“Cheyenne is not what the Cheyenne call themselves — it is a Lakota word meaning 'speakers of a foreign language.' Their own name is Tsitsistas.”
The Cheyenne call themselves Tsitsistas — 'the people' or 'the like-hearted ones.' The name Cheyenne is Lakota in origin: Šahíyena, which scholars interpret as 'speakers of a foreign language' or 'those who speak unintelligibly,' from the Lakota šahíya (foreign-speaking) and na (people). The Lakota applied this name to their allies and neighbors, and European Americans adopted the Lakota version, not the people's own name.
The Cheyenne migrated from the Great Lakes region to the Great Plains around 1700, adapting rapidly to mounted buffalo culture. By the early 19th century they had become one of the most formidable equestrian nations on the Plains, allied with the Arapaho and at various times with the Lakota Sioux. Their political structure divided into Dog Soldiers — an elite warrior society — and a Council of Forty-Four peace chiefs.
The Sand Creek Massacre of November 29, 1864, in which Colorado militia under Colonel John Chivington killed approximately 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho — mostly women, children, and elderly — at their encampment on Sand Creek, prompted years of intensified warfare. The military response to the massacre ultimately culminated in the forced placement of the Cheyenne on reservations in Montana and Oklahoma.
Cheyenne, Wyoming — the state capital — was founded in 1867 as a railroad construction camp and named by General Grenville Dodge for the people whose territory it occupied. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma continue as sovereign nations. Tsitsistas is still the name the people prefer for themselves.
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Today
Almost every Native American nation in the United States is known by a name someone else gave them. Cheyenne, Sioux, Comanche, Apache — these are external labels that stuck when European Americans wrote them into treaties, newspapers, and maps. The nations' own names for themselves are different in almost every case.
The Northern Cheyenne Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are both officially recognized. Tsitsistas is the proper name. Cheyenne is the name on the Wyoming license plate. Both names are in use. The distinction matters to the people who carry the name.
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