Do-hah-en-no, or Beaver, was the son of the white fur trader William Bent and his Cheyenne wife, Owl Woman. At his birth in 1843 his family gave him the English name George, by which he would come to be known to scholars and the U.S. government, but he would identify as Cheyenne through his entire life. George Bent went to school in St. Louis and graduated from Webster College, making him unusually well educated for his time. In 1861 he became a soldier for the Confederacy, fighting for a Missouri cavalry unit; when he was captured by Union soldiers, his college connections got him paroled, and he was sent back to his father’s ranch in Colorado. There, he underwent military training and fought as a Cheyenne warrior against the Cheyenne’s traditional enemies, the Utes and the Pawnee. His presence as a six-foot, 200-pound Cheyenne who was articulate in English and better educated than anyone he met up with in Colorado was intimidating to the racist white settlers, who feared conflict with the local tribes. Thus, though George and his family had no interest in fighting against white settlements, scholars speculate that fear of him as a warrior might have contributed to the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864, when hundreds of innocent Cheyenne and Arapaho were slaughtered by U.S. soldiers on their reservation in Colorado.