Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma

As their name suggests, the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma includes people of both Cheyenne and Arapaho ancestry. The Southern Cheyenne who live in Oklahoma were originally from North of the Missouri River on a large lake. They occupied a region populated by the Algonquon speaking people. It is suspected they began their tribal migrations from the shores of the Great Lakes or the upper Mississippi River area. The Cheyenne migrated to the Sheyenne River in eastern North Dakota in the late 1700s and spread southwest of the Missouri River into Nebraska in the 1800s. The Cheyenne were first removed to the Arkansas River, then settled along the Washita River.

The Arapaho are thought to have lived between the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes before moving west onto the Northern Plains, west of the Missouri River, before the 18th century. Northern bands of Arapaho, known as Atsina or Gros Ventre, met English traders in the mid 18th century in the upper Saskatchewan River area of Canada. They had been pushed farther south by other tribes, and by the late 18th century were in what is now southeastern Montana and eastern Wyoming. Pressed by the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne, they began to move Southwest, and by the early 1800's they controlled the area that is now west central Colorado.

About 1820, the Arapaho began to form an alliance with the Cheyenne to fight the Souix north of the Platt, and the Kiowa and Comanche to the south. The allies pushed the Kiowa and Comanche south of the Arkansas River and gradually dominated the area between the Platte and the Arkansas.

A treaty negotiated in 1861, without interpreters present, created a reservation on Sand Creek. The Southern Cheyenne were to have the eastern half and the Arapaho the western. The Northern Arapaho did not consent to the cession. After the Sand Creek Massacre, they agreed to accept a reservation between the Arkansas and Cimarron Rivers in Kansas, but found they could not adequately hunt the buffalo there. Eventually President Grant granted the Arapaho and Cheyenne a reservation together in Oklahoma Territory on the Canadian River.

The Northern Cheyenne remained in Montana, and some of the Arapaho went to the Shoshone Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.