, c. 1832 The earliest people of the Great Plains mixed hunting and gathering wild plants. The cultures developed horticulture, then
agriculture, as they settled in sedentary villages and towns.
Maize, originally from
Mesoamerica and spread north from the
Southwest, became widespread in the south of the Great Plains around 700 CE. Numerous Plains peoples hunted the
American bison (or buffalo) to make items used in everyday life, such as food, cups, decorations, crafting tools, knives, and clothing. The tribes followed the seasonal grazing and migration of the bison. The Plains Indians lived in
tipis because they were easily disassembled and allowed the nomadic life of following game. The
Spanish explorer
Francisco Vásquez de Coronado was the first European to describe the Plains Indian culture. He encountered villages and cities of the
Plains village cultures. While searching for a reputedly wealthy land called
Quivira in 1541, Coronado came across the
Querechos in the Texas panhandle. The Querechos were the people later called
Apache. According to the Spaniards, the Querechos lived "in tents made of the tanned skins of the cows (bison). They dry the flesh in the sun, cutting it thin like a leaf, and when dry they grind it like meal to keep it and make a sort of sea soup of it to eat. ... They season it with fat, which they always try to secure when they kill a cow. They empty a large gut and fill it with blood, and carry this around the neck to drink when they are thirsty." Coronado described many common features of Plains Indians culture: skin tepees,
travois pulled by dogs,
Plains Indian Sign Language, and staple foods such as
jerky and
pemmican.
Siouan language speakers may have originated in the lower
Mississippi River region. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the
Mound Builder civilization during the 9th–12th centuries. Wars with the
Ojibwe and
Cree peoples pushed the
Lakota (Teton Sioux) west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late 17th century. The
Shoshone originated in the western
Great Basin and spread north and east into present-day Idaho and Wyoming. By 1500, some Eastern Shoshone had crossed the
Rocky Mountains into the Great Plains. After 1750, warfare and pressure from the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward. Some of them
migrated as far south as Texas, emerging as the
Comanche by 1700. European explorers and hunters (and later, settlers) brought diseases against which the Indians had no resistance. Between a half and two-thirds of the Plains Indians are thought to have died of
smallpox by the time of the Louisiana Purchase. The
1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic spread across the Great Plains, killing many thousands between 1837 and 1840. In the end, it is estimated that two-thirds of the Blackfoot population died, along with half of the
Assiniboines and Arikaras, a third of the Crows, and a quarter of the Pawnees.
Horses The Plains Indians historically lived without horses, which went extinct in the Americas 15,000–13,000 years ago. However, the reintroduction of the horse in the 16th century had a profound impact on the culture of the Great Plains. When horses were obtained, the Plains tribes rapidly integrated them into their daily lives. People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted nomadic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback. The horse enabled the Plains Indians to gain their subsistence with relative ease from the seemingly limitless bison herds. Riders were able to travel faster and farther in search of bison herds and to transport more goods, thus making it possible to enjoy a richer material environment than their pedestrian ancestors. For the Plains peoples, the horse became an item of prestige as well as utility. They were extravagantly fond of their horses and the lifestyle they permitted. The first Spanish conqueror to bring horses to the new world was Hernán Cortés in 1519. However, Cortés only brought about sixteen horses with his expedition. Coronado brought 558 horses with him on his 1539–1542 expedition. At the time, the Indians of these regions had never seen a horse. Only two of Coronado's horses were mares, so he was highly unlikely to have been the source of the horses that Plains Indians later adopted as the cornerstone of their culture. In 1592, however,
Juan de Oñate brought 7,000 head of livestock with him when he came north to establish a colony in
New Mexico. His horse herd included mares as well as stallions. and his family with a horse and
travois, c. 1871–1907
Pueblo Indians learned about horses by working for Spanish colonists. The Spanish attempted to keep knowledge of riding away from Native people, but nonetheless, they learned and some fled their servitude to their Spanish employers—and took horses with them. Some horses were obtained through trade in spite of prohibitions against it. Other horses escaped captivity for a
feral existence and were captured by Native people. In all cases, the horse was adopted into their culture and herds multiplied. By 1659, the
Navajo from northwestern New Mexico were raiding the Spanish colonies to steal horses. By 1664, the Apache were trading captives from other tribes to the Spanish for horses. The real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the
Pueblo Revolt of 1680 in New Mexico and the capture of thousands of horses and other livestock. They traded many horses north to the Plains Indians. The Walters Art Museum. It was the Comanche, coming to the attention of the Spanish in New Mexico in 1706, who first realized the potential of the horse. As nomads, hunters, and pastoralists, well supplied with horses, they swept most of the mixed-economy Apaches from the plains and by the 1730s were dominant in the Great Plains south of the
