Cheyenne Repatriation: the Choice Between Secular and Traditional Methods

Abstract

The Cheyenne Nation has been a well documented tribe prior to the twentieth century. The following thesis is intended to document the repatriation of funerary objects and skeletal remains to the Northern and Southern Cheyennes that occurred in the early 1990s. It is a comparison of how the two federally recognized tribes handled these events and what roles the elected tribal officials and the traditional ceremonial people played. The thesis is largely based on both oral history from participants in the repatriation and also documents published by the Government Printing Office and the Smithsonian Institution. Secondary sources have been used to provide much of the historical background.