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Imagine a time before cities, railroads, highways, and automobiles.
Once upon a time, the vast grasslands of America’s Great Plains rolled on for thousands of miles with nothing to disturb them but the hooves of buffalo, deer, antelope, and elk. Thousands of years ago, small bands of hunters walked onto the Great Plains. Over time, their numbers grew. Different groups developed into different nations with different languages. Yet they still walked the Plains, hunting with bows and arrows and spears and living in tipis. They honored the spirits who guided and protected them. They raised their children to do the same. These are the Plains Indians.
In time, the Plains Indians settled into one of two ways of life. They were either nomadic or sedentary. Nomadic tribes moved their camps to follow herds of buffalo. Sedentary tribes, especially on the northeastern fringes of the Plains, learned farming from their eastern neighbors. But they made short trips to hunt buffalo too. These huge, shaggy grass-eaters were the general stores of the Plains Indians. They provided them with everything they needed to live.
