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Native American Indian Information
THE ARAPAHO TRIBE
The Beginnings
Though the Sioux, Shoshone, and Pawnee knew them as
formidable warriors, history tends to label the Arapaho Indians a "peaceful
people" because they did not fight the Americans. Unfortunately, their
strategy of making treaties with the invaders rather than fighting them did not
bring them to any better end. The increasing influx of settlers into areas
promised to the Arapaho by treaty forced them away from their traditional lands,
disrupted the buffalo routes, and ultimately split the Arapaho tribe in half, a
split that still exists today. The Southern Arapaho joined the Cheyenne, where
they together became victims of the most egregious massacre in American history,
the Sand Creek massacre of 1864 (in which one Colonel Chivington deliberately
attacked a reservation of peaceable Cheyenne and Arapaho people under US
protection and killed more than 150 men, women, and children despite their
repeated attempts to surrender. "Nits," he famously proclaimed,
"breed lice.") Meanwhile, the Northern Arapaho fled to what is now
Wyoming and petitioned their old enemies the Shoshone for a home there. Finally,
the Arapaho had made a treaty which would be honored: the land granted to them
by the Shoshone remains theirs to this day....
Please learn more about the Arapaho history at: http://www.native-languages.org/arapaho.htm
The People
It is uncertain where the word 'Arapaho' came from--they
called themselves Inuna-Ina (Hinonoeino), 'our people'--but this tribe
self-identifies as Arapaho now. There are two major Arapaho tribes: the Northern
Arapaho, who number about 6000 and are concentrated in Wyoming, and the Southern
Arapaho, who are united with their longtime allies the Cheyenne into the
Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation in Oklahoma, with a combined 11,000 members. Only
the Northern Arapaho people still speak the ancestral Arapaho language. The Gros
Ventre tribe of Montana was originally an emigrant group of Arapaho Indians, and
their languages and cultures are closely related....
Please learn more about the Arapaho people at: http://www.native-languages.org/arapaho.htm
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