Grinnell byl vlivným americkým intelektuálem, který se věnoval jak ochraně přírody, tak studiu domorodých Američanů. Jeho práce přispěla k formování veřejného mínění a k prosazování legislativy na ochranu amerického bizona. Zabýval se antropologií, historií a přírodovědou a jeho odbornost v těchto oblastech mu umožnila hluboce porozumět přírodnímu světu i lidské kultuře.
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."