Florence Whiteman, historian, teacher and last of the Northern Cheyenne warrior women, died Sunday evening in Billings at St. Vincent Hospital. She was 74.  

Whiteman was born July 17, 1926, the first child to James and Sally Crazy Mule Bites, who named her Meome' Ehne' E - "Appears in the Morning Woman."  

Whiteman was featured in several documentaries and books, including Herman J. Viola's "Little Bighorn Remembered" in 1999.  

In the book, Whiteman said her mother took her to be raised by her grandparents when she was 3. Cheyenne tradition obliges the firstborn to be raised by grandparents, she said.  

She learned traditional Cheyenne culture from her grandparents and other elders, people who remembered the buffalo days and the great battles, including the defeat of Custer.  

At age 12, Whiteman was initiated into the Elk Scrapers, a Cheyenne warrior society. Women are traditionally barred from all other warrior societies and only three girls were inducted in the last century. As a warrior woman, she was exempt from the tradition barring women from speaking out in public.  

Whiteman also had the tribe's last arranged marriage. Fellow society members and Cheyenne chiefs chose her first husband, Joseph Waters, whom she did not meet until her wedding day.  

In "Little Bighorn Remembered," Whiteman said she was the last Cheyenne woman given to her husband for a bride price of four horses. The traditional marriage took place in 1943, when she was 15.  

After Waters died in 1955, she married Phillip Whiteman, Sr.  

She prayed and sacrificed in the Sun Lodge five times, becoming a Sun Dance priestess. She was also a member of the Native American Church.  

Whiteman shared her knowledge as an instructor at Dull Knife Memorial College in Lame Deer.  

She had two sons and seven daughters.  

A wake will be at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Allen Rowland Memorial Gym in Lame Deer.  

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