Native American Culture Areas::

The Plains

• Subsistence
• Towns
• Trade
• Politics
• Society
• Ceremony
• Warfare

The Great Plains stretches across the heartland of North America. This land of wind and sun and grass is actually intercepted by a network of rivers and nestles against the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains. From the North Saskatchewan River in Canada, almost to the Rio Grande in Mexico, between the Missouri-Mississippi valleys in the east, to the foothills of the Rockies in the west, the Great Plains encompasses an area of some one million square miles.

The region consists of at least 4 linguistic groups. The Algonquian-speakers reside in the Northern Plains and comprise, amongst others, the Blackfeet, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwa and Gros Ventre. In the same part of the Plains, are the Athapascan-speakers, the Sarsi, who actually allied themselves with the Blackfeet during the 19th century. On the Central Plains reside the Siouan and the Caddoan-speakers. The former group comprise the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota groups of the Sioux Nation, as well as the Crow, Mandan and Hidatsa. The Arikara Nation represents the Caddoan-speakers. The Southern Plains consists of a variety of language-groups: the Comanche belong to the Uto-Aztecan linguistic group, the Kiowa to the Kiowan group, the Wichita and Pawnee to the Caddoan linguistic group, and the Kiowa-Apache speaks an Athapaskan dialect.

There is much climactic and geographical diversity on the Plains. A limited rainfall causes the aridity of the western and southern regions. Rain, however, falls in abundance in the region of the Missouri-Mississippi valleys, producing humid and lush conditions. Generally speaking, moving east to west the prairie grass becomes dryer and shorter. Despite the aridity, however, many Plains animals thrive on this shorter variety of prairie grass known as buffalo grass. In the recent past, numerous buffalo, wolves, coyotes and prong-horned antelope thrived in such conditions. In pre-historical times, great mammals such as mammoths used to roam the Plains regions.

Once, buffalo hunting characterised the subsistence culture of the western Plains. Western tribes such as the Comanche, the Cheyenne, Sioux, Blackfoot and Kiowa would follow the buffalo on foot with bows and arrows, and later on horses with guns. The bow and arrow had come from the Athapaskan Arctic north and the horse from the Spanish. A popular method for hunting buffalo was to stampede hundreds of such animals off cliff-tops. Old buffalo jumps are scattered across the Plains today.

At their peak, buffalo reached some 40 million. At the dawn of the 20th century, their numbers had been reduced to around 500. The buffalo furnished a whole way of life for western Plains Indians. The fur provided warmth and protection in the form of tipi coverings, clothing and bedding. The flesh and organs provided food. The sinew provided thread and binding. The bones provided all manners of tools and utensils. Even the bladder was used as a waterproof container for fluids. The utilitarian importance of buffalo was carried over into ceremonial life. The buffalo skull contains spiritual power, especially the horns and is frequently a centerpiece of sacred altars. Plains Indian tribes still have Buffalo Societies where members have dreamed or have had visions of buffalo and embody a buffalo's power. The western Sioux, for example, have a creation myth that links human origin with that of the buffalo. Both nations - the Sioux and the Buffalo or Pte nations - descended from the Pte Oyate, or Buffalo People, that lived under the surface of the earth. A few members of the Pte Oyate emerged to the present world through a cave in the Black Hills, South Dakota, and eventually became the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people.

Though buffalo provided the major food source for the western Plains tribes, other animals such as deer and antelope were hunted and wild foods such as berries and edible plants were also gathered and ate. Generally, bands of individual nations would gather together for ceremony and communal hunting during the spring and summer, separating off into family hunting groups during the winter.

In contrast to their nomadic neighbours, residents of the eastern Plains, such as the Mandan, Hidatsa, Omaha and Missouri nations, were far more sedentary. They had the lush abundance of the Missouri-Mississippi valleys at their disposal. As such, buffalo hunting supplemented a diet based on farmed and garden produce, small mammals, fish and wild vegetable foods. As far west as eastern South Dakota, for example, there are archaeological remains of cultivated squash, corn, beans, sunflowers and tobacco, as well as remnants of pottery and elaborate earth burial mounds.

