Children soothed their thirst by scraping their fingernails on barrack windows to capture frost and warded off hunger by chewing on leather. After four days of starvation, their elders declared they would rather die seeking freedom than perish like this. Thus, on January 9, 1879, Chief Dull Knife and approximately 149 of his Northern Cheyennes broke out of their Fort Robinson prison in Nebraska, successfully ending up on their homelands in Montana. They had been imprisoned at the fort since t


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