Tell Them We Are Going Home: The Odyssey of the Northern Cheyennes

Tell Them We Are Going Home details the courageous journey of the Northern Cheyennes, under the leadership of Little Wolf and Dull Knife, from Indian Territory northward to their homelands in the Powder River Country. Incorporating the perspectives of the Cheyennes, the U.S. military, the Indian Bureau, and the Kansas settlers who encountered the traveling Indians, this book provides a complete account of the odyssey, along with source material never before presented in print.The conflict between the Northern Cheyennes and the military began with the destruction of Dull Knife's winter village by cavalry troops in late 1876, at the close of the Great Sioux War. The survivors among Dull Knife's people, along with other Northern Cheyenne bands, were ordered to report to Fort Reno and the Darlington Agency in Indian Territory during the summer of 1877. Monnett describes the group's difficult seventy-day march to the agency, where the northern group began to sicken shortly after their arrival. Medical supplies were slow to arrive, and the food allotments were insufficient. By the spring of 1878, many of the Northern Cheyennes found life in Indian Territory intolerable. They formally asked to be taken back to the higher, dry country of Montana. When their request was refused, a group of about three hundred men, women, and children slipped away from the Darlington Agency during the early morning hours of September 10, 1878, led by Little Wolf and Dull Knife. Immediately the army marshaled the technological resources of a modern nation against them. Monnett chronicles the Cheyennes dramatic fifteen-hundred-mile trek through Kansas, Nebraska, and portions of Wyoming and Montana, which became one of the most important episodes in American history and in Cheyenne memory. Only when their plight was brought to national attention were the Northern Cheyennes officially allowed to return to their homelands and a new reservation established there for them.

History

Monnett, John H.

Americas

Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Tell Them We Are Going Home details the courageous journey of the Northern Cheyennes, under the leadership of Little Wolf and Dull Knife, from Indian Territory northward to their homelands in the Powder River country. Incorporating the perspectives of the Cheyennes, the U.S. military, the Indian Bureau, and the Kansas settlers who encountered the traveling Indians, this book provides a complete account of the odyssey. The dramatic fifteen-hundred-mile trek of the Northern Cheyennes through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana, lasting from 1878 to 1879, would become one of the most important episodes in American history and in Cheyenne memory.

University of Oklahoma Press

The Powder River country of what is now north central Wyoming was one of the most resource-rich regions of the northern plains in the nineteenth century. As U.S. mining interests and white settlement to the north in Montana Territory increased, conflict arose between the United States and the Lakota and Cheyenne nations. On December 21, 1866, the struggle climaxed when a well-organized force of Lakota, Northern Cheyennes, and Arapahos attacked and destroyed a detachment of forty-nine infantrymen and three officers of the 18th Infantry, twenty-seven troopers of the 2nd Cavalry, and two civilians under the command of Captain William Judd Fetterman near Fort Phil Kearny. The Battle of Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed or Hundred in the Hand, as the event is still called, was the worst defeat the U.S. Army had suffered in the Great Plains, only to be exceeded by the Battle of Little Big Horn a decade later.
Because none of the soldiers lived to tell what happened, the Fetterman fight has fostered a body of myth and speculation. In this study, John H. Monnett provides a groundbreaking examination of the conflicts that ensued in the Powder River Country during the nineteenth century and clarifies events and personalities that have become distorted in the annals of Western history. Monnett examines military interests as well as the geopolitical importance of the area and takes into account the environmental history of the conflict as it relates to hunting ranges, vital wood and water resources, and access to trade avenues.

Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth

University of New Mexico Press

The Battle of Beecher Island and the Indian War of 1867-1869

During the morning hours of September 17, 1868, on a sandbar in the middle of the Republican River in eastern Colorado, a large group of Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, Araphaho, and Sioux attacked about fifty civilian scouts under the command of Major George A. Forsyth. For two days the scouts held off repeated charges before the Indian warriors departed. For nine days, the scouts lived off the meat of their horses until additional forces arrived to relieve them. Five scouts were killed and eighteen wounded during the encounter that later came to be known as the Battle of Beecher Island. Monnett's compelling study is the first to examine the Beecher Island Battle and its relationship to the overall conflict between American Indians and Euroamericans on the central plains of Colorado and Kansas during the late 1860s. Focusing on the struggle of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers warrior society to defend the lands between the Republican River valley and the Smoky Hill River valley from Euroamerican encroachment, Monnett presents original reminiscences of American Indian and Euroamerican participants. Unlike many military studies of the Indian Wars, The Battle of Beecher Island also includes in-depth examinations of the viewpoints of homesteaders and the views of western railroad interests of the late nineteenth century.

