America 1835-1900�The Plains Indians
To identify some key features of the lifestyle of some Indigenous peoples living on the Great Plains.� Targeting Assessment Objectives AO1 and AO2.
Learning Objective
Success Criteria
The terms used in this unit of work for what people at the time referred to as ‘Indians’ can be problematic.
This lesson is entitled ‘Plains Indians’, to best fit with the term commonly used by examining bodies and textbooks. The term ‘Indians’ is neither accurate nor unanimously accepted by the modern descendants of these peoples. Christopher Columbus, on arriving in what he believed to be the east coast of India, named the Indigenous population Indians which was, of course, a misnomer. The name stuck however, and you will see it used in sources and sometimes when describing Indigenous�peoples and historic events in the USA.
A Note on Language
In this unit of work, the more accepted term ‘Indigenous peoples’ will be used where possible and wherever it does not conflict with primary sources or make the topic more difficult to understand.
What factors keep communities together? Examine the pictures below with a partner and try to come up with five factors.
Communities
Some factors:
family, religion, sport, geographical area, language, ethnicity, similar interests/passions, history, tradition, gender
Photos courtesy of Danilo Borges and Matt Crypto (via commons.wikimedia.org) - granted under creative commons licence – attribution
Communities
This lesson focuses on communities that lived on the Great Plains of the USA. Known as Indigenous peoples or nations, there were hundreds of different communities.
Each nation was different, which makes it hard to generalise about the ways in which they lived. For every aspect of life, there were nations that did things differently. This lesson tries to give some general information that is applicable to most nations, but certainly not all.
Pause for Thought: What factors do you think kept this community together?
Many Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains lived in seasonally nomadic societies known as nations. They would spend the autumn and winter in earth lodges and spend the warmer months moving around the plains and living in tipis.
Each nation would be made up of bands; small groups of between 50 and 100 people that would be self-governing for most of the time.
Each band was usually led by a chief who was in power based on his wisdom and skills. Their leadership skills were often referred to as strong spiritual energy or ‘medicine’.
Each chief would have a council of elders and�medicine men or doctors. This council would�discuss decisions before they were made.�Sometimes tobacco was smoked during�ceremonies to gain the wisdom of the spirits.
Each nation also contained warrior societies.�All the adult men of a band would be part�of this society
Indigenous Societies
Chiefs did not rule a band by making and enforcing laws, but by being respected. Chiefdom was not hereditary; it was based on merit rather than birth. A chief could not make members of a band do anything and decisions were made by a council. Being a chief was more about having the responsibility of protecting the band than wielding power.
Indigenous Society: Chiefs
Source 1
I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation.
We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right.
Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world.
We do not want riches. We want peace and love.
Chief Red Cloud, Sioux
Red Cloud, Oglala Lakota War Chief
Wolf Robe,�Cheyenne Chief
Pretty Nose, Arapaho War Chief
Both historic and modern Indigenous nations often have animist beliefs. This means that they believe that all things have a spirit; the trees, hills, rivers, animals etc. Indigenous people may therefore have a spiritual connection to their environment.
Indigenous Religion
Some nations believe in a spirit that is beyond the earth. In some cases this is known as the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery or one of a hundred other names. Before European contact, Indigenous people did not view this spirit as a Christian might view God; they saw it more as a mysterious guiding force outside or above normal life that should be respected.
In some nations, medicine men were the people responsible for communing with these spirits, battling bad spirits that caused diseases and interpreting dreams and visions. Not all medicine men were male, despite the name, and women could also perform this role.
Medicine men (and women) are often described as shamans�– a common feature of many animist religions around�the world.
Indigenous Society: Medicine Men
Source 2
The traditions of our people are handed down from father to son.
The Chief is considered to be the most learned, and the leader of the tribe.
The Doctor, however, is thought to have more inspiration.
He is supposed to be in communion with spirits...�He cures the sick by the laying of hands, and prayers and incantations and heavenly songs.
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Northern Paiute, 1883
Source 3
Blackfoot Medicine Man, performing�a religious ceremony by George�Catlin, 1832
Nesjaja Hatali,�Navajo Medicine Man
Betsy Thunder,�Ho-Chunk Medicine Woman
Leadership
It is your task to have a conversation with a small group and to decide on the top three characteristics that you would look for each type of leader.
You can use the word mat to help you, but there is a catch – you only have five minutes to decide on the top three for each, and no one in your group can talk.
Use pens and paper, hand signals and body language to have this conversation. You must agree on your top threes.
What would be the most important characteristics to look for in a chief or medicine man?
Indigenous Society: Warrior Societies
Warrior societies were groups of men that held the responsibility of hunting buffalo, the safe travel of a band and protecting their tipis from attackers.
Warrior societies would also fight in wars against other Indigenous peoples or the American settlers of the USA.
Source 4
Blackfoot Warrior,�painted by Karl�Bodmer, c. 1840
Indigenous Society: Women and Homes
Women played an equal, if opposite, roll to men in most Indigenous societies. They were responsible for the tipis, raising children, fetching water and making clothes and jewellery.
Some women also played a roll as warriors, with some even leading war bands in the Indian Wars.
Some nations practiced forms of plural marriage, with men having more than one wife at a time or women having multiple husbands (though usually not both in the same nation). Conversely, other nations practiced monogamy with people only marrying one person at a time.
Tipis were the standard homes of the plains Indigenous peoples when they moved around. Made from buffalo hide around a frame of wooden poles, these tents had a flap in the top to allow smoke from the fire within to pass out. The bottom edges of the tipi could be raised in times of warm weather and the conical shape kept the structure secure in high winds.
Tipis were portable; they would be disassembled and dragged around behind dogs or horses. This meant that a band’s village could follow wherever the buffalo herds went.
Uses of a Buffalo
With a partner, use your Buffalo Activity Sheet to cut out the labels and match them to the correct part of the buffalo.
On your activity sheet, explain why the buffalo was so important to the life of Indigenous nations on the Great Plains.
Life Without Buffalo
With a partner, discuss how Indigenous people living on the Great Plains would be affected if buffalo disappeared.
List three ways life would be different.