Stone Calf and wife (Cheyenne), 1873

Stone Calf and wife (Cheyenne) in Washington, D.C., 1873. [Photograph courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration]

Stone Calf was a dominant Cheyenne chief in the early reservation years (1870 to his death in 1885). In April 1870, he was the only Cheyenne chief to attend a meeting of tribes at what was to become the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency in Indian Territory. The movement of his people to the site the following month helped lure other Cheyenne bands to the agency.

In the Red River War of 1874-75, he and a large group of Cheyennes, along with the two remaining German sisters (German family massacre, Kansas, September 11, 1874) and Deputy U.S. Marshall Ben Williams, came from south of the Red River to surrender and release the girls at the agency.

Stone Calf's opposition to the leasing of reservation land to cattlemen was a factor in President Grover Cleveland's 1885 order clearing the reservation.

In 1868 Stone Calf had this exchange at Fort Larned (Kansas) with Gen. Philip Sheridan:

Sheridan: Yes, give them [the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians] arms, and, if they go to war, the soldiers can kill them like men.

Stone Calf: Let your soldiers grow long hair, so that we may have some honor in killing them.

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