Cheyenne
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50 free Cheyenne trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Cheyenne are one of the great nations of the Plains, a people whose story runs from woodland villages and cornfields to horseback buffalo hunts, and from some of the most famous battles of the American West to two thriving tribal nations today. These questions gather the fun facts that surprise most readers: where the tribe came from, how its warrior societies and council of chiefs worked, what its sacred objects mean, which leaders and battles shaped its history, and the unexpected places the Cheyenne name has turned up since, from the map to the movies. It is written for students researching a tribe report, teachers building a Native American history unit and curious readers alike. Each answer carries a short explanation, so a miss still teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US state's capital city is named after the Cheyenne people, who have no reservation there?
Wyoming
Wyoming got its capital from a Union Pacific railroad junction founded in 1867, which residents named for the Cheyenne people. The tribe's two nations live in other states today.
Q 02Northern Cheyenne chief Two Moons was a model for the Native American profile on which US coin?
Buffalo nickel
Buffalo nickel sculptor James Earle Fraser said he drew on several sitters, naming Two Moons and the Lakota chief Iron Tail. He wanted a type, he said, not a portrait.
Q 03Cheyenne oral history credits Buffalo Calf Road Woman with knocking which cavalry commander off his horse in 1876?
George Armstrong Custer
George Armstrong Custer was knocked from his horse by her blow before he died, Northern Cheyenne storytellers said in 2005, breaking more than a century of silence.
Q 04The Cheyenne word for a white person, vé'ho'e, is also the word for which creature?
Spider
Spider and white person share one word in Cheyenne. A common folk explanation is that settlers fenced the open range until it looked like a web.
Q 05Cheyenne Mountain, named for the Cheyenne people, houses the underground bunker of which military command?
NORAD
NORAD built its operations centre inside the mountain during the Cold War, to watch North American skies for missile launches and Soviet aircraft.
Q 06Warriors of the Cheyenne Contrary Society were best known for going into battle in which unusual way?
Riding backward
Riding backward was a show of bravery, and Contraries turned daily life around too, doing the opposite of what other people normally did.
Q 07Which actor played Jack Crabb, a white man raised by the Cheyenne, in the 1970 film Little Big Man?
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman starred beside Chief Dan George, who became the first Indigenous North American actor nominated for an Oscar.
Q 08Cheyenne warriors won high honour by counting coup, which meant doing what to a living enemy?
Touching him
Touching him with a hand, bow or coup stick and getting away unharmed was among the most prestigious acts of war on the Plains.
Q 09Before becoming Plains buffalo hunters, the Cheyenne farmed and gathered wild rice in which state?
Minnesota
Minnesota was the tribe's home when French records first mention it in the 1600s. Over the next two centuries the Cheyenne moved west and swapped cornfields for tipis.
Q 10Which director's last Western, Cheyenne Autumn, retold the Northern Cheyenne's 1878 trek home?
John Ford
John Ford called the 1964 film an elegy for the Native Americans his own earlier Westerns had misrepresented.
Q 11Lou Diamond Phillips plays Henry Standing Bear, the sheriff's Cheyenne friend, in which modern Western crime series?
Longmire
Longmire is based on Craig Johnson's mystery novels, and its plots often turn on who has authority on the neighbouring Cheyenne reservation.
Q 12Cloud Dancing, a Cheyenne who is blood brother to Byron Sully, appears in which 1990s frontier TV drama?
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman first cast Larry Sellers as a minor brave called Black Hawk, then quietly reworked the part into a major recurring character.
Q 13The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, bounded on the east by the Tongue River, lies in which state?
Montana
Q 21The Cheyenne language belongs to which family, shared with Cree, Ojibwe and Blackfoot?
Algonquian
Algonquian speech ties the Cheyenne to peoples far to the east of the Plains, and the tribe's own alphabet gets by with just 14 letters.
Q 22Which name do the Cheyenne use for themselves, in place of the Sioux-derived word Cheyenne?
Tsitsistas
Tsitsistas is often translated as 'those who are like this', though its exact origin is uncertain. The word Cheyenne began as a Sioux name for the tribe.
