Native American prehistory—Plains

Date: c. 9500 b.c.e.-c. 1800 c.e.

Location: Western Canada and United States

Cultures affected: Apache of Oklahoma, Arapaho, Arikara, Assiniboine, Atsina, Blackfoot, Caddo, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Hidatsa, Iowa, Kansa (Kaw), Kiowa, Mandan, Missouri, Omaha, Osage, Oto, Pawnee, Ponca, Quapaw, Sarsi, Sioux, Tonkawa, Waco, Wichita

The prehistory of the Great Plains begins with evidence of nomadic Paleo-Indian bands at around 9500 b.c.e. to 9000 b.c.e. These groups arrived before the end of the Pleistocene epoch and took advantage of herds of large mammals, such as mammoth, giant bison, camels, and horses, that have since become extinct (the horse was not reintroduced until the sixteenth century). It ends with the proto-historic period, when Spanish and other European explorers contacted agricultural village peoples and mobile bison hunting groups in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries.

The earliest Paleo-Indian populations utilized large, bifacial, fluted Clovis points for hunting mammoth. They captured the animals by chasing them into natural traps, such as stream heads or lakes, where females and immature animals were the most likely to be killed. Artifacts such as bifacial scrapers, choppers, worked flakes, and a variety of bone tools were used for butchering and processing hides. Sites of this period, known mainly from the southern and western Plains, include both kill sites and quarries for stone. Examples include Miami (Texas), Blackwater Draw Number 1 (New Mexico), Dent (Colorado), Domebo (Oklahoma), and Colby (Wyoming). No campsites, burials, or remains of dwellings have been discovered for this period.

Around 9000 b.c.e. Clovis points were replaced by unfluted points known as Plainview, shorter fluted points known as Folsom, and other successive styles such as Firstview, Midland, Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Albert, and Cody. The Hell Gap (Wyoming) site provides a long record for bison hunters in the form of a series of temporary campsites that are chronologically transitional between Clovis and Folsom. The hunting of large herds of bison was a Plains tradition for thousands of years, and the culture of the Folsom people was based on the nomadic hunting of the giant precursors to modern buffalo, such as Bison antiquus and Bison occidentalis. These animals were stalked in small groups or killed in large numbers by stampeding herds off cliffs, into ditches, or into traps. Large hunts, which provided abundant supplies of meat, may have required the cooperative efforts of several bands working together. At Olsen-Chubbuck, a site in eastern Colorado, almost two hundred bison were killed and slaughtered. Bones indicate systematic butchering and selective use of choice animal parts. Several sites, such as Lindenmeier (Texas), suggest regular use by nomadic groups from year to year.

The Paleo-Indian way of life, based on large-game hunting, was transformed around 6000 b.c.e. by the end of the Pleistocene and the extinction of species such as Bison antiquus. Projectile point styles such as Agate Basin were followed by styles of the Plano tradition, such as Scottsbluff, Milnesand, Portales, and Eden. These were utilized by the last of the big-game hunters until around 5000 b.c.e.

Archaic Period

Between around 5000 b.c.e. and 2500 b.c.e., both human and animal populations in the Plains regions were affected by a period of warmer and drier climates known as the Altithermal period. During this period, reduction of grasslands and water sources resulted in smaller, more highly dispersed human groups. The archaeological evidence of this period is scarce compared with that for earlier and later periods. Sites of this period consist mostly of temporary campsites. When bison were hunted, they belonged to the smaller, modern species Bison bison. There is evidence for local experimentation with fiber-tempered pottery in the central Plains around 3000 b.c.e., but this technology does not become important until a much later time.

Among the sites that have provided an understanding of this tradition is Mummy Cave (Wyoming), where thirty-eight distinct cultural levels bore evidence of a hunting and gathering lifestyle oriented to mountain resources between 7300 b.c.e. and 1580 c.e. By 2500 b.c.e., people living in the cave used milling stones, tubular bone pipes, coiled basketry, and fiber cordage. Sites from between 2500 b.c.e. and about 100 c.e. suggest a continuation of the pattern of small groups of nomadic foragers. These groups moved across the landscape in conjunction with the seasonal availability of plant and animal resources, collecting seeds, roots, nuts, and berries when they were in season and doing occasional hunting of bison.

Woodland Period

The Woodland tradition in the Plains begins with the widespread use of pottery. During the Early Woodland period, the eastern Plains were inhabited by semisedentary villages of incipient agriculturalists. The year-round occupation of settlements resulted from a combination of increasing sedentism by earlier peoples and the colonization of portions of the central Plains by village cultures from farther east via fertile river valleys.

Although there is no evidence for maize farming until around 500 c.e., by 250 b.c.e. Plains peoples were experimenting with sunflower, chenopodium, squash, and marsh elder. Ceramic styles of eastern Kansas and western Missouri suggest participation in the larger “Hopewell Interaction Sphere,” through which maize may have been introduced during the latter part of this period.

