For decades the Cheyennes endured abuses from the white settlers without spilling a single drop of white blood in well-merited reprisal. Finally goaded beyond human endurance, they turned on their tormentors with pent-up ferocity.

They fought with desperate courage, but also with a high sense of honor, and gave the U.S. Army some of its bloodiest trouncings. Hungry, homeless, and driven, the Cheyennes repeatedly defeated overwhelming forces of well-equipped troops to win the accolade: "The finest natural cavalry on Earth."

Here is the story of a mighty people who had war forced upon them, and who reluctantly made themselves the scourge of the Plains, weaving a crimson thread into the tapestry of Western history.