George Bird Grinnell and The Cheyenne Indians

I’m a day behind on my Monday History post, but I would rather be late this week than skip it entirely. Because today I want to talk about the man to whom I owe an incredible debt of gratitude in the writing of Trail of Dreams. And that’s George “Bird” Grinnell.

George “Bird” Grinnell,
courtesy of Wikicommons

Now, you’ve probably never heard of Grinnell. He was born in 1849 and died in 1938, so that’s no surprise. But to me, he’s the kind of man that should have been studied in History classes all those years ago. Grinnell was a key figure in the early conservationist movement, a naturalist, anthropologist, and someone who recognized early on that the West was disappearing and needed to be preserved and documented as much as possible.

Grinnell was born in Brooklyn and went to school at Yale, but his passion was for the open lands of the West. He began traveling West as a young man, even going along with one of Custer’s expeditions against the Indians as a naturalist. (Not THAT expedition, though) His experiences instilled in him a great need to preserve the land, and, along with Teddy Roosevelt, he was one of the founding members of the Boone and Crocket Club. He also organized the first Audubon Society.

But where I owe my debt of gratitude to Grinnell is in his relationship with and connection to the Native American tribes of the West. At a time when their land was being taken away and the government of the people who flooded into their lands persecuted them, Grinnell lived amongst the Native Americans and earnestly sought to learn their ways. His book, The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Lifeways, was an essential resource for me in writing Trail of Dreams, because it details every aspect of life amongst the Cheyenne at the end of their way of life as they knew it.

Portrait of a Cheyenne brave, from the Smithsonian collection,
courtesy of Wikicommons

Grinnell was accepted amongst the Cheyenne. They were the ones who gave him the name “Bird” in honor of the fact that he would come and go, like a migratory bird. He would spend entire seasons living with them, talking to them, and experiencing life as the Cheyenne knew it. You can tell from reading his book that he really listened to all of the stories that the people had to tell him. They trusted Grinnell and were open with him.

When you read Grinnell’s book, which was published in 1923, the most remarkable thing about it is how personal it sounds. He tells the stories of the Cheyenne with a closeness that speaks to the relationships he had with these people. Half the time he writes as though reporting anthropology, but then he’ll slip into retelling anecdotes about specific men and women, their triumphs and their foibles, as though you’re sitting around a campfire smoking with him. Those kinds of details drive home how real and how human these voices from the past are, and how much they lost.

Another thing that I find so important about Grinnell’s work is that he was driven enough to publish it and many more articles. He began publishing in journals in the late nineteenth century, and was prolific in the early 20th. Sometimes we forget that, even at the time when official policy was far more destructive toward the land and the Native Americans, not everyone agreed with what was going on. It was a good reminder for me to see that there were men and women who worked tirelessly to preserve the way of life and the untouched land that was being bowled over by progress. Not only did I enjoy reading about that, I’ve tried to bring it into my Hot on the Trail series through some of the characters, namely Dean Meyers and Aiden Murphy.

So as nice as it is that you would read my books, I hope that you’ll pick up Grinnell’s The Cheyenne Indians when you have a chance. This is History the way it’s meant to be told. Real. Alive. Human.

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