Grinnell was an influential American intellectual who bridged the fields of conservationism and the study of Native American life. His work significantly shaped public opinion and legislative efforts to preserve the American bison. With a background in anthropology, history, and natural science, he developed a profound understanding of both the natural world and human culture, leaving a lasting legacy on conservation and historical understanding.
George Bird Grinnell was a zoologist by training. He accompanied Custer's Black Hills expedition as a naturalist in 1874 and from that time until his death in 1938 was closely associated with the Cheyennes and other Plains tribes. In this title, he looks at its warmaking and warrior societies, healing practices and responses to European diseases.
Here are the folk tales of the Cheyenne--stories of their heroes, their wars, their relationships with supernatural powers--as told to George Bird Grinnell during the winter months in Cheyenne tipis. "Of all the books written about Indians," say Margaret Mead and Ruth L. Benzel in The Golden Age of American Anthropology , "none comes closer to their everyday life than Grinnell's classic monograph on the Cheyenne. Reading it, one can smell the buffalo grass and the wood fires, feel the heavy morning dew on the prairie."