In the vicinity of Kansas City, Hopewellian villages approached 4 hectares (10 acres) in area. Among the new features associated with them were earth-covered burial mounds with stone chambers, usually built on the tops of bluffs. Houses were more substantial, sometimes marked with oblong patterns of postholes. The pottery of this period includes cord-marked and rocker-stamped wares with shapes and decorations similar to Early Woodland styles of the eastern United States. Other Hopewell markers include platform pipes. Maize and beans were cultivated, and large-stemmed or corner-notched projectile points were used for hunting deer and bison.

Burial mounds of the late Plains Woodland and early Plains Village periods are found throughout the eastern Dakotas and in southern Manitoba. Frequently grouped, these were usually situated on bluffs overlooking lakes and valleys. Their forms consisted of low, circular and oblong shapes as well as long, linear embankments. Burials with pottery vessels were placed in timber-covered pits below or within mounds.

In the northwestern and southern Plains, there was a persistence of mobile Archaic patterns. A number of sites indicate the continued practice of communal bison hunts. It is likely that bison hunters were in contact with village farmers, exchanging meat, hides, and other products for cultivated foods.

Plains Village Period

The Late Woodland, beginning around 900 c.e., is marked by an increased reliance on the cultivation of maize in alluvial river valleys. In eastern Kansas there is evidence that suggests contact with Mississippian cultures (probably via canoe along the Missouri River) and the possible existence of trading colonies. Plains Village cultures may have been trading buffalo meat and hides with their neighbors to the east. Among the most characteristic bone artifacts of Plains Village culture is the bison scapula hoe. Ceramics of this period were typically cord-roughened. Some pottery from sites of this period in the vicinity of Kansas City display “sunburst” motifs and other designs reminiscent of the Mississippian culture at the large temple mound village at Cahokia, Illinois.

There was a wide variability in cultures of the Plains at this time. In the central Plains, the best-documented cultures are the Upper Republican, Nebraska, Smoky Hill, and Pomona. Characteristic house types included rectangular earth lodges with four central posts supporting timber roofs covered with soil. Earth lodge villages ranged in size from about fifty to one hundred people. Along the middle Missouri River in the Dakotas, villages of as many as three hundred people were surrounded by ditches and palisades.

Maize was one of the principal cultigens of the Plains Village tradition. A characteristic agricultural implement of this period was the bison scapula hoe. Hunting of bison, deer, and antelope was undertaken with bows and arrows tipped with small, triangular, side-notched points. Fishing in rivers was done with bone hooks and harpoons. Animal products such as hides and bones were intensively utilized by Plains Village peoples. Sites have yielded a wide variety of bone implements, including needles, pins, punches, and flaking tools. Shell ornaments were common. In the Upper Republican and Nebraska phases, fine stone and ceramic pipes, occasionally decorated with human or animal effigies, were among the most important ceremonial items.

Large villages in the east were clearly affected by the contact with complex societies of the eastern Missouri and central Mississippi valleys. In the northwestern and southern Plains, however, ancient patterns of mobile foraging and bison hunting still continued. Nomadic bison hunters traded with both the Plains Village peoples to the east and the Pueblo peoples of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Between 1400 c.e. and 1500 c.e., a culture known as the Lower Loup phase appeared along the banks of the Loup and Platte Rivers in eastern Nebraska. Their earthlodge villages were substantially larger than earlier settlements, sometimes covering an area of 100 acres, and often were fortified. In central Kansas, the contemporaneous Great Bend culture was characterized by large agricultural villages that were occupied at the time of the first European incursions, as evidenced by fragments of Spanish armor. In the Middle Missouri region, the proto-historic period is represented by villages with circular house foundations that were probably occupied by the agricultural ancestors of the historic Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara peoples. In the far western and northwestern Plains, the mobile bison hunting pattern that had begun at least ten thousand years earlier persisted into the nineteenth century, but it was aided by the introduction of the horse. The historic heirs to this tradition, whose ancestors may never have participated in agricultural Plains Village patterns, are tribes such as the Blackfoot, Arapaho, and Assiniboine.

The first Spanish to arrive in the Great Plains included Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, who in 1541 traveled north in search of a kingdom known to him as “Gran Quivira.” Reaching central Kansas, he was disappointed to discover settled Great Bend villages with little gold. Nevertheless, it is clear that the indigenous peoples of the Plains share a rich and ancient cultural history.

Bibliography

Adair, Mary J. Prehistoric Agriculture in the Central Plains. University of Kansas Publications in Anthropology 16. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988.

Bamforth, Douglas B. Ecology and Human Organization on the Great Plains. New York: Plenum Press, 1988.

Frison, George C. Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. 2d ed. San Diego: Academic Press, 1991.

Wedel, Waldo C. Central Plains Prehistory: Holocene Environments and Culture Change in the Republican River Basin. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “The Prehistoric Plains.” In Ancient North Americans, edited by Jesse D. Jennings. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983.