We are beginning a new blog series. This series will highlight some of the descendants from Sand Creek that have visited Chuck and Sheri Bowen’s Lost Sand Creek Site.
In the late 1990s to mid 2000s, Chuck and Sheri Bowen had many guests visit their Lost Sand Creek site. Among those guests included descendants of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes that were in Black Kettle’s village at Sand Creek. The first in our series will focus on a southern Cheyenne chief.
Chuck and Sheri became acquainted with a descendant of a chief at Sand Creek and invited him to their site.
Chief Charlie Little Coyote, a Cheyenne, from Medicine Lodge, Kansas wanted to have a ceremony at the site in the late 1990s. He personified the Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty Pageant for many years. Chief Little Coyote served as a Marine in World War II and the Korean War. He told Chuck and Sheri he was the great-grandson of Black Kettle.
“When we arrived at our ranch for the ceremony, he said they were going to do a sagebrush blessing. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Chuck said. ‘I go to your church sometimes; you can go to mine,’ Chief Little Coyote said. Chuck and I sat on our knees while he put small pieces of sagebrush in a cast-iron pot and lit it to make smoke. He pulled the smoke over us and said, ‘This is a blessing to protect you from harm and to bless you financially,’ which I thought was okay. No physical harm has come to us,” Sheri said.
Chuck and Sheri visited Chief Little Coyote in his home in Medicine Lodge. “He showed us the tribe’s sacred arrows that were wrapped in a rabbit skin—all five with metal points. It was kind of him to share them and he could relate to us.”
Chief Little Coyote passed away February 2012.
See part two here: https://www.thelostsandcreek.com/index.php/2023/06/13/cheyenne-descendants-hold-feeding-the-spirits-ceremony-at-lost-sand-creek-site/
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Wonderful article. Charlie was my adopted Father. He adopted me in the mid 1990’s. I never knew he did this ceremony. He was a very modest man who never bragged about things like this. Now I know a little more about Pop. He lead me through a Cheyenne fast whare I spent a night on a hilltop outside of Medicine Lodge praying and fasting,. I was blessed to have been in a sweat lodge ceremony that he lead. He was a wonderful man and I was blessed to have had him bless me and to have have him adopt me as his son. He gave me his name, Mayo Huhn, Morning Killer. At the time I was in the reserves and was an Infantry Officer and he said I was an officer and a warrior. Thank you sincerely for writing the article. Steve Bogart.
Thank you for your comment. Charlie was a very nice man. Did you know a lot of his stuff is in the museum in Medicine Lodge?