When the first European fur trappers and traders moved into the Mississippi and Missouri valleys, they found flourishing and socio-politically and religiously complex agricultural nations. Archaeologists have called these Mississippian developments and the Mississippian trend is thought to have lasted from AD 1000 to 1850. This period and region also saw the establishment of semi-subterranean earth lodges, each of which housed several families and each of which was grouped with others into fixed villages. Mandan towns, for example, were formally laid out with streets and a central plaza. This plaza was the focal point of the community and ceremonies and competitive games were held there. The circular Mandan earth lodge was between 40 and 80 feet in circumference. Four centre posts upheld a continuous series of horizontal cross beams, over which were laid willow-branch matting and then layers of firmly packed earth. Sometimes the tops of such lodges would be flattened to provide a platform for drying crops and to provide a kind of porch to be used on hot evenings.

This eastern Plains region was at the centre of an extensive pan-Indian trading network, which spanned all four corners of the Americas. Over time, large, settled villages began to appear across the central Plains region also, such as in central Nebraska. There was also much inter-regional trade carried on among the different Plains nations. Western tribes, for example, traded buffalo skins and manufactured clothing such as moccasins and skin shirts for eastern corn, squash and the highly valued tobacco plant. All Plains tribes traded Pan-American items: Pacific and Gulf Coast sea shells, Great Lakes copper and Yellowstone obsidian.

Among the nomadic western Plains nations, settlement patterns tended to mirror buffalo movements. As such, these groups were highly mobile and tended to have minimum material possessions.

Political organisations of western Plains bands were structured around the authority of a single or a couple of leaders who had proved themselves in war and hunting. Decision-making also lay in the hands of a single or several female elders. Leaders of each band of a specific nation would gather together at certain times during the year - generally during communal summer gatherings. A grand council of Sioux leaders, for example, was held annually during the communal summer ceremonial season. In such a way, tribal unity was maintained and reinforced each year. The Cheyenne recognised a supernaturally sanctioned ruling council of 44 leaders, each of whom had been chosen from a group of respected, older men to run under 10-year terms. On the eastern Plains, towns or villages were structured on the basis of clans. Councils of clan representatives governed each village and confederation of villages, and leaders tended to be drawn from lineages that traditionally produced leaders.

Western Plains cultures emphasised war and military societies. Social organisation and kinship tended to be bilateral - that is, kinship relations are traced through both maternal and paternal sides of the family. There were exceptions, of course. The Cheyenne and Crow, for example, both had matrilineal kinship systems. The basic social unit was the band, which comprised of 25-100, generally kin-related individuals grouped into families. Band membership was flexible, however, and a family could choose to leave a band and join or even form another.

On the eastern Plains, the functioning economic and social unit was the matrilineal or patrilineal extended family. Each extended family would own an earth lodge and would control, but not own, a certain field. This field was owned by a lineage and ultimately by the clan, which was composed of various lineages. Clans were hierarchically ranked according to size and ritual importance.

On the western Plains, ceremonial life was largely oriented toward the buffalo and its regeneration. In the east, ritual and belief was oriented towards the agricultural cycle. However, all Plains tribes shared certain religious characteristics in common. These shared religious elements included: shamanism, the vision quest, sacred medicine bundles, belief in guardian spirits and community- or nationwide ceremonials such as the Sun Dance.

Very broadly speaking, each individual has a guardian spirit, or a spiritual entity that protects an individual and provides him or her with special songs, prayers and symbols. On the western Plains especially, such spirits usually come to an individual during a vision quest, and can appear in the form of a human, an animal or a bird. The vision quest is a solitary ritual wherein a person retreats to a solitary place, fasts and prays with a pipe for, say, four days and nights, until he or she receives spiritual instructions from a spiritual entity. Such visions carry great symbolic weight among Plains nations, even today. Often, it is the shaman or medicine person who provides an interpretation to a vision quester's dream. But equally often, emphasis is placed upon the individual him- or herself to provide such an interpretation. Individuality is prized among many Plains nations, such as the Sioux.

