Friday (Arapaho chief)

During the next seven years, he was schooled in St. Louis, Missouri and went on trapping expeditions with his informally adopted father, Thomas Fitzpatrick.

Called the "Arapaho American" by tribal members, Friday was a translator, interpreter, and peacemaker who helped negotiate treaties and resolve cultural misunderstandings.

[3] Friday 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 into Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska.

He made friends of white settlers in northern Colorado and secured jobs on farms and ranches for his tribal members after losing access to the Arapaho's traditional hunting grounds.

[6] Among the stipulations, the Native Americans would be able to range through their ancestral homelands as long as they agreed to stop attacking non-native travelers and allowed the military to build forts and roads on the lands.

[1] Hayden learned the Arapaho vocabulary from Friday in the winter of 1859–1860, while on Deer Creek near present-day Laramie, Wyoming.

A decisive event occurred in 1864 with the Sand Creek massacre, when more than 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people were killed by the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment.

[1][7] Friday's band diminished in size due to attacks by the United States Army, disease, and hunger.

[9] Black Bear, Little Wolf, Littlesheild, Medicine Man, and Sorrel Horse signed for the Northern Arahapo, who agreed to settle on one of three reservations in one year.

[9] Shoshone Chief Washakie did not show up for the meeting but in February 1870, he agreed to let the Arapaho stay at the reservation temporarily.

[9] Friday continued to negotiate for the Northern Arapaho to protect their traditional lands in Wyoming into the 1870s, even as his son became a scout for the United States Army.

[1] Friday and other Northern Arapaho met with President Rutherford B. Hayes and Interior Secretary Carl Schurz in September 1877.

[1][9] One month later the Northern Arapaho returned to the Wind River Indian Reservation, where they lived alongside the Shoshone.