Who were the Plains’ Indians?

1. Wednesday, 13 July 2016 Who were the Plains’ Indians? Comanche buffalo dance Starter: What do you think Christian Europeans would have thought of this dance? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians

2. Wednesday, 13 July 2016 Who were the Plains’ Indians? Starter: What do you know about the Plains' Indians? In groups of four, take a blank piece of paper and write down: l the names of all the American Indian 'tribes' familiar to you - for instance, those you may have seen in 'western' films about the 'Wild West' l the names of any famous American Indian chiefs or war leaders. At the end of five minutes, share these with the rest of the class to see which names occur most frequently L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians

3. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians We are concentrating on the Great Plains area of North America; the parts shaded in red. This includes states like Nebraska, Kansas, North and South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa.

4. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians

5. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians

6. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians

7. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Although I am credited with discovering the Americas, I actually thought I’d found an alternative route to India (the Indies). This is why Native Americans were referred to as ‘Red Indians’. They are actually ‘Native Americans’ as they are the indigenous people of the Americas. (This means the original population)

8. Anthropology of the Native Americans Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Anthropologists have shown that the Native Americans may have originated in Asia and migrated into the Americas across a land bridge which formed over the Bering Straits in Siberia. This is far easier to show you on a big paper map!

10. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Different nations • Before the Europeans arrived in the Americas in large numbers in the 1600s, there were hundreds of different ‘tribes’ or ‘nations’ living in America. The map shows the locations of the main nations who survived the European migration

11. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians TASK: Comprehension What type of lifestyle did most the Plains’ Indians adopt? Identify a ‘push’ factor. Identify a ‘pull’ factor. What was the Cherokee Indians lifestyle before the west in 1838?

12. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians TASK: Comprehension Why did some Indians want to resist white settlement on the land. What had weakened the Plain Indian nations?

14. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Why did the Native Americans move West? Most mainstream scholars believe that, among the various contributing factors, epidemicdisease was the overwhelming cause of the population decline of the American natives because of their lack of immunity to new diseases brought from Europe. Native Americans killed by Small Pox Which diseases were deadly to the Native Americans? How many possibly died from disease? European explorers and settlers brought infectious diseases to North America against which the Native Americans had no natural immunity. Chicken pox and measles, though common and rarely fatal among Europeans, often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox proved particularly deadly to Native American populations. Epidemics often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine, some historians estimate that up to 80% of some Native populations died due to European diseases after first contact.

15. In 1618–1619, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans. Historians believe Mohawk Native Americans were infected after contact with children of Dutch traders in Albany in 1634. The disease swept through Mohawk villages, reaching Native Americans at Lake Ontario in 1636, and the lands of the Iroquois by 1679, as it was carried by Mohawks and other Native Americans who travelled the trading routes. The high rate of fatalities caused breakdowns in Native American societies and disrupted generational exchanges of culture. Similarly, after initial direct contact with European explorers in the 1770s, smallpox rapidly killed at least 30% of Northwest Coast Native Americans. For the next 80 to 100 years, smallpox and other diseases devastated native populations in the region. Puget Sound area populations once as high as 37,000 were reduced to only 9,000 survivors by the time settlers arrived en masse in the mid-19th century. Smallpox epidemics in 1780–1782 and 1837–1838 brought devastation and drastic depopulation among the Plains Indians. By 1832, the federal government established a smallpox vaccination program for Native Americans (The Indian Vaccination Act of 1832). It was the first program created to address a health problem of American Indians.

16. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Who introduced the horse to Native Americans? In the sixteenth century Spaniards and other Europeans brought horses to the Americas. The reintroduction of horses resulted in benefits to Native Americans. As they adopted the animals, they began to change their cultures in substantial ways, especially by extending their ranges. Some of the horses escaped and began to breed and increase their numbers in the wild. Horses had originated naturally in North America and migrated westward via the Bering Land Bridge to Asia. The early American horse was game for the earliest humans and was hunted to extinction about 7,000 BC, just after the end of the last glacial period. The re-introduction of the horse to North America had a profound impact on Native American culture of the Great Plains. The tribes trained and used the horses to ride and to carry packs or pull travois, to expand their territories markedly, more easily exchange goods with neighbouring tribes, and more easily hunt game. They fully incorporated the use of horses into their societies, including using the horses to conduct warring raids. Travois used by the Apaches to move camp

17. http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0300/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0300/stories/0301_0111.htmlhttp://www.nebraskastudies.org/0300/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0300/stories/0301_0111.html The tribes trained and used the horses to ride and to carry packs or pull travois Life on the Plains before horses returned was very different. The introduction of horses into plains native tribes revolutionized entire cultures. Some tribes abandoned a relatively sedentary life style to become horse nomads in less than a generation. Hunting became more important for most tribes as ranges were expanded. More frequent contact with distant tribes increased the likelihood of competition and warfare. Eventually, in most tribes a person’s wealth was measured in horses, and great honours came to those who could capture them from an enemy. Explain how the the horse changed Native American lives. Before horses, dogs were the only pack animals on the plains. The harnesses and equipment originally designed for dogs were easily adapted to horses. Obviously, horses could carry much larger loads than a dog.

18. CASE STUDY: Nebraska Horses reached Nebraska by the 1680s, and the upper Missouri by the 1750s. Much of the trade was between tribes — Apache groups took horse herds to Kansas and all the way to the Dakota, trading them for hides and other goods. The Spanish also participated in this trade in a major way. In Nebraska, two different fundamental economies evolved. Tribes in eastern Nebraska (Pawnee, Ponca, Omaha, and Oto) utilized the horse for extensive buffalo hunts, but did not abandon their older pattern of earth lodge villages and maize growing. The western part of the state became dominated by bison-hunting nomads, which are today pictured as the stereotypical Plains Indian. The Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, lived in skin tepees and roamed over most of western Nebraska. These tribes were relative newcomers to the Plains, having moved out of the Great Lakes region onto the Plains in the 1700s. Horses allowed them to expand their traditional nomadic lifestyle over the vast distances of the plains. How did the introduction of horses have an effect on this region of America?

19. Who were the Plains’ Indians? L/O To analyse the culture of the Plains Indians Plenary: Match the four factor cards with the correct illustration.