Q 23Which Methodist preacher turned colonel led the Colorado volunteers who attacked the Cheyenne camp at Sand Creek?
John Chivington
John Chivington's order to attack was defied by Captain Silas Soule, who told his company to hold fire and later testified about the massacre.
Montana became the tribe's permanent home in 1884, after years of exile in the south. Unusually, the Northern Cheyenne control most of the land inside their reservation.
Q 14The Southern Cheyenne today share a tribal government, headquartered in the town of Concho, in which state?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma was still Indian Territory when the Southern Cheyenne were assigned a reservation there. Its unallotted land was opened to settlers in the Land Run of 1892.
Q 15Which Plains tribe, allied with the Cheyenne since about 1811, shares one tribal nation with the Southern Cheyenne?
Arapaho
Arapaho and Cheyenne are related languages that are not mutually intelligible, yet the alliance between the two peoples has held for more than two centuries.
Q 16Which Cheyenne peace chief flew an American flag over his tipi at Sand Creek in 1864, yet was attacked?
Black Kettle
Black Kettle had been given the flag by the commissioner of Indian Affairs, who told him it would show anyone he was a friend of the United States. He survived the massacre and kept working for peace.
Q 17At which 1876 battle did Northern Cheyenne and Lakota warriors wipe out five companies of the 7th Cavalry?
Little Bighorn
Little Bighorn drew an allied camp of about 10,000 people, one of the largest gatherings of Native Americans before the reservation era.
Q 18Which Cheyenne warrior society's bravest men pinned themselves to the ground in battle with a rawhide rope?
Dog Soldiers
Dog Soldiers who staked the rope were declaring they would not retreat, whatever the odds. A comrade could free one only by driving him from the field with a whip.
Q 19Which pair of explorers visited a Cheyenne village in present-day North Dakota in 1804?
Lewis and Clark
Lewis and Clark met a people in mid-migration. Explorers of the day recorded so many names for the Cheyenne that they failed to see a single tribe taking shape.
Q 20Before adopting the portable tipi, the farming Cheyenne lived in which kind of permanent home?
Earth lodges
Earth lodges were left behind when the tribe gave up its fields for a nomadic life on horseback, following the bison across the Plains.
Q 24Which river gave its name to the 7th Cavalry's 1868 dawn attack on a Southern Cheyenne village in Indian Territory?
Washita
Washita Battlefield is now a National Historic Site, and it lies beside a small town that is itself named Cheyenne.
Q 25Which body of Cheyenne peace chiefs, each chosen for about ten years, traditionally governed the whole tribe?
Council of Forty-four
Council of Forty-four chiefs were not voted in but named their own successors, and they kept the peace through moral authority.
Q 26At which sacred mountain near the Black Hills do the Cheyenne say their great prophet received the tribe's laws?
Bear Butte
Bear Butte is Noahvose, the Giving Hill, to the tribe. In 1945 Northern Cheyenne held a ceremony there to pray for the end of World War II.
Q 27Which disease, spread along the emigrant trails in 1849, killed around half of the Cheyenne in one summer?
Cholera
Cholera struck a decade after the tribe had escaped the smallpox epidemics of 1837–39 by heading into the Rocky Mountains.
Q 28Which adobe trading post on the Santa Fe Trail, built in 1833, drew many Cheyenne south to the Arkansas River?
Bent's Fort
Bent's Fort traded with the tribe for buffalo robes, and trader William Bent married Owl Woman, daughter of the keeper of the Sacred Arrows.
Q 29Which Northern Cheyenne chief, also called Morning Star, led his people out of Indian Territory toward home in 1878?
Dull Knife
Dull Knife is the English form of the name the Lakota gave him, while Morning Star translates his Cheyenne one. A tribal college now carries his name.
Q 30Besides its bundle of arrows, which holy object kept by the Northern Cheyenne is the tribe's other great covenant?
Sacred Buffalo Hat
Sacred Buffalo Hat stands for female power, as the arrows stand for male. Its keeper must come from the Suhtai, once a separate tribe that merged with the Cheyenne.