This paper examines the historical events surrounding the Dull Knife band of Northern Cheyenne, their forced relocation to Indian Territory in 1878, and their dramatic escape northward to Pine Ridge. The narrative details their reasons for surrender at Fort Robinson, their discovery of broken promises and disease in Oklahoma, and their courageous 500-mile journey through hostile territory. The paper also contextualizes U.S. federal housing policy toward Indian tribes during the New Deal era and highlights the leadership of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail in defending Lakota interests. Ultimately, it documents how tribal families endured extraordinary hardship in pursuit of freedom and autonomy.
In 1877, following Custer's defeat at the Little Big Horn, military determination to resolve what was vaguely known as "the Indian problem" intensified dramatically. Military reinforcements poured into the Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming territories with the singular objective of corralling all remaining Sioux and Cheyenne into the newly established reservation system. The government's approach was indiscriminate: it did not matter whether specific tribes had participated in the Little Big Horn conflict. The reservation system served as a "one size fits all" solution to settler expansion across the West.
As a result, in the spring of 1877, a band of approximately 900 Northern Cheyenne approached Fort Robinson, Nebraska, with the intent to surrender. History records three primary reasons for their decision. First, these people lived by hunting, and the buffalo upon which they depended had been nearly exterminated. Second, Plains Indians recognized that they could not survive sustained warfare against the U.S. military—particularly when they had to protect women, children, and elderly members while the professional soldier bore no such burden. Third, facing acute hunger, inadequate clothing, and emaciated horses, the promise of food, provisions, and peace alongside their Sioux relatives appeared to offer the best hope for their people's survival.
Two elderly and respected chiefs, Dull Knife and Lone Wolf, led their people to Fort Robinson to surrender because their children, elderly, and women could no longer endure the hardships they faced. However, they soon discovered that the promises of the white man—formalized in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868—meant very little in practice.
Despite the treaty's guarantee of a home with the Sioux, Washington issued orders that the Northern Cheyenne be shipped to Indian Territory in Oklahoma to live with the Southern Cheyenne. Only after General Crook encouraged them to travel south and assess conditions for themselves, with the promise they could return to Pine Ridge if dissatisfied, did the Northern Cheyenne consent to the move.
What they encountered in Oklahoma was starkly different from official assurances. The Northern Cheyenne found abject poverty, broken promises (such as repeated pledges of additional food that never materialized), contaminated water, and rampant disease. Disease and hunger began claiming lives immediately. When the Cheyenne pleaded to be allowed to return north, their requests were denied. Watching their numbers dwindle and fearing complete annihilation and oblivion, they resolved to leave, with or without governmental permission.
On the night of September 9, 1878—just over a year after their arrival in Oklahoma—approximately 300 Northern Cheyenne departed for the north. In his book The Dull Knifes of Pine Ridge, Joe Starita captures the magnitude of their challenge: "ahead lay more than a thousand miles of open prairie. Cowboys and ranchers, farmers and homesteaders, two railroads, a dozen forts, and thousands of soldiers stood between them and their freedom. Along the way, there would be no mountains to hide in, little wild game, few weapons and not enough horses. Some would have to walk and some were afraid."
Of the 300 who departed, approximately 60 were warriors, 30 were elderly men and boys, and the remainder were women and children. Over the following weeks, their actions testified to the courage of a people with nothing left to lose. They fought and won four major battles, traveled 500 miles in five weeks, and suffered losses of food, possessions, and much of their pony herd. Ammunition was scarce, and winter arrived early in the northern plains.
Starita writes that "Chief Dull Knife saw his weary people and he wanted to turn off course now, take them to Red Cloud and his Lakota camp near the fort on the White River. The Lakota, their relatives, would help them, he said, and the soldiers would treat them fairly, would let them stay in the north with the Red Cloud Sioux." Dull Knife believed that seeking refuge with their Lakota allies offered the safest path forward.
Little Wolf disagreed. He advocated for continuing north to the Powder River and the Big Horn Mountains of Montana, where they might find greater security in the wilderness. This strategic disagreement led to a division of the band: 149 people, mostly women, children, and elderly, chose to follow Dull Knife, while Little Wolf led the remaining Cheyenne northward toward Montana.
At the end of October, Dull Knife's group encountered troops from Fort Robinson during a blinding snowstorm. The soldiers escorted them to the fort and housed them in one of the barracks. There they received food and medical attention, and their Sioux relatives brought them clothing. For a brief moment, it appeared their ordeal might end.
On Christmas Eve, that fragile hope shattered. Word came from Washington that the Cheyenne prisoners were to be returned immediately to Indian Territory. General Crook, witnessing the conditions firsthand, protested to his superiors: "at this time, the thermometer at Fort Robinson showed a range of from zero down to nearly 40 below. The captives were without adequate clothing, and no provisions had been made."
On January 3, 1879, the post commander summoned Dull Knife and four sub-chiefs to inform them of the devastating order. They were to be taken back to the Oklahoma reservation as soon as transportation could be arranged. Dull Knife's response was unequivocal: "I am here on my own ground, and I will never go back. You may kill me here, but you cannot make me go back."
For two days, Captain Wessells, the post commander, told the Cheyenne prisoners that he had no choice but to ship them south. For two days, Dull Knife and his subordinate chiefs refused. They reminded Wessells that their children had died in Oklahoma, that their elderly had suffered and perished there. They knew that starvation and disease awaited them if they returned.