Arkansas River. The success of the Comanche encouraged other Indian tribes to adopt a similar lifestyle. The southern Plains Indians acquired vast numbers of horses. By the 19th century, Comanche and Kiowa families owned an average of 35 horses and mules each – and only six or seven were necessary for transport and war. The horses extracted a toll on the environment as well as required labor to care for the herd. Formerly egalitarian societies became more divided by wealth with a negative impact on the role of women. The richest men would have several wives and captives who would help manage their possessions, especially horses. The milder winters of the southern Plains favored a pastoral economy by the Indians. On the northeastern Plains of Canada, the Indians were less favored, with families owning fewer horses, remaining more dependent upon dogs for transporting goods, and hunting bison on foot. The scarcity of horses in the north encouraged raiding and warfare in competition for the relatively small number of horses that survived the severe winters. The Lakota, also called Teton
Sioux, enjoyed the happy medium between North and South and became a dominant Plains tribe by the mid-19th century. They had relatively small horse herds, thus having less impact on their ecosystem. At the same time, they occupied the heart of prime bison range which was also an excellent region for furs, which could be sold to French and American traders for goods such as guns. The Lakota became a highly powerful Plains tribe.
Slaughter of the bison 's late-nineteenth-century research. By the 19th century, the typical year of the Lakota and other northern nomads was a communal buffalo hunt as early in spring as their horses had recovered from the rigors of the winter. In June and July the scattered bands of the tribes gathered together into large encampments, which included ceremonies such as the
Sun Dance. These gatherings afforded leaders to meet to make political decisions, plan movements, arbitrate disputes, and organize and launch raiding expeditions or war parties. In the fall, people would split up into smaller bands to facilitate hunting to procure meat for the long winter. Between the fall hunt and the onset of winter was a time when Lakota warriors could undertake raiding and warfare. With the coming of winter snows, the Lakota settled into winter camps, where activities of the season ceremonies and dances as well as trying to ensure adequate winter feed for their horses. On the southern plains, with their milder winters, the fall and winter was often the raiding season. Beginning in the 1830s, the Comanche and their allies often raided for horses and other goods deep into Mexico, sometimes venturing 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south from their homes near the
Red River in Texas and Oklahoma. The U.S. federal government and local governments promoted bison hunting for various reasons: to allow ranchers to range their cattle without competition from other bovines and to starve and weaken the Plains Indian population to pressure them to remain on reservations. The bison herds formed the basis of the economies of the Plains tribes. Without bison, they were forced to move onto reservations or starve. The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated. Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding through hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days. The slaughter of the bison had substantial adverse impacts on the Native American people who relied on them. These impacts were both immediate and persistent. By the early 20th century, bison nations had greater child mortality and unemployment compared to Indian nations that were never reliant on the bison. By the late 20th century, income per capita was 25% lower for bison nations. Whereas people in bison-hunting communities were once among the tallest people in the world, generations born after the slaughter of the bison had lost all their height advantage. As the great herds began to wane, proposals to protect the bison were discussed.
Buffalo Bill Cody, among others, spoke in favor of protecting the bison because he saw that the pressure on the
species was too great. But these were discouraged since it was recognized that the Plains Indians, often at war with the United States, depended on bison for their way of life. In 1874, President
Ulysses S. Grant "
pocket vetoed" a federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds. In 1875, General
Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of
Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Plains Indians of their source of food. This meant that the bison were hunted almost to
extinction during the 19th century and were reduced to a few hundred by the early 1900s.
Indian Wars ritual, which the Lakota believed would reunite the living with spirits of the dead, cause the white invaders to vanish, and bring peace, prosperity, and unity to Indian peoples throughout the region Armed conflicts intensified in the late 19th century between Native American nations on the plains and the U.S. government, through what were called generally the Indian Wars. Notable conflicts in this period include the
Dakota War,
Great Sioux War,
Snake War and
Colorado War. Comanche power peaked in the 1840s when they conducted
large-scale raids hundreds of miles into Mexico proper, while also
warring against the Anglo-Americans and
Tejanos who had settled in independent
Texas. Expressing the frontier anti-Indian sentiment,
Theodore Roosevelt believed the Indians were destined to vanish under the pressure of white civilization, stating in an 1886 lecture: Among the most notable events during the wars was the
Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890. ==Material culture==