University Press of Colorado

This popular volume presents the exciting history of Colorado through the lives of thirty-two of its most noteworthy citizens, both famous and obscure, who helped to shape Colorado as we know it today. Among those featured are: Black Kettle, David Day, Anne Bassett, Lewis Price, Casimiro Barela, Josephine Roche, Jefferson Randolph "Soapy" Smith, and Enos Mills.

Colorado Profiles: Men and Women Who Shaped the Centennial State

Biographies & Memoirs

McCarthy, Michael

Community & Culture

On the morning of April 23, 1875, H Company, 6th U.S. Cavalry attacked and destroyed a Cheyenne camp located on the middle fork of Sappa Creek, a tributary of the Republican River in what is today Rawlins County, Kansas. The ensuing engagement was the last important military action of the Red River War and the last fought on the central plains between the U.S. Army and an independent band of Indians composed principally of Southern Cheyennes. 
In Massacre at Cheyenne Hole, John H. Monnett sifts through the various interpretations of the event over the years and places them into proper historical perspective. Initially, Lieutenant Austin Henely was viewed as a hero, and his H Company men were awarded eight Medals of Honor for their bravery in the skirmish. However, later intimations surfaced that the Sappa Creek fight was a massacre of the Cheyennes under Little Bull who attempted to surrender. Tales of innocent noncombatants being murdered in the destruction of the camp following the battle were common by the early twentieth century. 
Avoiding the current approach of separating the participants into clear camps of victims and victimizers, Monnett instead uses the Sappa Creek battle as a case study to understand how Americans since 1875 have perceived the Indian wars in general within the larger cultural construct. By studying the Sappa Creek Massacre and its remaining mysteries from this perspective, Monnett reveals as much about how Americans view Western history and the theme of manifest destiny as he does about what we can accurately conclude from the facts of the battle. 
Massacre at Cheyenne Hole is a welcome addition to the literature about the Indian wars and the Cheyenne Indians, and will appeal to both historians and the general reader interested in military and Native American history.

Massacre at Cheyenne Hole: Lieutenant Austin Henley and the Sappa Creek Controversy

Univ Pr of Colorado

To cast a fly on high country waters in the West is to be part of an angling tradition that stretches back over a hundred years. First published in 1988, John H. Monnett's Cutthroat and Campfire Tales brings that heritage alive with its stories of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fishing expeditions. To the nineteenth-century angler, the West's resources appeared inexhaustible -- there seemed to be as many cutthroat trout in the rivers as there were stars in the sky. Monnett shows how the error of that assumption became all too quickly apparent, and also traces how the inevitable depletion of the trout led to early stocking efforts and changing attitudes toward conservation.

Cutthroat & Campfire Tales: The Fly-Fishing Heritage of the West

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Cutthroat & campfire tales: The fly-fishing heritage of the West

PRUETT PUB.

To cast a fly on high country waters in the West is to be part of an angling tradition that stretches back over a hundred years. First published in 1988, John H. Monnett's Cutthroat and Campfire Tales brings that heritage alive with its stories of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fishing expeditions. To the nineteenth-century angler, the West's resources appeared inexhaustible -- there seemed to be as many cutthroat trout in the rivers as there were stars in the sky. Monnett shows how the error of that assumption became all too quickly apparent, and also traces how the inevitable depletion of the trout led to early stocking efforts and changing attitudes toward conservation.

Cutthroat and Campfire Tales

Sports & Outdoors

Hunting & Fishing

Pruett Pub. Co

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Monnett, John H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Monnett, John H.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Monnett, John H.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Tell Them We Are Going Home: The Odyssey of the Northern Cheyennes

Tell Them We Are Going Home: The Odyssey of the Northern Cheyennes

Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth

Where a Hundred Soldiers Were Killed: The Struggle for the Powder River Country in 1866 and the Making of the Fetterman Myth

The Battle of Beecher Island and the Indian War of 1867-1869

Colorado Profiles: Men and Women Who Shaped the Centennial State

Massacre at Cheyenne Hole: Lieutenant Austin Henley and the Sappa Creek Controversy

Cutthroat & Campfire Tales: The Fly-Fishing Heritage of the West

Cutthroat & campfire tales: The fly-fishing heritage of the West

Cutthroat and Campfire Tales