Under pressure from Washington, Wessells took drastic action. He withheld food and heat from the barracks for two days, then cut off their water supply entirely. Starita describes the heartbreaking scene: "soldiers guarding the barracks sometimes saw the windows crack open, saw the Indian hands scooping snow from the ledges so the children could have some water. Still, no one surrendered. They had decided they would not be starved into returning to a place they had left because they were starving."
On the morning of January 9, Wessells summoned the Indian leaders to his office. Three subordinate chiefs complied, but Dull Knife refused to attend. Wessells ordered the three men placed in irons and transferred to the cavalry post approximately one mile away, betting that the removal of leadership would demoralize the remaining Cheyenne. He then ordered the wives and families of the imprisoned chiefs to join them at the cavalry post.
This action left 130 Cheyenne in the barracks—angry, frightened, and convinced they faced execution. The warriors covered the windows with blankets and prepared to defend themselves. Upon arrival at Fort Robinson months earlier, they had not surrendered all their weapons. They had carefully disassembled five rifles and eleven pistols, concealing them as trinkets within women's clothing. Larger gun components had been hidden beneath the wooden floorboards of the barracks. Now these weapons were retrieved and reassembled. Floorboards were fashioned into clubs. The Cheyenne determined they would not be trapped and slaughtered—they would die fighting on the open prairie.
Just before 10:00 p.m., glass shattered in the barracks windows. Gunshots erupted. The Cheyenne poured out of the barracks and ran toward the hills beyond the fort. The warriors gathered weapons and ammunition from fallen soldiers as they fought. Women, children, and elderly fled first, while selected warriors formed a defensive line between them and the pursuing soldiers.
The human cost was immediate and terrible. One elderly man, watching his wife fall wounded, chose to kill her and then himself rather than leave her to the soldiers. Within minutes of the first shots, half of the defending warriors lay dead.
For the next two weeks, approximately 32 Cheyenne managed to evade and resist several companies of cavalry troops. The soldiers, operating from the fort's supply lines, enjoyed advantages of food and fresh clothing denied to the fleeing Cheyenne.
When additional troops and supply trains arrived, the Cheyenne were located roughly 45 miles north of Fort Robinson. They took shelter in a buffalo wallow approximately six feet deep. Four cavalry companies surrounded them and fired into the depression for about 30 minutes. Acts of Cheyenne bravery proved futile; three warriors charged oncoming soldiers wielding only knives and empty guns, and were killed immediately. Only eight women and children survived that final assault.
The casualties were devastating: 64 Cheyenne dead, including 39 men and 25 women or children. At the fort, 78 prisoners remained, many wounded severely. Seven were reported missing, including Dull Knife and members of his family, who had chosen a different escape route and hidden in a cave for ten days.
Traveling only at night and leaving no tracks, Dull Knife's group made their way eastward. Forced to eat rawhide from the soles of their moccasins to survive, they stumbled into the Red Cloud Agency at Pine Ridge after eighteen days. People broke into tears upon seeing them. Dull Knife, now nearly 70 years old and gravely ill, was scarcely recognizable. Throughout the winter and spring, he remained hidden among the Sioux while soldiers continued to search for him.
Meanwhile, Little Wolf and the other half of the Cheyenne nation found their way to Lost Chokecherry Valley in the Nebraska sandhills, where they encamped until winter's worst had passed. Making their way to the head of the Powder River, they succeeded in returning to their ancestral homeland.
At the end of March 1879, having traversed 1,000 miles of hostile territory, Little Wolf's group arrived home only to be confronted by soldiers demanding their surrender. They complied, but were granted permission to remain in the north—the only outcome they had sought from the beginning.
Later that year, having recovered somewhat, Dull Knife joined his friend Little Wolf and the surviving Cheyenne in Montana, where he died in 1883. Finally, after decades of pain, hunger, disease, and loss, the government took official action. In 1904, they set aside a tract of land in Montana as a permanent home for the Northern Cheyenne.
The United States Housing Act of 1937, one of many post-Depression New Deal programs established by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, promised to provide "safe and sanitary" dwellings for America's poor. The act authorized local governments to organize public housing agencies and provided loan funds for low-income housing projects. The federal government could guarantee these loans and make yearly payments. In 1949, Congress updated and expanded the original act, addressing the post-World War II housing shortage and renewing the federal commitment to provide safe, sanitary homes and "a decent home and suitable living environment for all American families."
Indian tribes, however, were entirely excluded from this process. This exclusion stemmed primarily from the federal government's termination policy of the 1940s and 1950s, which aimed to dissolve the government-to-government relationship with tribes and assimilate Indian people into mainstream American society. Additionally, tribes lacked the experience and influence in constitutional government needed to assert their housing rights under existing federal and state law, and they lacked the financial capacity to finance independent housing programs.
Under an unstated but pervasive "if you cannot see them, they aren't there" policy, a segment of the American population was shamefully ignored. Indian peoples, supposedly protected under the Constitution of the United States, continued to suffer in poverty and inadequate housing.
In 1866, Red Cloud orchestrated what would become the most successful war against the United States ever waged by an Indian nation. His strategic brilliance was so effective that by 1868, the U.S. government agreed to the Fort Laramie Treaty. This remarkable agreement mandated that the United States abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and guarantee the Lakota possession of the western half of present-day South Dakota, including the Black Hills, as well as much of Montana and Wyoming.
"Political resistance, treaty negotiation, and tribal diplomacy strategies"
"Family sacrifice and hidden costs of tribal struggle for freedom"
You’re 84% through this paper. Sign up to read the remaining 2 sections.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.