Overview of the Plains

The People of the Plains are the most famous of all the Native Americans. Their horsemanship, buffalo-hunting, tepees and war bonnets are the most often represented symbols from Native American history.

Many people think that all Native Americans looked and lived like the Plains tribes. Some people even think that modern Native Americans still dress and act like the People of the Plains. These native peoples do not like to be stereotyped. They want their wide range of cultures, identities and histories to be recognized and understood.

But why are the People of the Plains of all the Native Americans, so famous? One reason is that many of them retained their original way of like longer than most other native peoples, through most of the 19th century. Most of the final wave of Anglo-Native American wars involved the Plains tribes. This is a period of American history re-created time and again in books, movies, and television shows. The Native American fighters of that period captured the national imagination then, and they still do today, for their bravery, skill and resourcefulness. Moreover, there is something especially romantic about the Plains way of life-freedom of movement and independence on the open range, plus colorful clothing and homes-that still strikes a chord in us.

Who exactly were the People of the Plains? What and where are the Plains? The phrase People of the Plains is one way to refer to the many tribes of the Plains Culture Area. A culture area is a geographical region where different peoples shared cultural traits. The Plains Culture Area, as defined by experts on Native American culture, extends over a vast area: east to west, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rocky Mountains; north to south, from territory in present day Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta in Canada all the way to central Texas in the United States.

Most of the country in this region is treeless grassland. There are two types of grasslands: (1) that of Mississippi Valley region, where there is plenty of rainfall - about 20 to 40 inches - and tall grass; sometimes called the Prairie
Plaines, or simply the prairies; (2) that of the west, where there is less rain - about 10 to 20 inches - and short grass; known as the high plains, or the Great Plains.

The flat or rolling grasslands are interrupted in places by stands of trees, especially willows and cottonwoods along the numerous rivers flowing eastward into the Missouri and the Mississippi/ Move over, in some locations, highlands rise up from the Plains; the Ozarks of Missouri and Arkansas; the Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming; and the Badlands of South Dakota. These ountains, ghills, plateaus and buttes are often by pine trees. Yet what is remarkable about the Plains is the sameness-an enormous ocean of grass stretching over thousands of miles.

Many different kinds of animals, both large and small lived on these grasslands, including antelope, deer elk, bears, wolves, coyotes and rabbits. The environment was especially suitable to one big grazing animal: the shaggy-mane, short-horned, fleshy humped, hoofed creature known as the American bison, or the buffalo. The buffalo was central to the Plains people economy, providing meat for food, as well as hides, bones, and horns for shelter, clothing, and tools.

The People of the Plains Culture Area is different from other Native American culture areas in that the typical way of life evolved only after the arrival of whites. What made the nomadic buffalo-hunting life possible was the horse, which was first brought to North America by the Spanish in the 1500s. Native American in the Southwest gained widespread use of horses by the late 1600s. And Plains tribes acquired use of the animal in the early to mid-1700s.

Because of horses, native peoples were no longer dependent on farming, along the fertile river valleys to supply enough food for their people. They could now range over a wide area in search of the great buffalo herds, carrying all their possessions with them. Portable tepees of poles and buffalo hide proved practical for life on the trail. Not all tribes on the Plains completely abandoned their permanent villages of earth or grass lodges and their farming. Bur, with horses, the tribes tended to leave to leave the villages for longer periods on wide ranging hunting expeditions.

Many different peoples adopted the new nomadic way of life, migrating onto the Plains from different directions. Many of these peoples were being pushed from the ancestral homelands by white settlers or by eastern tribes armed with guns acquired from whites.

Once on the Plains people began sharing other customs besides horses, buffalo hunting and tepees. They passed on religious ritual and methods of warfare. In order to communicate with one another for purposes of council or trade they also devised a language of the hands. In this shared sign language, each tribe had its own gesture to identify it.

Ancient Native American had once lived in the Plains. But it is thought they left the region, probably because of drought, in the 13th century. The earliest inhabitants on the Plains after that time may have been the early agricultural tribes of the Missouri River Valley: Caddoan speaking Pawnee, Arikara and Wichita; and Siouan speaking Mandan and Hidatsa. It is thought that there were only two non-farming tribes on the Plains before 1500: the Algonquian speaking Blackfoot and the Uto-Aztecan speaking Comanche. But then, during the 1600s and 1700s, other tribes came to the region: The Algonquian speaking Arapaho, Cheyenne, Gros Ventre, Plains Cree and Plains Ojibway; the Kiowa-Tanoan speaking Kiowa; the Athapascan speaking Kiowa-Apache and Sarcee; the Tonkawan speaking Tonkawa; and the Siouan speaking Assiniboine, Crow, Iowa, Kaw, Missouri, Onaha, Osage, Oto, Ponca, Quapaw and Sioux.

Plains tribes really consisted of bands of related families. Each band had a few hundred members. The bands lives apart most of the year, but gathered in the summer for communal buffalo hunts and religious rituals.

Some books make a distinction between the tribes of the tall grass prairies and those of the short grass high plains, since many of the former had permanent villages and continued farming part of the year, while the more western peoples set up only temporary camps and gave up farming altogether.

Each one of the tribes mentioned has its own particular history and life ways.