People of the Poudre - Cache la Poudre National Heritage Area

proficient in English. By 1843 he had returned to live with the Arapaho. In 1851, Friday participated in the HorseCreek council near Fort Laramie and was selected to go to Washington D.C. By 1858, Friday had become a minorchief; at times he had a band as large as 250 men and considered the Poudre and Big Thompson preferred huntingand camping areas. On a ridge near the Larimer County canal head gate in 1858, Friday’s band had a battle withPawnee hunters who were in the area in violation of the 1840 Treaty. 188 Figure 11. Engraving of Chief FridayMarshall Cook, a settler who lived near Auraria and who had frequent contact with Arapaho told thefollowing story about Friday. 189 Sometime in 1858 or 1859, the owners of Fort St. Vrain left for trading trip to St.Louis. A band of Arapaho, including Friday, learned that the native wife of one of the traders who had remainedat the fort was a member of an enemy tribe who had previously inflicted wrongs on the Arapaho. The Arapahoband killed the woman and her child in revenge. When the fort owners returned, they staged an elk feast to enticethe disarmed Arapaho into the fort and then killed them in retaliation. A few Arapaho escaped including Friday.If true, this episode may explain why Friday’s band was significantly reduced in size by 1860. The Fort CollinsCourier reported that Friday’s band with only 40-50 members was in the Poudre Valley in 1860 when Judge A. F.Howes arrived. 190Geological surveyor F.V. Hayden encountered Friday in Wyoming in 1859 or 1860, but by 1861 Friday’sband was back on the Cache la Poudre, occasionally using the Big Thompson Valley as well. 191 In July of 1862, theband was camped on the north side of the Poudre river opposite the F.W. Sherwood ranch. 192 In June 1863, Fridayand another band of Arapaho under Many Whips were seen in the Poudre valley; by August, Friday was near FortLaramie to sign a treaty agreement along with Northern Arapaho chiefs Black Bear and Roman Nose. 193 Thisagreement stipulated that the signers would abide by any treaty made by their people, which given that their people(the Northern Arapaho) had made no treaties up to that point, made the agreement mute.During the 1860s, Friday was caught up in the escalating tensions between Native Americans andEuroamericans. Local historian John Gray offers insight into this escalation. 194 At the 1851 Fort Laramie treatytalks, the Arapaho and Cheyenne were granted all the land between the North Fork of the Platte and the ArkansasRiver; however, the 1860 and the revised 1861 Treaty of Fort Wise reduced this area to a reservation between theArkansas River and Sand Creek. 195 The 1860/1861 treaty was signed by Southern Arapaho and Cheyenne leaderssuch as Left Hand and Black Kettle but not by Northern Arapaho leaders. Because of this omission, bands underNorthern Arapaho leaders Friday, Chief Owl (or possibly Little Owl), and Many Whips remained in northernColorado. Friday advocated for a reservation along the Cache la Poudre which would have extended from themouth of the Poudre to Box Elder Creek and north to Crow Creek, an area similar to that given to Colona founderAntoine Janis in 1858. 196From a Euroamerican perspective, the prime real estate in Colorado Territory at this time was west andnorth of the South Platte River in Northern Arapaho territory. This included Denver, the gold fields, and theCache la Poudre valley and the proposed Northern Arapaho reservation. 197 That this ownership was not clearlyunderstood--or whether it was understood but ignored with Euroamerican revisionism--is expressed by historianWatrous’ statement that “[a]fter the title to Indian lands passed to the United States, settlers came in faster and atthe close of 1861, nearly all the bottom land along the river from Laporte down to where Greeley now stands had40 People of the Poudre