Life on the PlainsBy: Nora, Simone, and Esti

How Indians Hunt

They wore animal skin as a disguise when they were hunting.

Right before they start to hunt they all yell at the same time to startle the bison.

Right after they yell they run at the bison towards the cliff and the bison fall off the cliff and die!

What Bison is Used For…

They made clothing, blankets and moccasins out of the skin.

They twisted bison hair into cord.

They made tools from the bones and horns.

They carried water in bags made from the stomach of a bison.

EEWWWW!!!

Farmers and Hunters

Indians like Mandans, Pawnees, Whichatas, and Sioux lived in the eastern part of the plains.

The Indians were farmers and hunters.

They were farmers in the valleys along river in Mississippi and Missouri and Platte.

They hunted deer, elk and bison.

What Indians Live in

Indians live in circular houses called lodges

All lodges are built over a shallow pit

On the northern prairies of the plains the lodges are covered with sod (earth cut into blocks or mats and held together by grass and its roots)

These lodges are called earth lodges

On the southern prairies the earth lodges are covered with grass or animal skin

All About Those Earth Lodges Each earth lodge was a

home to several families. Sometimes, 60 people plus

their dogs lived in one lodge.

Each family its own beds. In the center of the lodge,

there was a fireplace, under a hole to let the smoke out.

The fireplace protected them in the cold winter.

The Big Hunt Twice a Year

Twice a year, the villages on the prairies emptied.

Everyone took part in the great buffalo hunt.

The people walked for many days in the river valleys, forest, and to the grassy hunting areas.

When the Indians were not hunting, they farmed.

There farms were small they looked as though they were gardens.

There crops were mainly beans, corns, squash, and sunflower.

Often times they would trade their crops to others.

Some villages along misouri river became trading centres.

The presidents day sight of Pierre was once the capital of Arikara.

The Great Plains Nomads

They didn’t grow any crops because the ground had no rich river valleys.Roots of the tiny grass was so hard/ tough it was nearly impossible break the soil with a shovel.

Many of the people on the great plains did not farm or live in villages.

The crows, the cheyenns, the kiowas, and the comanches were all nomads.

They never stay to live in one place because they follow a big herd of bison

Things nomads do …

Even though the nomads did not have permanent homes or shelters, they still claimed areas they liked as THEIR hunting areas.

They followed special paths in their land areas.

The paths mostly depended on the movement of herds of buffalo.

They counted on the buffalos as an important resource.

Things like houses, clothing, food and fuel for fire all came from one animal… buffalo.

Fuel for fire was made from dried buffalo duty that they called chips.

All about their shelters

The nomads would built easy-to-move shelters.

Most of the time, they would built tepees.

A tepee is a cone-shaped tent that early Americans would live in.

The nomads would set up wooden poles in the shape of a circle, and tied them at the top.

They used buffalo skin to cover the wooden poles and left a small hole at the top to let out the smoke from their fires.

How wood is used..

Wood was rare if found because not a lot of trees grew on the plains.

Native Americans made their wood use good in two ways, poles for the tepees and making them into a kind of carrier called a travois.

Travois’s were made from two poles tightly secured to a dog.

How to be chosen as chief

In the Indian plains way of life, each and every person was treated the same.

No person was born more importantly than the other.

Any man could become chief by proving their great hunting skills and a good leader of the people.

A man was chosen to be chief only because his people not only chose him, but they trusted him.

About the nomadic tribes

In some of the nomadic tribes, people who didn’t follow the tribes rules could live on their own.

In some situations a chief and his followers would start a whole new group.

One tribe usually had many subgroups.

Each of these subgroups were made up of families who worked together to hunt.

Vocab words

Lodge: A circular house of the Plains Indians. Tepee: A cone shaped tent made from wooden

poles and buffalo skins. Travois: A device made of two poles fastened to a

dogs harness, used to carry possessions. Sod: Earth cut into blocks or mats, held together

by grass and its roots.

THE ENDBy: Nora, Esti and Simone