American Indian tribes
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American Indian tribes
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This is our collection of links to Cheyenne folktales and traditional stories that can be read online. We have indexed our American Indian legends section by tribe to make them easier to locate; however, variants on the same legend are often told by American Indians from different tribes, especially if those tribes are kinfolk or neighbors to each other. In particular, though these legends come from the Cheyenne tribe, the traditional stories of related tribes like the Arapaho and Gros Ventre are very similar.
Maheo
(also spelled Maheo'o and other ways.) This is the Cheyenne name for the Creator (God.) Literally his name means "Great One," and
he is often referred to as Great Medicine or the Great Spirit. Maheo is a divine spirit without human form or attributes and is rarely
personified in Cheyenne folklore. In some myths, Maheo is referred to as Heammawihio (or Heamaveeho,) which means "Spider Above."
This may be an appellation borrowed from their Arapaho kinfolk, who referred to the Creator this way to differentiate him from the earthly
Spider figure (see below.) Maheo is by far the more common name. It is pronounced similar to mah-hey-yoh in Cheyenne.
Wihio (also spelled Veeho, Veho, and other ways.)
Wihio is the spider trickster of Cheyenne mythology. His name is pronounced veh-hoh or wih-hoh, depending on dialect.
Though he is associated with spiders and his name means "spider," he has the form of a man in every Cheyenne tale we know of.
In some stories, Wihio plays the role of the clever and benevolent trickster/transformer hero, similar to
Nanabozho of the Anishinabe tribes;
but in most stories, he is merely a silly and foolish character who behaves as inappropriately as possible by Cheyenne social standards.
In any case, the literal meaning of the character's Cheyenne name is "Spider." It is given as "White-Man" in
some older translations, but this is a misleading translation-- the Cheyennes named white people after the trickster character, not vice versa!
Nonoma:
The Cheyenne spirit of thunder. Some Cheyenne people describe Nonoma as a Thunderbird; others consider him a wind spirit like the Winter Wind,
who is his spiritual opposite.
Mehne or Axxea:
These are water monsters who live in springs and menace travelers. Some Cheyenne people believe that these are two
names for the same monster, others that Axxea was the individual name of one particular Mehne monster, and still
others that they are two different species of water monster. Mehne is always described as a horned serpent, while
Axxea is sometimes described as a horned serpent, sometimes as a four-legged creature like a bull or
water panther, and other times
compared to a caterpillar or worm. Nonoma is the
sworn enemy of both, and while both are dangerous to humans, they may be calmed by respectful offerings.
Enemy Dwarves (Vo'estanehesono):
A race of dangerous little people, about knee-high to a man, who lived in the Rocky Mountains and warred with the Cheyenne.
Sometimes they were said to eat humans; other times, they were merely described as warlike and violent.
Their Cheyenne name literally means "little people" and is pronounced similar to voh-stah-neh-heh-so-no.
Two-Face (Hestovatohkeo'o):
A malevolent monster resembling a man with a second face on the back of his head; a person who makes eye contact with this second
face will be murdered by the monster, who tries many ploys to try to get victims to look at him.
Ma'xemestaa'e:
A large, hairy humanoid creature, somewhat like the Sasquatch or Bigfoot of the Northwestern tribes, only with birdlike feet.
Sweet Medicine (also Arrow Boy or Metzehouf):
Legendary prophet and medicine man of the Cheyenne tribe. He predicted the arrival of white men, among other things.
Rolling Head:
A horrible, vampiric sort of creature from Cheyenne myth, created when a man murders his unfaithful wife
and her disembodied head returns from the dead to seek revenge.
Cheyenne Stories:Great Medicine Makes a Beautiful Country:Race Among the Animals 
How The Buffalo Hunt Began: The Life and Death of Sweet Medicine Arrow Boy: Veeho's Eyeballs The Eye Juggler: Sun Teaches Veeho A Lesson:How Wihio Got Tongue:The Rolling Head Case of the Severed Head: Falling-Star:Yellowstone Valley and the Great Flood:The Old Woman of the Spring:The Quillwork Girl and her Seven Brothers:The Girl Who Married A Dog:The Great Medicine Dance:The Death of Head Chief and Young Mule:Mythology of the Cheyennes:Tales of the Cheyennes: Algonquian Spirit:American Indian Trickster Tales:
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