Native North Americans of the Plains whose language belongs to the Algonquian branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock. Their own name was Inuna-ina (our people), but they were referred to as dog eaters (for the obvious reason) by other Native Americans. Arapaho were farmers in the beginning and lived in Minnesota, in the Red River valley. They moved to the plains and lived by the Platte and Arkansas Rivers in the 1800s. Arapaho became buffalo hunters which made them come into conflict with other tribes such as Comanche, Crow, Kiowa, Pawnee, Sioux, Shoshoni and Ute. They are thought to be most closely related to the Cheyenne and to the Blackfoot. However, it is known that the Arapaho divided into two groups after they migrated to the plains. One group, the Northern Arapaho, continued to live on the North Platte River in Wyoming, while the Southern Arapaho moved south to the Arkansas River in Colorado. Traditionally the Southern Arapaho were allied with the Cheyenne against the Pawnee. In 1851 Arapaho leaders signed a peace treaty at Fort Laramie and in 1867 Little Raven signed the Medicine Lodge treaty and as a result the Arapaho came to a reservation in Oklahoma.

Their annual sun dance was a major tribal event, and later the Arapaho adopted the Ghost Dance religion. There are three major divisions; the Atsina or Gros Ventre, who were allied with the Blackfoot and now live with the Assiniboin on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana; the Southern Arapaho, now living with the Cheyenne in Oklahoma; and the Northern Arapaho, who retain all of the sacred tribal stone articles and are considered by Native Americans to represent the parent group. Since 1876 they have lived on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming with their former enemies, the Shoshone.
G. A. Dorsey and A. L. Kroeber, Traditions of the Arapaho (1903, repr. 1974)
V. C. Trenholm, Arapahoes, Our People (1970).

Little Raven (Hósa, 'Young Crow').
He was first signer for the Southern Arapaho, of the treaty of Fort Wise, Colo., Feb. 18, 1861. At a later period he took part with the allied Arapaho and Cheyenne in the war along the Kansas border, but joined in the treaty of Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in 1867, by which these tribes agreed to go on a reservation, after which treaty all his effort was consistently directed toward keeping his people at peace with the Government and leading then to civilization. Through his influence the body of the Arapaho remained at peace with the whites when their allies, the Cheyenne and Kiowa, went on the warpath in 1874-75. Little Raven died at Cantonment, Okla., in the winter of 1889, after having maintained for 20 years a reputation as the leader of the progressive element. He was succeeded by Nawat, 'Left-hand'.

Nawat became the principal chief of the Southern Arapaho since the death of Little Raven in 1889. He was born about 1840, and because noted as a warrior and buffalo hunter, taking active part in the western border wars until the treaty of Medicine Lodge in 1867, since which time his people, as a tribe, have remained at peace with the whites. Arapaho leaders carried on to negotiate and they were at last garantied the right to live on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. There early enemies, the Shoshoni who also lived on this reservation complained highly over this solution. Chief Washakie from the Shoshoni tribe helped solving the problem by pursuading one of his sons to marry an Arapaho woman. In 1890 Nawat took the lead in signing the allotment agreement opening the reservation to white settlement, notwithstanding the Cheyenne, in open council, had threatened death to anyone who signed. He several times visited Washington in the interest of his tribe.
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