Video: Northern Cheyenne Youths singing after running 360 miles, 40 to go

In 1878, just a year after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the U.S. cavalry relocated the Northern Cheyenne to Oklahoma because of their role in joining forces with the Lakota and defeating Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. The majority of those who were relocated the Indian Territory died there. Two Northern Cheyenne chiefs, Little Wolf and Dull Knife, decided to lead thier people back home rather than suffer from the heat in Oklahoma. Dull Knife’s band made it as far as Fort Robinson in Nebraska where they were imprisoned and starved. Rather than starve, about 130 of the band members broke out of the log barracks around 10:30 p.m. on Jan. 9, 1879. They fled into the night in which temperatures were reported to be 40 below zero. About 30 people were shot just outside the barracks. The rest fled into the surrounding hills where many more were shot and killed by the cavalry.

The Northern Cheyenne youths commemorate the past by running for their relatives back to Montana. Only this time, the runners are fed warm meals like spaghetti and clothed with warm jackets and hats. While no one has to die on the run in 2010, I saw a number of the youth runners take off their shirts and run down the highway in the snow. It was their way of acknowledging the hardships experienced by their relatives who died on the same trip in 1879.

The snapshot above was taken on Thursday night, Jan. 13, the night before the youths completed the last 40-mile leg of the journey, a stretch of highway between Ashland, Mont. and and Busby, Mont.

Jodi Rave