Pawnee capture of the Cheyenne Sacred Arrows

Background

The Pawnee, living in earth-lodge villages in present-day Nebraska and northern Kansas since the 16th century, were divided into the Skidi Pawnee on the Loup River and the South Bands (Chawi, Kitkahahki, Pitahawirata) south of the Platte River. They cultivated corn and other crops but also undertook long communal bison hunts in summer and winter, during which they lived in skin tents and tipis. The Cheyenne crossed the Missouri River from eastern North Dakota in the late 18th century, settling south of the Cannonball River.

By the early 19th century, they camped north of the North Platte, and around 1825 some bands moved south toward the Platte and Arkansas rivers, drawn by reports of wild horses. This brought them into proximity with Pawnee hunting grounds. The two tribes had long been enemies, fighting over horses and raiding each other on the plains without either side gaining a lasting advantage. According to Cheyenne tradition, the Sacred Arrows were given to the ancestral hero Sweet Medicine by supernatural beings inside a cave at Bear Butte in the Black Hills.

The bundle contained two red Buffalo Arrows for good hunting and two black Man Arrows for war. When properly ceremonially tied to a lance and carried against an enemy, the arrows promised victory, as demonstrated in the destruction of a Crow camp at Tongue River in 1820. The renewal of the arrows is one of the most sacred Cheyenne ceremonies, held annually and also in response to tragedies.

Prelude

A year before the battle, a Cheyenne war party raiding the Pawnee near the lower Platte was discovered and all its members killed. This mirrored an earlier incident a decade prior, when thirty Cheyenne Bowstring warriors were killed by the Crow, prompting a vow of vengeance. In the summer of 1830, the entire Cheyenne tribe, joined by allied Lakota and Arapaho, moved down the Platte River. The keeper of the Sacred Arrows, White Thunder, and his wife led the procession.

Scouts sent ahead found no trace of the Pawnee until the group encountered four messengers from a scout party that had been killed by the Pawnee. After a day and night march, the Cheyenne and their allies reached a position near the Pawnee camp early in the morning. Warriors prepared for battle while women and children gathered in a circle overlooking the battlefield. The Pawnee camp was hidden behind a ridge.

The Cheyenne warriors formed two wings: one led by the Sacred Arrows, the other by a man wearing the sacred Buffalo Hat. These two medicines were believed to protect those behind them and render the enemy helpless. As the first Pawnee bison hunters left camp, they nearly stumbled into the Cheyenne line, and the battle began before White Thunder could perform the required ceremony. He hastily handed the arrow bundle to a medicine man named Bull, who tied it to his lance and rode after the warriors.

Battle

The fighting was intense. Cheyenne warrior Bull, despite warnings, attempted to count coup on this old man. The Pawnee avoided Bull's lance thrust, seized it, and pulled it from Bull's grasp. Seeing the hide-wrapped medicine bundle tied to the lance, the Pawnee shouted that the spear must be wonderful.

Pawnee warriors rushed forward, and Chief Big Eagle secured the lance before the Cheyenne could recapture it. Big Eagle wore the Wonderful Leggings of Pahukatawa, part of a tribal war bundle that made him fearless, and he was dressed in a red shirt with a government medal on his chest, riding a small spotted horse. The Cheyenne later remembered him as Spotted Horse or Big Spotted Horse.

The Cheyenne claimed they killed the old Pawnee on the battlefield, while the Pawnee said he died the following summer during a Cheyenne attack on an almost empty village. With the Sacred Arrows lost and morale shattered, the Cheyenne could not withstand a renewed Pawnee charge and retreated. Casualties on either side were not recorded. The Cheyenne withdrew up the Platte River, mourning the loss of the arrows, which George Bent later described as the greatest disaster the Cheyenne ever suffered.

Aftermath

The Cheyenne had their best arrow makers create four surrogate Sacred Arrows, but they also sought to recover the originals. On one occasion, they invited Big Eagle and the Pawnee to their camp, promising many horses for the four arrows. Big Eagle, suspecting treachery, brought only one arrow wrapped in a bundle, and a Cheyenne rode away with it in an unguarded moment. Another account states that in 1835, three Cheyenne—White Thunder, Old Bark, and Doll Man—traveled to a Skidi village, were received in Big Eagle's lodge, and were given one Buffalo Arrow, despite gifts of over a hundred horses.

The Lakota attacked a Pawnee village and retrieved a single Man Arrow, which they returned to the Cheyenne in exchange for one hundred horses; this event is dated either to the winter of 1843–1844 or to 1837. With two surrogate arrows now surplus, the Cheyenne held a ceremony and left them in a bundle in a crevice of the Black Hills, near where Sweet Medicine received the originals. The bundle remained there for a long time, visited occasionally by Cheyenne travelers, before eventually disappearing. Further efforts to recover the remaining original arrows in the 1890s and 1930s failed, and the loss remained a source of bitterness for generations.