Tsehesenestsestotse

The Cheyenne were an Algonquian-speaking people of the Great Plains, formed of two closely related tribes, the Tsitsistas and the Suhtai, who spoke slightly different dialects. In the seventeenth century they lived between the Mississippi and Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota, gathering wild rice and hunting bison.

The Assiniboine and later the Lakota pushed them west, and they reached the Missouri River in 1676. There they lived beside the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara and adopted much of their way of life. About 1730 they introduced the horse to the Lakota. By 1776 the Lakota had taken much of their land near the Black Hills; around 1811 the Cheyenne allied with the Arapaho and spread over the central Plains.