North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler.

  • Clark Wissler
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the map one may see how closely the distributions of this culture type and that for the buffalo coincide. This animal supplied them with one of their chief foods, in accessible and almost never-failing abundance. For a part of the year at least, all Plains tribes used the conical skin tent, or tipi. In early times the dog was used to transport baggage and supplies, but later, horses became very abundant and it is not far wrong to speak of all Plains tribes as horsemen. When on the hunt or moving in a large body most of these tribes were controlled by a band of “soldiers,'7 or police, who drove in stragglers and repressed those too eager to advance and who also policed the camp and maintained order and system in the tribal hunt. All Indians are quite religious. Most of the Plains tribes had a grand annual gathering known in literature as the sun dance. In general, these few main cultural characteristics may be taken to designate the type — the use of the buffalo, the tipi, the horse, the soldier-band, and the sun dance. Many of the tribes living near the Mississippi and along the Missouri, practised agriculture in a small way and during a part of the year lived in earth-covered or bark houses. Furthermore, there are many other tribal differences, so that it becomes admissible to subdivide the Plains Indians. The following seems the most consistent grouping.
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