thumb|Friday, Arapaho Chief (ca. 1822-1881) interpreter and negotiator Friday (Arapaho: Teenokuhu or Warshinun (ca. 1822–1881), also known as Friday Fitzpatrick, was an Arapaho leader and interpreter in the mid to late 1800s.
When he was around the age of eight, he was separated from his band and was taken in by a white trapper.
During the next seven years, he was schooled in St. Louis, Missouri and went on trapping expeditions with his informally adopted father, Thomas Fitzpatrick.
After he was recognized by his mother during an encounter with the Arapaho, he returned to the tribe.
Called the "Arapaho American" by tribal members, he was a translator, interpreter, and peacemaker who helped negotiate treaties and resolve cultural misunderstandings.
He traveled with and translated for the explorers John C. Frémont in 1843 and Rufus Sage in the spring of 1844.
He assisted Ferdinand V. Hayden during his surveying expedition and in the winter of 1859–1860 taught Hayden the Arapaho vocabulary.
He became the leader of a band who were centered in the Cache la Poudre River area (near present-day Fort Collins, Colorado), but also ranged in Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska.
He made friends of white settlers in northern Colorado and attained jobs on farms and ranches for his tribal members after losing the ability to range for food in the Arapaho's traditional hunting grounds.
After multiple attempts to establish a reservation for the Northern Arapaho in Colorado or Wyoming, he ultimately moved with his people to the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Early years
Teenokuhu was born ca. 1822 into a band of Northern Arapaho people.
His name means "sits meekly".
He also was said to have been named Warshinun (meaning "black spot" or "black coal ashes").
In 1831, his band was camped with the Atsina people along the Cimmaron River in present-day southeastern Colorado.
A fight broke out when 30 Mexican traders arrived at the campsite.
The Atsina (Gros Ventre) chief wanted all the traders to stay with his group, the Arapaho suggested that half of the Mexicans went to the Atsina camp and the rest to the Arapaho camp.
A disagreement ensued, which led to the Arapaho chief being stabbed.
The Atsina chief was killed in retaliation.
In the melee, he and two boys were separated from their band in the Great Plains or the mountains, where he wandered for several days.
Teenokuhuhwas was found by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a white trapper, on a Friday.
Acquiring the name "Friday", he was taken in by Fitzpatrick and attended school for two years in St. Louis, Missouri.
Friday went with Fitzpatrick into the frontier on his trapping journeys.
He met other trappers who found him to have an "astonishing memory" and he was known for "his minute observation and amusing inquiries".
At some point, Fitzpatrick was a United States Agent for the Arapaho.
Arapaho leader and interpreter
Return to the Arapaho
In 1838, Fitzpatrick and Friday met up with a band of Arapaho people.
When a woman recognized Friday as her son, he returned to his life with the Arapaho.
He remained friends of Fitzpatrick until his death in 1854.
Friday's life was centered in the Cache la Poudre River area (near present-day Fort Collins) and the Big Thompson River valley of present-day northern Colorado.
A nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe, they ranged into Wyoming, Kansas, and Nebraska.
He was known for his skill as a hunter and warrior, who fought against the Ute, Shoshone, and Pawnee people.
Called the "Arapaho American" by tribal members, he was a translator and interpreter and was known as a peacemaker.
The only English-speaking Arapaho from that time until his death in 1881, he helped negotiate and resolve cultural misunderstanding.
He traveled with and translated for the explorers John C. Frémont in 1843 and Rufus Sage in the spring of 1844, when Sage traveled along the Arkansas River (in southern Colorado).
Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1851
Friday attended the treaty council at Fort Laramie, Wyoming in 1851.
Held along Horse Creek.
It was the largest treaty council on the Great Plains, with between 10,000 and 15,000 Native Americans in attendance.
The Fort Laramie Treaty was completed and signed in October 1851.
It was signed by Indian Superintendent D. D. Mitchell and Indian Agent Thomas Fitzpatrick for the United States government.
The Arapaho and Cheyenne agreed to end hostilities against non-natives and others in exchange for access to their ancestral homelands in present-day south-eastern Wyoming, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, and southwestern Nebraska.
The government would be allowed to build military forts and roads across this territory and they agreed to protect the Arapaho and Cheyenne against attacked by European-Americans.
They were to receive an annuity of $50,000 over the next 50 years, although the government later changed the term to 15 years without consultation or negotiation.
Friday had left for Washington, D.C. with other Arapaho and Cheyenne delegates who met with President Millard Fillmore in December 1851 and January 1852.
Continued experiences as an interpreter
thumb|Principal Chiefs of Arapaho Tribe, engraving by James D. Hutton, ca. 1860.
Arapaho interpreter Warshinun, also known as Friday, is seated at right.
In 1857, he facilitated communication when the Arapaho encountered Mormans in Wyoming.
