Sherman Coolidge (February 22, 1862 – January 24, 1932), an Episcopal Church priest and educator, helped found and lead the Society of American Indians (1911–1923).

Coolidge spent twenty-six years preaching and teaching Shoshone and Arapaho people at the Wind River Reservation at Fort Washakie, Wyoming.

Banasda (Big Heart) and Ba-ahnoce (Turtle Woman), both Arapaho, gave their newborn son the name Doa-che-wa-a (Runs-on-Top).

[2][3] They moved with the seasons to hunting grounds and to places where they gathered food, while in competition with Eastern Shoshone for the resources.

Another tragedy occurred when American soldiers mistook the Arapaho for Lakota, which resulted in the death of his aunt, uncle, and grandmother.

[12] He completed his post-graduate studies at Hobart College, Geneva, New York between 1887 and 1890,[13][14] with the assistance of President Eliphalet Potter.

Called "Arapaho Whiteman", Coolidge reunited with his mother Ba-ahnoce at Wind River Reservation in the fall of 1884,;she had learned of his impending return.

Over the past fifteen years since he was separated from his mother, his people had a difficult time finding a place to live and a means to preserve their culture.

The Northern Arapaho needed to make peace with the Eastern Shoshone at Wind River to survive.

When Coolidge arrived at the reservation, he was met by his mothers and other relatives, including Chief Sharp Nose, who was his uncle.

On October 2, 1884, Deacon Coolidge began assisting to Episcopalian priest John Roberts at the St. Michael's Mission and government school at Ethete, Wyoming for the Shoshones.

Instead, the United States government expected them to take up farming, which was difficult due to the poor soil on the reservation.

[3] The Bureau of American Ethnology assigned James Mooney, an anthropologist, to study the nature of the Ghost Dance, which he did with Coolidge’s assistance as an interpreter or as a source of information.

John Robert was returning from a trip to Lander, Wyoming when a group of Arapaho began to pursue him near the border of the reservation.

He was assigned to minister to white and Dakota people at the Episcopal Church in Faribault, Minnesota in the spring of 1912.

[19] The society pioneered twentieth-century Pan-Indianism, the philosophy and movement promoting unity among American Indians regardless of tribal affiliation.

[18] In 1923, Secretary of Interior Herbert W. Work hired Coolidge to serve on the Committee of One Hundred, which was formed to "investigate conditions on reservations and report on the challenges facing indigenous peoples in the United States".

[3] In May 1923, Coolidge and other society leaders joined with reformer John Collier founding the American Indian Defense Association, a powerful new lobby in Washington.

The Committee included many distinguished men and women in public life, including Bernard M. Baruch, Nicholas Murray Butler, William Jennings Bryan, David Starr Jordan, Gen. John J. Pershing, Mark Sullivan, Roy Lyman Wilbur, William Allen White and Oswald Garrison Villard.

Coolidge, but also Arthur Caswell Parker, Dennison Wheelock, Charles Eastman, Thomas L. Sloan, Father Phillip Gordon, Henry Roe Cloud, J.N.B.

[27] Their recommendations prompted the Coolidge administration to commission the Brookings Institution to conduct a two-year study of the overall condition of Indians in the United States.

[30] Grace, who had studied in the deaconess house in New York City, came west with Bishop Talbot with family from Pennsylvania to assist him in his missionary work at the Wind River Reservation.

Newspaper headlines, like "Society Girl's Heart and Hand Captured by an Indian", reflect the horror of a white woman marrying a Native American.

[3] The Coolidges adopted two Native American girls, one of Shoshone heritage and another who was an Arapaho, both of whom were born in Wyoming.

In 1917, a collection of her works was published as "Teepee Neighbors", a series of touching brief stories of life on the Wind River Reservation in the early twentieth century.

[34][35] While visiting Los Angeles, he died on January 24, 1932, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs.

[3] As an advocate for Native American interests, he helped "launch two of the basic types of secular Pan-Indian movements".