Dog Soldier
The Dog Soldiers or Dog Men (Cheyenne: Hotamétaneo'o) are historically one of six Cheyenne military societies. Beginning in the late 1830s, this society evolved into a separate, militaristic band that played a dominant role in Cheyenne resistance to the westward expansion of the United States in the area of present-day Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Wyoming, where the Cheyenne had settled in the early nineteenth century.
After nearly half the Southern Cheyenne died in the cholera epidemic of 1849, many of the remaining Masikota band joined the Dog Soldiers. It effectively became a separate band, occupying territory between the Northern and Southern Cheyenne. Its members often opposed policies of peace chiefs such as Black Kettle. In 1869 United States Army forces killed most of the band in the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado Territory. The surviving Cheyenne societies became much smaller and more secretive in their operations.
The twenty-first century has seen a revival of the Dog Soldiers society in such areas as the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana and among the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma.
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