About the Arapaho Indians

The Arapaho Indians were a Native American tribe based mostly in the Great Plains. The tribe was comprised of excellent horsemen and considered premier bison hunters. Like many Plains tribes, the Arapaho relied heavily on bison for food, clothing and shelter. Buffalo hides were used to create the massive teepees that the tribe used as shelter, and dried bison, sometimes called pemican, was a dietary staple. As European settlers moved west, the tribe was pushed farther west toward the Rockies. When the buffalo herds were destroyed from over-hunting and random slaughter, the tribe nearly starved to death.

Time Frame

The Arapaho moved westward to the Great Plains in the early 18th century as European settlements began to spring up along the East Coast. Prior to that time, the tribe had been largely agrarian and lived in small farming communities in what would become Minnesota. On the Great Plains, the tribe lived primarily in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska along the Platte and Arkansas rivers. They remained in the region until just after the Civil War, when a series of treaties sent the northern tribes to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and the southern tribes to reservations in Oklahoma.

Misconceptions

The Arapaho, like many of the Plains tribes, were depicted as fierce warriors and savages, despite the fact that they were a generally peace-loving tribe. Even the name Arapaho is a corrupted word in Paiute meaning "trader." The Arapaho were fearsome hunters, but generally had few problems with other peoples so long as they respected the land and the animals. The greatest conflicts with the Arapaho came as a result of the mass slaughter of bison. When the buffalo were killed and left to rot , the Arapaho who relied on the buffalo for every aspect of their existence fought back.

People also misunderstand the Arapaho Sun Dance, one of the most sacred of the tribe's religious ceremonies. Those participating in the Sun Dance would fast and then use barbed hooks through their chests to suspend themselves from a central pole and hang there in hopes of receiving a vision of wisdom from their supreme God. Those who could endure the trial without exhibiting pain were considered worthy of a vision.

History

Based on the etymology of the language, it is believed that the Arapaho were one of many tribes which descended from the Algonquin tribes of New York. The Sioux and Cheyenne are other Great plains tribes with similar origins. Though they were part of a larger tribe, most of the Arapaho lived in smaller hunting bands that followed the rivers and the herds. They gathered some berries and other wild-growing food stuffs, but were not farmers once they moved to the Great Plains.

For generations the Arapaho had alliances with the Sioux, the Cheyenne and Kiowa tribes, but considered the Ute, Shoshone and Pawnee enemies. When they were forced to the reservation at Wind River, they shared the space with traditional enemies, the Shoshone. The two tribes continue to share the 2.2 million acre reservation today, with about two-thirds of the reservation population being Arapaho and one-third Shoshone.

Significance

Many of the images that non Native Americans associate with "Indian" tribes come from images of the Arapaho. Though we know that only the tribes of the Great Plains made teepees, the historical images of teepees with colorful decoration and filled with buffalo skins come largely from the Arapaho, as do the pictures of Sun Dance participants. In later years, the Arapaho would be among the instigators of the Ghost Dance religion, a sort of conglomerate religion of the Native American nations that gained popularity on the reservations in the 1880s. The religion combined a sort of ancestral and spirit worship with a great reverence for the land and provided a resurgence in native cultures at a time when the policy was to the Christianize and civilize the native tribes.

Identification

The Southern Arapaho tribe closely identified itself with the Cheyenne tribe and the two worked together to defeat General Custer at Little Big Horn. The treaty between the two tribes and the military victory in South Dakota led to the two tribes being sent to the Oklahoma reservations together. Since the 1880s, the Arapaho have proudly served in the American Armed Forces in several wars and some soldiers even wore the Arapaho tribal flag during World War II.