A Man Known by Four Names

Historians have called him Dull Knife, a name given to him by the Lakota for his tendency to seek reconciliation rather than sharpen his knife for battle. Young fighting men heckled him for this and his call "let us make a new way." At times they called him "White Man's Wife". His people knew him by his Cheyenne name, Wohehiv, or Morning Star. They believed the old man chief would carry them through their darkest time into a new day. His name was not spoken for over a hundred years from the time of his death. Many of the grandchildren and great grandchildren referred to him simply as "the Old Man".

Up until 1986, when the descendants began gathering together an oral history of his life, the history books, all referring to him as Dull Knife, had five different accounts of his death at five different times. His place in the history of his people and our country had not been shared outside of his direct descendants. Today there is an effort to gather what stories are still being shared according to oral traditions. This book is the initial effort to create a place for Morning Star in the narrative of the Plains Indians, in particular the Cheyenne, and begin a new narrative that places him at the crossroads of Manifest Destiny, leading the Cheyenne Exodus.