Plains Indians
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50 free Plains Indians trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
For hundreds of years the grasslands in the middle of North America were home to dozens of Native nations, from the Lakota and Cheyenne in the north to the Kiowa in the south. Some followed the bison herds and lived in tipis; others farmed the river valleys and built permanent villages. Their history is full of clever inventions, brave deeds and stories that still surprise people today. This quiz turns that history into fun facts you can play. The questions cover everyday life on the Plains, such as homes, food, hunting, clothing and travel, along with ceremonies and beliefs, famous leaders, well-known battles and treaties, and the ways Plains nations are remembered in place names, films and sport. It is written for curious kids, families, teachers planning a Native American history unit, and anyone who enjoys a good story behind an answer. Many of the questions are easy enough for young players, some are a real challenge, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Long before horses arrived, how did Plains Indian hunters at Head-Smashed-In kill many bison at once?
Drove them over a cliff
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.
Q 02Which fuel, nicknamed 'chips', did Plains Indians gather for cooking fires on grasslands with few trees?
Dried bison dung
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.
Q 03What did Plains Indian nations with different spoken languages use to trade and hold councils with one another?
Sign language
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.
Q 04Which Wyoming landmark got its grooved sides, in Kiowa and Lakota legend, from the claws of giant bears?
Devils Tower
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.
Q 05Which part of an animal did Plains Indian tanners rub into a scraped hide to turn it into soft buckskin?
The brain
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.
Q 06At which Montana battle did Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors wipe out George Custer's 7th Cavalry command?
Little Bighorn
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.
Q 07Which A-shaped drag frame of two poles did Plains Indians hitch first to dogs and later to horses?
Travois
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.
Q 08Which Best Picture-winning Western has much of its dialogue spoken in Lakota with English subtitles?
Dances with Wolves
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.
Q 09What nickname, said to come from Cheyenne warriors, was given to Black US cavalrymen serving on the Plains frontier?
Buffalo Soldiers
Buffalo Soldiers may have begun as a Cheyenne name meaning 'Wild Buffalo' in 1877, though accounts differ on which nation said it first.
Q 10What name is given to the Plains Indian war honour of touching a living enemy and riding away unharmed?
Counting coup
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.
Q 11Feathers of which bird, each one earned by an act of courage, make up a Plains Indian war bonnet?
Eagle
Eagle feathers were so hard to earn that a warrior in some societies might be given only two or three in his whole life.
Q 12Among the Lakota and other Plains Indian nations, who traditionally made and owned the family tipi?
The women
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.
Q 13A Plains Indian tipi was traditionally pitched with its doorway facing which direction, away from the prevailing winds?
East
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.
Q 21What name is given to the rite in which a young Plains Indian fasts alone for four days seeking spirit guidance?
Vision quest
A vision quest takes place at a sacred site chosen by elders, who afterwards help to interpret whatever dreams or animals appeared.
Q 22Which Oglala Lakota chief won a war named after him, forcing the US Army to abandon its Bozeman Trail forts?
Red Cloud
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.
Q 23Which movement, begun by the Paiute prophet Wovoka in 1889, promised the Lakota a return of peace and plenty?
Ghost Dance
Q 14Colonists from which European country brought the horses that Plains Indians began riding in the 1600s?
Spain
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.
Q 15Which Plains Indian food of pounded dried meat, fat and berries later fed polar explorers such as Shackleton?
Pemmican
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.
Q 16Which Hunkpapa Lakota leader took his people to Canada for four years and later toured with a Wild West show?
Sitting Bull
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.
Q 17Which Oglala Lakota war leader, who avoided cameras all his life, is being carved into a South Dakota mountain?
Crazy Horse
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.
Q 18Which range, sacred to the Lakota as Paha Sapa, was promised to them by treaty until gold was found in 1874?
Black Hills
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.
Q 19Which Southern Plains nation split from the Shoshone and became famed as some of history's finest mounted fighters?
Comanche
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.
Q 20Which yearly ceremony of the Plains nations has dancers go without food or water for days around a central pole?
Sun Dance
The Sun Dance was outlawed in Canada in 1895, and the full ceremony was not allowed there again until 1951.
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.
Q 24Before glass beads arrived by trade, what did Northern Plains artists dye and stitch onto hides as decoration?
Porcupine quills
Porcupine quills just two to three inches long were coloured and sewn on, an art form found nowhere outside North America.
Q 25In which small domed hut do the Lakota pour water over heated rocks for their basic purification ceremony?
Sweat lodge
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.
Q 26What do historians call the Lakota calendars painted on bison hide with one picture for each year's biggest event?
Winter counts
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.
Q 27Which dome-shaped homes, up to 60 feet across, did farming Plains nations such as the Hidatsa and Arikara build?
Earth lodges
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.
Q 28Mount Rushmore was carved into a peak that the Lakota know by which name, honouring spirits of the directions?
Six Grandfathers
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.
Q 29Which painter toured the Plains in the 1830s making Indian portraits and has the red pipe-bowl stone named after him?
George Catlin
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.
Q 30Which painted rawhide case, named by French fur traders, did Plains Indians pack with dried meat and clothing?
Parfleche
Parfleche comes from French words meaning 'to parry' and 'arrow', and the same name was once given to tough rawhide shields.