They were the elite warrior society of the Cheyenne nation, and functioned at times as an intra-tribal police force and private bodyguard for Dog Soldier chiefs such as White Horse, Tall Bull, and Roman Nose. The Hotamitanio members were selected for their devotion to duty, physical strength, hunting and combat skills, and political connections. Above all Dog Soldiers were expected to defend the tribe from attack by red and white assailants, and punish unauthorized incursions by outsiders onto tribal homelands.
       With their allies the Lakota (Sioux), and Arapaho, the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers were a force to be reckoned with on the Great Plains during the 19th century. As America approaches the end of the 20th century the forces that all but annihilated native societies in this country from 1492 to 1890 are grinding to a halt. Neither foreign military conquest nor financial collapse (as yet) threaten Western civilization. Rather, the reemergence of tribalism and reprimitivized man threaten to undermine America from within.
       This trend which is perhaps more clearly seen in Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnaya, Somalia and Afghanistan, rears its head in urban and suburban America. Tribalism is reflected not only in the rise of racial hate groups, paramilitary organizations, and street gangs, but also the fractious terms of social discourse. Escalation of force by sound bite overshadows a heightened level of violence in society from personal attacks and insults to murder.
        The rise of organized gangs or “nations” is directly attributable to the decline of the extended family and increasingly limited employment prospects for working-class and low- income youth. These semi-autonomous groups of young men and women from all racial backgrounds are a hybrid of the extended family, fraternal or sororal organizations, and Indian warrior society. The historical parallels between the establishment of the reservation system for Native Americans and the evolution of Black ghettos in America are numerous and strikingly similar.
       The reservation system was implemented in part to break apart Indian families, allowing women and children to subsist on government stipends without a male adult present in the household. The need to hunt for food constantly or fight tribal enemies disappeared as a practical matter by 1890, leaving the Indian male “culturally unnecessary”, vulnerable to alcoholism, unemployment, and intra-cultural violence.
       “English only” schools sponsored by the Bureau of Indian Affairs initiated a loosening of language and religious and family ties that nearly destroyed many recognized tribes. The eventual survival and rebirth of many Indian societies have defied the devastating government attempts to “turn the red man into a white man”.
        The Great Society programs of the 1960s while initially well-intentioned, doomed many low- income blacks to generations of dependency on government handouts by dividing the family, allowing the female and children to survive without the need for the father’s presence.
        The decline of religious influence and the rise of the crack cocaine trade combined with a lack of legitimate employment opportunity to turn portions of many large cities into violent, impoverished wastelands. The approach of the 21st century has witnessed the expansion of this trend into the white working- class community.
         The demise of the American manufacturing sector and the loss of hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs have reduced many white, blue-collar communities to the level of ghettos, plagued by increased rates of out of wedlock births, crime, street gangs, unemployment, and drug abuse, primarily methamphetamines.
        Economic survival among these new working poor and two income homes has further resulted in the abandonment of children to be raised by television, the internet, and the streets, producing huge numbers of socially dysfunctional human beings of all races. Corporate downsizing in the private sector and oceans of public sector red ink have pushed millions of Americans to the edge of financial ruin.     

          The increased levels of reported domestic violence and child abuse testify to societies inability to deal with a frightened, alienated citizenry. Where there is mass poverty over time, people find liberation in violence. Constantly forced to live hand to mouth, more and more average citizens find great sensory gratification in violence, if not in movies or television, then in their own overt actions. A burned dinner, a soiled diaper, a personal insult, or lost employment, increasingly becomes justification for violent responses by the “aggrieved” party.
           Reprimitivized man, feeling shackled by society’s insistence on political correctness is rebelling against these “norms”; and a jail sentence means nothing but an extended stay in a “welfare hotel” with other warehoused low-income men. Many observers attempt to put the blame exclusively on young people, but the responsibility for the current state of affairs rests squarely with adult society. The rap and heavy metal artists rail at conditions created and maintained by adults.
        As Doctors Nathan and Julia Hare conclude, “The young black man is trying of necessity to reinvent manhood for himself… the gangs and the… rap artists have brought manhood back to its basest, if not predatory level, around the trappings of the primal role of the male, the warrior.” The Hares then go on to take a jab at America’s ridiculous preoccupation with political correctness:
“Thus, using adolescent logic, in a world that no longer wishes a man to call a woman a lady for fear of sexism, the so-called gangster rappers can talk about the woman in a terrible way and dance with their young female counterparts in mutual ecstasy and reactive glee.”
        Again, we see references to the warrior and primal male behavior in current urban hip-hop culture that is increasingly popular with suburban whites. The vile references to female sex organs (as insults) and the image of women only as sex objects are endemic in warrior culture, which is entirely male, indeed it’s “Last Bastion.”
          Modoc Chief Kintpuash, known to the whites in California as Captain Jack, was goaded into murdering General Edward R S Canby at a peace conference in 1873 by his Modoc sub-chiefs and war captains, one of whom threw an old woman’s shawl and headdress over Kintpuash’s head and shoulders at a tribal council, where the Chief tried to advocate peace with white settlers. As Martin Van Creveld, military historian at Hebrew University writes:
“By compelling the senses to focus themselves on the here and now (war) can cause a man to take his leave of them”
        America is approaching a crossroads in its evolution where society seems to be regressing to a time 150 years ago when men and women “lived by the feud”, and tribe, clan and county defined the vast majority of people. Rather than depending on self-reliance, independence, and hard work; the country is increasingly therapeutic, addicted to government subsidies and tax breaks, and broken into factions to point of social and political standoff and stalemate.
          America has, as Chief Sitting Bull warned the Assiniboines who had taken up reservation living, “ become slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hardtack and a little sugar and coffee. I warn you that the white man’s hand that feeds you, is the white man’s hand that will starve you.”