50 Fun Facts About Plains Indians

Long before horses arrived, how did Plains Indian hunters at Head-Smashed-In kill many bison at once?

Hunters drove them over a cliff, a method used at this Alberta site for about 5,500 years, and the bones left at the bottom lie 12 metres deep.

Which fuel, nicknamed 'chips', did Plains Indians gather for cooking fires on grasslands with few trees?

Dried bison dung was one of the few things on the open prairie that would burn, so settlers crossing in wagons collected it for their own cooking fires too.

What did Plains Indian nations with different spoken languages use to trade and hold councils with one another?

Sign language, known as Hand Talk, worked as a common tongue across much of North America, and some deaf people still use it day to day.

Which Wyoming landmark got its grooved sides, in Kiowa and Lakota legend, from the claws of giant bears?

Devils Tower is called Bear Lodge by several Plains nations, and in the story the rock rose skyward to lift a group of girls out of the bears' reach.

Which part of an animal did Plains Indian tanners rub into a scraped hide to turn it into soft buckskin?

The brain was worked into the raw hide and the skin was then smoked, a pairing that leaves the leather soft, pliable and the colour of dark honey.

At which Montana battle did Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors wipe out George Custer's 7th Cavalry command?

Little Bighorn is known to the Lakota as the Battle of the Greasy Grass, and over the next 70 years more than 120 people claimed to be its lone survivor.

Which A-shaped drag frame of two poles did Plains Indians hitch first to dogs and later to horses?

A travois pulled by a dog could carry only about 20 to 30 kg, and by the mid-1700s horses had taken over the job.

Which Best Picture-winning Western has much of its dialogue spoken in Lakota with English subtitles?

Dances with Wolves won seven Oscars from twelve nominations, including Best Director for Kevin Costner, who also starred as a soldier taken in by a Lakota band.

What nickname, said to come from Cheyenne warriors, was given to Black US cavalrymen serving on the Plains frontier?

Buffalo Soldiers may have begun as a Cheyenne name meaning 'Wild Buffalo' in 1877, though accounts differ on which nation said it first.

What name is given to the Plains Indian war honour of touching a living enemy and riding away unharmed?

Counting coup with a hand or a short stick was among the most prized feats in battle, and in some nations a warrior who managed it won the right to wear a feather in his hair.

Feathers of which bird, each one earned by an act of courage, make up a Plains Indian war bonnet?

Eagle feathers were so hard to earn that a warrior in some societies might be given only two or three in his whole life.

Among the Lakota and other Plains Indian nations, who traditionally made and owned the family tipi?

The women both made and owned the tipi, and they were the ones who took it down and set it up again each time the camp moved.

A Plains Indian tipi was traditionally pitched with its doorway facing which direction, away from the prevailing winds?

East is where the sun rises, and the whole tipi was tilted slightly that way so that the wind blowing from behind slid over it.

Colonists from which European country brought the horses that Plains Indians began riding in the 1600s?

Spain's settlers brought horses to New Mexico, and a 1680 uprising by the Pueblo peoples there put thousands of the animals into Native hands.

Which Plains Indian food of pounded dried meat, fat and berries later fed polar explorers such as Shackleton?

Pemmican takes its name from a Cree word for fat or grease, and fur traders shipped packs of it north to stock their trading posts.

Which Hunkpapa Lakota leader took his people to Canada for four years and later toured with a Wild West show?

Sitting Bull had a vision of soldiers falling upside down into camp shortly before his people's greatest victory, and they took it as a promise of what was coming.

Which Oglala Lakota war leader, who avoided cameras all his life, is being carved into a South Dakota mountain?

Crazy Horse has a carved face 87 feet high, finished in 1998, but the rest of the mountain sculpture, begun in 1948, is still far from done.

Which range, sacred to the Lakota as Paha Sapa, was promised to them by treaty until gold was found in 1874?

The Black Hills are 'the heart of everything that is' to the Lakota, yet miners poured in only six years after a treaty had closed the land to outsiders.

Which Southern Plains nation split from the Shoshone and became famed as some of history's finest mounted fighters?

The Comanche held a territory across Texas and its neighbours so vast that colonists called it Comanchería, and their language served as a code in both world wars.

Which yearly ceremony of the Plains nations has dancers go without food or water for days around a central pole?

The Sun Dance was outlawed in Canada in 1895, and the full ceremony was not allowed there again until 1951.

What name is given to the rite in which a young Plains Indian fasts alone for four days seeking spirit guidance?

A vision quest takes place at a sacred site chosen by elders, who afterwards help to interpret whatever dreams or animals appeared.

Which Oglala Lakota chief won a war named after him, forcing the US Army to abandon its Bozeman Trail forts?

Red Cloud would not even meet the peace commissioners until the soldiers had gone, and the day after they marched out his allies burned the forts.

Which movement, begun by the Paiute prophet Wovoka in 1889, promised the Lakota a return of peace and plenty?

The Ghost Dance grew out of the traditional circle dance, and Wovoka taught that it would reunite the living with the spirits of the dead.

Before glass beads arrived by trade, what did Northern Plains artists dye and stitch onto hides as decoration?

Porcupine quills just two to three inches long were coloured and sewn on, an art form found nowhere outside North America.

In which small domed hut do the Lakota pour water over heated rocks for their basic purification ceremony?

The sweat lodge is known as the inípi to the Lakota, and some describe its rounded shape as a symbol of Mother Earth's womb.

