Plains Peoples

Date: 8000 b.c.e.-700 c.e.

Locale: North American Great Plains, present-day central United States and southern Canada

Plains Peoples

The Great Plains stretch from present-day Texas into the southern provinces of Canada. The Rocky Mountains provide the western boundary, and the eastern limit is considered the ninety-fifth meridian. Given the vast size of the region, the lives of the people who inhabited the Plains varied in many ways. Those who lived to the north had to deal with harsher winters and shorter gathering seasons, while those farther south enjoyed milder winters and a long growing season. Despite the many differences in the day-to-day lives that different groups of Plains peoples led, they had at least one feature in common. They were in large measure influenced by climatic and environmental change.

The date of the arrival of the first humans on the Plains, called Paleo-Indians, is uncertain. They may have arrived around 9500 b.c.e. or even earlier. Before 8000 b.c.e., the Plains climate was mild, and wooded areas, bogs, and lakes dotted the plains. Paleo-Indians traveled in small bands, perhaps of twenty to fifty people. They gathered plant foods and hunted. Among their prey was the mammoth and other large mammals found in North America at that time.

The climate changed around 8000 b.c.e., becoming warmer, with less rainfall. Wooded areas declined and grasses dominated the Plains. The large mammals that Paleo-Indians relied on died off. The human role in this mass extinction is a matter of considerable debate among archaeologists. Some contend that the climate change was the sole cause of the extinctions, while others argue that Paleo-Indian overhunting was a contributing factor.

Whatever the reason for the mass extinction, Plains people turned to hunting bison, deer, and small mammals. The pursuit of smaller game may have required more time than hunting large animals such as mammoths and may have caused a shift in the lifestyles of Plains peoples. Lacking the horse, which would not be introduced into the region until Europeans arrived, hunters usually had to work as a team to kill bison. They either drove the animals into log or stone compounds or stampeded them over cliffs. One such site, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Canada, was in use for some five thousand years. Because food gathering societies are usually organized into small bands, bison hunting may have been the one activity that brought the bands on the Plains together to visit and socialize.

Butchering sites and campsites remain the primary sources of evidence that scholars have regarding the Plains people between 8000 b.c.e. and 5000 b.c.e. Because the people were very mobile, they did not erect permanent shelters. They may have dug small pits that they covered for sleeping. Although the Plains people probably returned to the same locations year after year, the temporary nature of the camps has left little in the way of archaeological evidence. The nature of Plains clothing is a matter of speculation, although given the severe winters, the people must have developed sophisticated means of dressing and protecting their feet.

Climate change after 5000 b.c.e. again altered life on the Plains. A period of extended drought, lasting perhaps twenty-five centuries, made life difficult. Game and water became harder to find. A scarcity of archaeological sites from this period indicates that many people may have abandoned the Plains in pursuit of food. Some people, however, did remain. They continued to hunt and gather, living as nomads in search of food. They probably spent much of their time in river valleys and along the front range of mountains, where water and animals were more plentiful. Studies of campsites indicate that at this time bison was not an important part of the Plains diet, which consisted largely of small mammals and deer.

Around 2500 b.c.e., rainfall increased and game became more plentiful. Populations grew in size, but the lifestyle of the Plains people did not differ much from what it was during the drought era. One interesting development that occurred in Plains life during this period was the construction of stone circles, now known as medicine wheels. The purpose of the circles in unclear. Although they probably had some religious meaning, they also may have served as regional maps or astronomical calendars.

Life on the Plains underwent a dramatic change around 1 c.e. The Plains people began using pottery and constructing burial mounds. Whether they borrowed these practices from Indian communities to the east or eastern Indians migrated to the Plains is not clear. Archaeologists refer to the culture that developed at this time as the Plains Woodland, because it shares traits with early Plains culture and with that of woodland communities found east of the Mississippi. There is evidence that farming took place on some parts of the Plains, with maize, beans, and squash being the primary crops.

The Plains Woodland culture lasted until 700 c.e. Increased rainfall at that time made farming a more reliable source of food, and the Plains population increased. Although gathering remained an important component of Plains behavior, agriculture allowed for an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

Bibliography

Carlson, Paul H. The Plains Indians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998.

Frison, George C. Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. New York: Academic Press, 1978.

Jennings, Jesse C. Ancient North Americans. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1983.

Krech, Shepard, III. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History. New York: W. W. Norton, 1999.

West, Elliott. The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, and the Rush to Colorado. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.