)

Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!
I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right
and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians.
(Col. John Milton Chivington, U.S. Army)

:-( :-( :-( John Chivington is in MY EYES a mass murderer

My candle burn again and my prayers going up

A`ho

~Wolfgang~

The Battle of Adobe Walls

The Battle of Adobe Walls

(Picture on top - Comanche
Medicine man Ish-Ta-Ma)

This battle between buffalo hunters
and approximately 700 Comanche, Kiowa,
and southern Cheyenne warriors resulted
in an Indian defeat, one among several during
the course of the large-scale military operation
known as the Red River War of 1874-75.
Inspired ba a recent Sun Dance and Comanche
medicine man Ish-Ta-Ma`s promise of easy victory,
the warriors sought to inflict a mortal blow
against the hated buffalo hunters who were
destroying the vast southern herds in Texas Panhandle.

The young Comanche Quannah Parker joined Ish-Ta-Ma
as nominal leaders of the raid against
the twenty-eight men and one woman residing in Adobe Walls,
a small complex of trading stores
and a saloon in present-day Hutchinson Country, Texas.



During the early dawn hours of June 27, 1874,
the Indians attacked the residents,
quickly killing two hunters who were sleeping in a wagon.
The others were alerted immediately because they had
remained awake during the night while repairing
a broken bearn in the saloon. They held off
several assaults, losing only two other defenders -
one to Indian gunfire and one to the accidental
discharge of a rifle. The siege continued for five days.
Indian casaulities mounted to several dozen,
and faith in Ish-Ta-Ma`s power faded.
On the second day of the siege, Billy Dixon
fired his fabled shot, hitting a mounted warrior
fully eight-tenths of a mile away.
Following abandonment of the Adobe Walls settlement
six weeks later, the Indians burned it to the ground.
Yet the battle had been a bitter setback for them,
and it presaged the larger defeat that would soon
follow at the hands of the army.

from M.L.Tate
(University of Nebraska at Omaha)

Tse-tsehese-staestse

Tse-tsehese-staestse is what the Cheyenne call themselves.
The word Cheyenne was believed to come
from the French word chien for dog.
The French traders called these people this because
of the famous dog soldiers of the Cheyenne nation.
This is erroneous. The now accepted etymology
of the word Cheyenne is that it is
the anglicized word Shyhela, which is Sioux.

The Cheyenne people are the most western
branch of the Algonquian people.
They originally came from the great lakes area.
There are many theories about
why the Cheyenne moved from the great lakes area.
Most of them involve competition in the area
with the Ojibwe, Ree, and Mandan.



They originally lived as sedentary farmers in northeastern Minnesota,
from which they began migrating westward in the late 1600s;
they later settled along the Cheyenne River of North Dakota.
Dislodged ca.1770, they gradually moved southwestward;
when encountered (1804) by the Lewis and Clark expedition,
they were living as nomadic buffalo-hunters
in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Religiously,
the Cheyenne were guided to the plains area by MaheÛo.
They also were sent a prophet named Sweet Medicine
who helped organize themselves, and developed a code to live by.
He gave them their first sacred item - the four sacred arrows.
It was at this point the Cheyenne became
a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Their hunting territory extended from the Platte River
to what is now eastern Montana.
A southern group also had hunting grounds
around the Arkansas River.
Another group of people known as
the Sohtaio also joined the Cheyenne.
It is said that these two groups of people
were one day fighting,
when the Cheyenne overheard the Sohtaio speak amongst themselves.
To their surprise, they could understand the people.
Peace was quickly pursued and these people
have lived with the Cheyenne ever since.

AHO

Cheyenne Warrior Woman



E’hyoph’sta of the Southern Cheyenne was born about 1826
and died in August 1915, on the Tongue River Reservation in Montana.
Of all the Plains' manly-hearted women, the most ruthless may have been
E’hyoph’sta, better known as Yellow-Haired Woman. The daughter of
Cheyenne Chief Stands in Timber and the niece of the old Bad Faced Bull.
Unlike most women warriors, she first entered battle intending to die
rather than achieve revenge for a loss. Her husband, Walking Bear,
had been killed by an accidental discharge of his own gun in 1867.

In 1868, during the Southern Plains Campaign, Major George Forsyth
led a volunteer company of fifty-one “Plainsmen” out to find and report
the locations of Indian camps so the they could be found by regular army
units and placed on reservations. E’hyoph’sta’s first battle was an attack
on this force by the Cheyenne. This took place on September 17, 1868,
on the Arickaree Fork of the Republican River in Colorado,
at a low river island later known as “Beecher’s Island”.



After surrounding the scouting party on the low island, warriors of the
Cheyenne Dog Society, (Dog Soldiers, as they were commonly known),
kept the small force under siege for eight days. E’hyoph’sta,
riding a horse her father had given her, joined in the mounted charges
against the scouts.

Four times she charged along with the swirl of warriors toward the small
group of soldiers and civilians on the island. Each time she came back
with more holes in her dress from the near misses of their bullets.
But there was no blood on it. She would not be hurt or die this day,
even though she wished for death. Her husband Walking Bear had been
killed the year before. Now, even her father understood her desire to die,
and he had provided her with the horse she rode into battle.
By the end of that autumn day in 1868, E’hyoph’sta was firmly set upon
the warrior path and on her way to becoming a renowned and respected
member of her husband’s Cheyenne military society.




E’hyoph’sta’s next battle was against the Shoshone on Beaver Creek,
a stream near the Big Horn Mountains in Montana. One account told by
a warrior named Wooden Leg places the action in 1873. Several plains
tribes had gathered for their annual autumn buffalo hunt, which were also
times for major horse raids. Members of the Cheyenne camp and the
nearby Shoshone camp were out raiding when they ran into each other
and fighting began. After one attack, the Cheyenne chased and trapped
a Shoshone war party in a deep ravine. At the end of four days the
Shoshone were either dead or captured. One captured Shoshone warrior
was about to be questioned by the Dog Soldiers when E’hyoph’sta
came up and said she would interrogate him. She raised the Shoshone’s
arm and stabbed him twice in the arm pit, killing him. She then took his
scalp. For this act and two other coups counted during the four days
of fighting, she was admitted to the Dog Soldier Warrior Society.



This information was taken from Journal of Indian Wars,
Volume 1, No. 3, article titled:”Daughters of the Lance:
Native American Women Warriors.”
By Rodney G. Thomas. For more information see:
“The Fighting Cheyenne” by George Bird Grinnell
University of Oklahoma Press, 1915.
Mr. Grinnell interviewed E’hyoph’sta in 1908 and 1912.

AHO
~U-ne-ga-wa-ya~