What do historians call the Lakota calendars painted on bison hide with one picture for each year's biggest event?

Winter counts get their name because the Lakota year ran from first snowfall to first snowfall, and each band trusted a single keeper with the record.

Which dome-shaped homes, up to 60 feet across, did farming Plains nations such as the Hidatsa and Arikara build?

Earth lodges had heavy timber frames under a thick layer of soil, and they were the largest buildings on the Plains until the 20th century.

Mount Rushmore was carved into a peak that the Lakota know by which name, honouring spirits of the directions?

Six Grandfathers are the spirits of the four compass points plus above and below, and the name was tied to six head-like knobs along the summit ridge.

Which painter toured the Plains in the 1830s making Indian portraits and has the red pipe-bowl stone named after him?

George Catlin visited the Minnesota quarries in the 1830s, and the soft red rock carved into ceremonial pipes has been known as catlinite ever since.

Which painted rawhide case, named by French fur traders, did Plains Indians pack with dried meat and clothing?

Parfleche comes from French words meaning 'to parry' and 'arrow', and the same name was once given to tough rawhide shields.

Which nation's 1920s oil wealth, and the murders it attracted, are the subject of the film Killers of the Flower Moon?

The Osage kept shared mineral rights to their land, and the killings by outsiders who were after that money became known as the Reign of Terror.

Which Plains state takes its name from Otoe and Omaha words meaning 'flat water', describing the Platte River?

Nebraska was first the name French explorers gave the river itself in 1714, before they swapped it for 'plate', their own word for flat.

Which farming nation on the upper Missouri River sheltered the Lewis and Clark expedition through the winter of 1804–05?

The Mandan were famous for their hospitality, and it was at their villages that the explorers first met Sacagawea.

Charles Curtis, a citizen of the Kaw Nation of the Plains, held which high office in Herbert Hoover's government?

Vice president Curtis served from 1929 to 1933, after years in the House and the Senate, where he rose to be majority leader.

Which Montana nation, known to themselves as Apsáalooke, sent scouts to ride with George Custer in 1876?

The Crow name translates Apsáalooke, 'children of the large-beaked bird', which was first given to them by their Hidatsa neighbours.

Which Oglala Lakota runner from Pine Ridge won the 10,000 metres at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics as a virtual unknown?

Billy Mills was a Marine Corps lieutenant when he ran, and his win is still counted among the greatest upsets in Olympic history.

Which confederacy of Montana and Alberta, the most northerly large Plains nation, got its first horses in the 1730s?

The Blackfoot name is said to come from the black-dyed soles of their moccasins, which one story puts down to walking through the ash of prairie fires.

Which farming nation of the central Plains believed that its people were descended from the stars?

The Pawnee painted four poles in each lodge for the four major star gods, and held that the Morning Star and Evening Star were parents of the first Pawnee woman.

Which Oglala holy man, whose life story became a famous 1932 book, has South Dakota's highest peak named after him?

Black Elk toured Europe with a Wild West show as a young man, and the mountain once called Harney Peak took his name in 2016.

Which Ponca chief won an 1879 court ruling in Omaha that Native Americans are 'persons' under US law?

Standing Bear won the right of habeas corpus, which meant the Army could no longer hold him and his band without a legal reason.

Which gatherings, named from a Narragansett word, feature dance styles such as Grass and Fancy that began on the Plains?

Powwows take their name from a word for a spiritual leader, and each session opens with a grand entry in which the dancers parade into the arena.

In which firm-framed carrier did Plains Indian mothers keep a baby safe on their backs or tied to a horse?

A cradleboard could hang from a strap round its mother's forehead or chest, and trinkets were tied to the headpiece to keep the baby amused.

Which new form of transport in the 1860s brought the hunters and markets that nearly wiped out the Plains bison herds?

Railroads even hired their own hunters to feed the work crews, and William 'Buffalo Bill' Cody was one of the men they paid to do it.

Which present-day state was once called Indian Territory, where many southern Plains nations were resettled?

Oklahoma was created when a 1906 act of Congress merged Indian Territory with the Oklahoma Territory next door, ending its separate existence.

The US Army's UH-72 Lakota follows a service tradition of giving Native American names to which kind of machine?

Helicopters in Army service take the names of Native nations by tradition, and the Lakota's was announced as the first one was delivered.

Which Sioux reservation straddling the two Dakotas drew thousands of oil pipeline protesters in 2016?

Standing Rock's protest camps began with one set up by an elder and her grandchildren, and by that September they were the largest Native American gathering in more than 100 years.

The Lakota name Wakan Tanka, the term for the sacred or divine, is usually translated into English as what?

Great Spirit is the usual version, but before missionaries came the phrase meant a whole group of sacred beings, so some prefer 'Great Mystery'.

A Lakota heyoka, or sacred clown, is expected to behave in which unusual way around other people?

Opposite to everyone else is the rule: in a heat wave a heyoka might shiver under a thick blanket, and in freezing weather wander about complaining of the heat.

On what unusual paper did Plains Indian warrior-artists of the late 1800s draw their battles and hunts?

Accounting ledgers were a common source of paper on the Plains, and the drawing style named after them was revived by artists in the 1960s.

What name is given to the tub-shaped craft that Missouri River villagers made by stretching one bison hide over willow?

Bull boats were only about four feet across and eighteen inches deep, and took their name from the hide of a male bison.