![]() The outlawing of Porcupine Bear, his relatives, and his followers led to the transformation of the Dog Soldiers from a warrior society into a separate division of the tribe. He and his warriors were reportedly the first to strike the enemy, considered an honor, but due to their status as outlaws, their feat was not celebrated. Although outlawed by the main body of the Cheyenne, Porcupine Bear led the Dog Soldiers into battle against the Kiowa and Comanche at Wolf Creek. It took over leading warfare against the Kiowa. Wolf reformed the Bowstring Society, which had been nearly annihilated in the fight with the Kiowa. ![]() The other chiefs forbade them from leading war against the Kiowa. The Dog Soldiers were disgraced by Porcupine Bear's act. Porcupine Bear was expelled from the Dog Soldiers, and he and his relatives had to camp apart from the rest of the Cheyenne. A society's member who committed such a crime was expelled and outlawed. īy the rules governing military societies, a man who murdered or accidentally killed another member of his tribe had blood on his hands and was prohibited from joining a society. He forced Around to finish off Little Creek. Little Creek got on top of Around and held up a knife, ready to stab Around at that point, Porcupine Bear, aroused by Around's calls for help, tore the knife away from Little Creek, and stabbed him with it several times. Two of his cousins, Little Creek and Around, became caught up in a drunken fight. He reached a Northern Cheyenne camp along the South Platte River just after it had traded for liquor from American Fur Company at Fort Laramie. He carried it to the various Cheyenne and Arapaho camps in order to gain support for revenge against the Kiowa. Porcupine Bear, chief of the Dog Soldiers, took up the war pipe of the Cheyenne. In 1837, while raiding the Kiowa horse herds along the North Fork of the Red River, a party of 48 Cheyenne Bowstring Men were discovered and killed by Kiowa and Comanche warriors. Prior to the peace council held at Bent's Fort in 1840, the Algonquian-speaking Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho were allied against their traditional enemies, the Comanche, Kiowa, and Plains Apache, who belonged to different language families and cultures. One tradition recalls that in battle, they would "pin" themselves to a "chosen" piece of ground, through an unusually long breech-clout "rear-apron", by use of one of three "Sacred Arrows" that they traditionally carried into battle.Įmergence as a separate band Porcupine Bear Historically, Dog Soldiers have been regarded as both highly aggressive and effective combatants. While chiefs are responsible for overall governance of individual bands and the tribe as a whole, the headmen of warrior societies are charged with maintaining discipline within the tribe, overseeing tribal hunts and ceremonies, and providing military leadership. The Council of Forty-Four is the council of chiefs, comprising four chiefs from each of the ten Cheyenne bands, plus four principal or "Old Man" chiefs, known to have had previously served with distinction on the council. The two central institutions of traditional Cheyenne tribal governance are the Council of Forty-Four and the military societies, the Dog Soldiers. Main articles: Council of Forty-four and Cheyenne military societies The twenty-first century has seen a revival of the Dog Soldiers society in such areas as the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana and among the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma. The surviving Cheyenne societies became much smaller and more secretive in their operations. In 1869 United States Army forces killed most of the band in the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado Territory. Its members often opposed policies of peace chiefs such as Black Kettle. It effectively became a separate band, occupying territory between the Northern and Southern Cheyenne. ![]() Īfter nearly half the Southern Cheyenne died in the cholera epidemic of 1849, many of the remaining Masikota band joined the Dog Soldiers. Beginning in the late 1830s, this society evolved into a separate, militaristic band that played a dominant role in Cheyenne resistance to the westward expansion of the United States in the area of present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming, where the Cheyenne had settled in the early nineteenth century. The Dog Soldiers or Dog Men ( Cheyenne: Hotamétaneo'o) are historically one of six Cheyenne military societies. A modern Dog Soldier headdress at a pow wow For other uses, see Dog Soldiers (disambiguation). This article is about the Cheyenne warrior society.
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