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
PEOPLES OF THE PLAINS The Plains region is the original home of many American Indian nations This map shows the areas where some of them lived before Europeans arrived in the region Sarcee Sarcee Blackfeet Blackfeet CreeCree Ojibwe Ojibwe Assiniboine Assiniboine CrowCrow Hidatsa Hidatsa Mandan Mandan Arikara Arikara Cheyenne Cheyenne Lakota Lakota Dakota Dakota Yankton Yankton Pawnee Pawnee CULTURAL AREAS Plateau Plains Southeast Southwest Great Basin Northeast Subarctic Other Cultural area border International border State province border Omaha Omaha Iowa Iowa Arapaho Arapaho OtoOto Ponca Ponca OsageOsage Kiowa Kiowa Apache Apache WichitaWichita Comanche Comanche Tonkawa Tonkawa Ancient Plains Indian stories say that Plains peoples have lived in this region much longer ever since the Great Spirit created Earth Each Plains culture tells its own version of how this happened The Pawnee pah-NEE of present-day Nebraska and Kansas say the Morning Star and the Evening Star had a daughter She was the first human The Arapaho 66
from present-day Colorado and Wyoming say a coyote and a few bison lived on Earth But there was only one human He was an old man He was lonely With some clay bison skin and smoke from his pipe he made the first people The native peoples spread out across the plains between the foothills of the Rocky Mountains all the way east to the Mississippi River This grassy sweep of land stretches north into Canada and south to the Rio Grande on the present-day US-Mexico border Many Nations The Plains peoples formed many different nations Each nation had its own form of government culture and language Plains Indians speak languages from seven different language families A language family includes many different but related languages Nations in the same language family also share many cultural traits Each Plains nation also had its own way of life The western nations were nomadic They followed herds of animals that they hunted for meat For instance the Comanche moved across the arid plains of Texas and Oklahoma Farther north areas in present-day Montana and Wyoming were home to the Crow KROH The Cheyenne shy-ANN traveled through present-day North Dakota South Dakota Montana and Colorado Eastern nations were more settled They lived near rivers in green areas where they grew crops The Osage OH sage people farmed in present-day Arkansas and Missouri The Oto OH-toh settled in today’s Oklahoma Missouri and Iowa The Kaw KAH lived in present-day Kansas the Kiowa KY-uh-wuh were in present-day Oklahoma and the Ponca PONG-kuh lived in present-day Nebraska 7