In 1859, he did the same when Little Owl's band visited a surveying party led by Ferdinand V. Hayden.
Hayden learned the Arapaho vocabulary from Friday in the winter of 1859–1860, while on Deer Creek near present-day Laramie, Wyoming.
Poudre Valley village
Friday lived in a village of 150 lodges in the Poudre Valley of present-day northern Colorado.
He had ten wives and children.
The French trapper Antoine Janis and his wife First Elk Woman of the Oglala Sioux came to live with the band in 1858.
Jarvis had passed through the area in the 1830s when the valley was "black with buffalo", but by 1858 the buffalo had diminished significantly.
With the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859 there was a dramatic influx of white people who headed for mining communities and wanted to settle on the western frontier.
To do so encroached on the land of the Arapaho and Cheyenne.
In 1861, the government sought to renegotiate what had been agreed to in the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851, dramatically reducing the Arapaho and Cheyenne's land to a small area between present-day Limon and Rocky Ford, Colorado, which was not an area that Friday's band used.
Friday would not sign the Treaty of Fort Wise.
Friday tried to negotiate for land in the Poudre River valley and up to Crow Creek in Wyoming.
The Overland Trail and Stage Route ran near this land and there were white squatters who had settled illegally on the land.
Although the Fort Wise treaty was not fully ratified by all the parties, the government negotiated as if the Cheyenne and Arapaho did not have ownership of the lands agreed upon in the treaty of 1851.
Camp Collins (later Fort Collins, and then the town of Fort Collins) was established as a military outpost in 1862.
Forced out of Colorado
By the 1860s, there was an influx of white settlers and miners wanting land, which later resulted in the Arapaho being forced out of Colorado.
A key decisive event occurred in 1864 with the Sand Creek massacre, where 230 people, mostly women and children, were massacred.
The band diminished in size due to attacks by the United States Army, disease, and hunger.
Their traditional hunting grounds were lost to whites.
His band was just about 175 people in the late 1860s lived in northern Colorado along the Cache la Poudre.
They often met at a 100 foot gnarled cottonwood tree, a Council Tree, where the Boxelder Creek met up with the Cache la Poudre.
The land that it sat on came to be owned by Robert Strauss who homesteaded the land about 1860.
Unable to range for food across their traditional hunting grounds and hungry, Friday found jobs for the men of his band at the ranches and farms of white settlers with whom he had good relationships.
He often camped near F. W. Sherwood and John Coy.
He was also friends with Antoine Janis, Oliver Goodwin, John Prost, Elias Whitcomb, Benjamin Claymore, and Rock Bush—who had married Native American women.
Friday's band was pushed out of Colorado Territory and north of the Platte River by governor Alexander Hunt in 1869.
His band joined Black Bear's and Medicine Man's communities.
Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868
Friday was hired by government peace commissioner in early 1868 to communicate an ultimatum to Northern Arapaho bands.
They would need to sign a treaty to continue to get provisions.
Northern Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne met at Fort Laramie and signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie on May 10, 1868.
Black Bear, Little Wolf, Littlesheild, Medicine Man, and Sorrel Horse signed for the Northern Arahapa, who agreed to land on one of three reservations in one year.
Their options were with the Lakota people on the Missouri River, in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) with southern Arapaho and Cheyenne people, or with the Crows on the Yellowstone River in Montana Territory.
They wanted to stay in Wyoming and a meeting was held in October 1869 between Sorrel Horse, Medicine Man, and Friday with U.S. Army General Christopher Augur and Governor John Allen Campbell.
Although the Shoshone had been their enemies, the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming was their preferred new home.
Shoshone Chief Washakie did not show up for the meeting.
In February 1870, he agreed to let the Arapaho stay at the reservation temporarily.
Continued negotiations
He continued to negotiate for the Northern Arapaho to protect their traditional lands in Wyoming into the 1870s.
Friday's son became a scout for the United States Army.
Friday's band folded in with other Northern Arapaho bands.
They left the Wind River reservation by the winter of 1870–1871, when they hunted amongst the scarce game in the Powder River Basin.
Needing food, they drew provisions at the Red Cloud Agency near Fort Laramie in March 1871.
Friday's band came to live among the Lakota at Red Cloud's reservation in Montana.
Friday and other Northern Arapaho met with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Interior Secretary Carl Schurz in September 1877.
It was his last trip to Washington, D.C. where the leaders lobbied for a reservation for the Northern Arapaho in Wyoming.
One month later the Northern Arapaho moved to the Wind River Indian Reservation, where they lived alongside the Shoshone.
Friday lived at Wind River until his death in 1881, perhaps near Fort Washakie.
Legacy
A bust of Friday is located at Horsetooth and Shields in Fort Collins.
Notes
References
Further reading
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