Grinnell était un intellectuel américain influent qui a fait le pont entre la conservation et l'étude de la vie des Amérindiens. Son travail a considérablement façonné l'opinion publique et les efforts législatifs visant à préserver le bison d'Amérique. Avec une formation en anthropologie, histoire et sciences naturelles, il a développé une profonde compréhension du monde naturel et de la culture humaine, laissant un héritage durable en matière de conservation et de compréhension historique.
George Bird Grinnell was a zoologist by training. He accompanied Custer's Black Hills expedition as a naturalist in 1874 and from that time until his death in 1938 was closely associated with the Cheyennes and other Plains tribes. In this title, he looks at its warmaking and warrior societies, healing practices and responses to European diseases.
Here are the folk tales of the Cheyenne--stories of their heroes, their wars, their relationships with supernatural powers--as told to George Bird Grinnell during the winter months in Cheyenne tipis. "Of all the books written about Indians," say Margaret Mead and Ruth L. Benzel in The Golden Age of American Anthropology , "none comes closer to their everyday life than Grinnell's classic monograph on the Cheyenne. Reading it, one can smell the buffalo grass and the wood fires, feel the heavy morning dew on the prairie."