The shaman or medicine person serves many functions and not all shamans serve all. Shamans act as intermediaries between the human and supernatural worlds. They are also interpreters of the spiritual world. They can function as healers. Often, books on shamanism talk about medicine people flying out to the spiritual worlds. This may be true for the Plains region as well, but often shamans there will say that spirits come to them, upon invitation. Shamans are also sought out to provide spiritual guidance, to locate lost objects, to provide relief from economic and social hardships, and to provide protection in war. Of the latter, this can apply as much to the Gulf and Vietnam wars as to ancient battles between tribes and between tribes and Europeans. It is important to bear in mind that not all healers are necessarily shamans.

Sacred medicine bundles feature heavily in the religious life of western and eastern Plains nations. Each bundle is associated with a complex mythology and sacred lore. Some of them pertain to specific activities such as fishing or eagle trapping; others are more generalised in their function, relating broadly to curing or fertility. A bundle can contain many or a few sacred things, ranging from the preserved skins of small animals and birds, parts of buffalo horns, eagle feathers, stones, seeds and other plant matter. An especially potent object contained in a medicine bundle is the Sacred Pipe. The pipe is a medium by which tobacco is offered as a smoke to the spirit realm. The smoke also carries the prayers of the people. The pipe in itself is sacred and its bowl and stem can only be joined during ceremony. All these objects are wrapped in layers of hide and often red cloth and opened under ceremonial conditions.

An example of a community-wide ceremony is Okipa ceremony, held annually by the Mandan. Over a four-day period, a series of rituals insures the welfare of the people. The creation of the earth, its people, animals and plants is ceremonially enacted, as are events of Mandan history, past and present. The most famous community-wide ceremonial gathering on the Plains is perhaps the Sun Dance. This Plains ritual varies in purpose and function from tribe to tribe but everywhere it draws people from far and wide, though of course there are small Sun Dances held in tiny reservation communities that attract only residents. In the past, it drew hundreds and thousands of people to the annual summer camps. The ritual could be an earth-renewal one, it could serve to unify a nation as well as to heal individuals, it could be a prayer for fertility, it could be a dance of vengeance for death.

Warfare was another defining aspect of the Plains culture area. It still is. Korean and Vietnam veterans are still highly respected in certain reservation communities, and they are frequently honoured during powwows for example. On Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, traditional male warrior societies are being re-established based on a membership of veterans of 20th century wars such as the Gulf and Vietnam wars. Distinction and glory in war, as well as the quality of generosity, enhanced the status of a Plains Indian individual, male and female. War was a social institution and warlike exploits were necessary for social enhancement. Such exploits including counting coup on a live enemy with a harmless stick, and scalping. Many Plains tribes, such as the Lakota Sioux and the Cheyenne, had female warriors and women warrior societies too, although we know much less about these as most historians have chosen not to acknowledge their existence. Today, women warrior societies are being resurrected on Pine Ridge Reservation, for example.

The earliest contact between Plains Indians and Europeans came from European explorers, trappers and traders. These initial encounters were generally friendly, especially in the Canadian Plains. However, the systematic slaughter of beaver and then buffalo for trade and then for sport, plus the increasing influx of white migrants to the area, caused a progressive collapse in Anglo-Indian relations. Numerous battles were fought and eventually treaties were signed and then broken by the US. When buffalo extermination became a part of US policy in the mid- to late 1800s, the Plains nations realised they had lost their lifestyle and their homeland forever. Their defeat was symbolised by the massacre of Minniconjou Lakota families by US troops at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. By the end of the 19th century, almost all Plains tribes had been herded onto reservations and reduced to hunting cows released from corrals. Religion, language and other cultural traditions went underground, rather than disappeared, however, and today most Plains tribes, particularly western ones, are experiencing a dramatic revival in their culture.