CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 GIFTS OF THE PLAINS CHAPTER 2 SOCIETY AND SPIRITUALITY CHAPTER 3 ART MUSIC AND DANCE CHAPTER 4 EUROPEANS ARRIVE CHAPTER 5 KEEPING TRADITIONS ALIVE NOTABLE PLAINS INDIANS TIMELINE GLOSSARY SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY FURTHER INFORMATION INDEX 5 10 18 24 30 38 42 43 44 45 46 47
N O R T H W E S T C O A S T C A L I F O R N I PP L A TTTT EE AA U G RRRRR EE AA T B AA SIN ST E W HH T U O S ARCTI C SS U B AA R C T I C P L A I N S N O RRRRRRRR T A EE H SS OOOOOOO U TT TT SS A E TTTTT HH S A PLAINS REGION OF NORTH AMERICA CULTURAL REGIONS OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA Plateau Northwest Coast California Plains Southeast Southwest Great Basin Northeast Subarctic Arctic Other Cultural area border International border State province border
INTRODUCTION S omewhere on the North American Plains a campfire glows beneath a bright moon during summer A group of children sits quietly in a circle They listen as an elder tells a story If the children are Arapaho uh-RA-puh-ho they may be listening beneath the Moon When the Buffalo Bellow If the children are Lakota luh-KO-tuh they might be under what they call the Moon When the Chokecherries Are Black To the Comanche kuh-MAN-chee it is the Hot Moon For thousands of years native peoples of the plains used the moon to keep track of time Twelve or thirteen complete phases of the moon made up one year The Omaha OH-muh haw from present-day Nebraska and Iowa counted six moons The Mandan MAN-dan and Hidatsa hih-DAHT-suh from modern-day North Dakota and Montana divided the year into a winter moon and a summer moon Plains peoples were the first residents of North America’s grassy prairies Some scholars believe their ancestors came from northeast Asia as early as forty thousand years ago These people may have traveled by boat or walked across the frozen Bering land bridge that used to stretch between Russia and Alaska Eventually these first Americans found routes from present-day Alaska to the Great Plains 5
