Plains Indian summary

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Below is the article summary. For the full article, see Plains Indian.

Pawnee scoutsPawnee Scouts, photograph by Frank North, c. 1869.

Plains Indian, Any member of various Native American tribes that formerly inhabited the Great Plains of the U.S. and southern Canada. Plains Indians are popularly regarded as the typical American Indians. They were essentially big-game hunters, the buffalo being a primary source of food and equally important as a source of materials for clothing, shelter, and tools. Until supplanted by white settlers from the 16th century onward, the Plains Indians occupied the area between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, which includes portions of both the United States and Canada. It is a vast grassland stretching from northern Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada to the Rio Grande border of Texas. The Arapaho, Assiniboin, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Plains Cree, Crow, Hidatsa, Kiowa, Mandan, Osage, Pawnee, and Sioux are Plains Indians.

Plains Wars Summary

Plains Wars, series of conflicts from the early 1850s through the late 1870s between Native Americans and the United States, along with its Indian allies, over control of the Great Plains between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. The initial major confrontation, sometimes known as the

Runs Medicine, an Arapaho man wearing traditional regalia, c. 1899.

Arapaho Summary

Arapaho, North American Indian tribe of Algonquian linguistic stock who lived during the 19th century along the Platte and Arkansas rivers of what are now the U.S. states of Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas. Their oral traditions suggest that they once had permanent villages in the Eastern

Oceti Sakowin Summary

Oceti Sakowin, broad alliance of Indigenous North American peoples who spoke three related languages within the Siouan language family, commonly known by the exonym (a name given and used by outsiders) Sioux. The Oceti Sakowin people are divided into three groups based on the language variant they