Social Studies Notes
Native American of the Plains:
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The plain Indians lived in the prairies and hills.
Prairies are flat or rolling lands covered mostly with grass. They have few trees because
they receive little rain.
Plain Indians were mainly hunters.
The buffalo provided them with their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter.
They lived in lodges.
Lodges are homes made of logs covered with grasses, sticks, and soil.
When they moved they used a travois to move their belongings.
A travois was a sled-like device that was used for carrying people and belongings.
In the 1600’s horses escaped from their Spanish owners and roamed the prairies.
The Indians tamed these horses. They became expert riders.
The arrival of the horses allowed many people to hunt buffalo as their main source of
food.
The Lakota:
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The Lakota lived in the Black Hills in South Dakota.
The Lakota trained boys and girls from early ages in their traditions and ways of life.
The boys were taught how to hit a moving target with a bow and arrow.
The qualities the Lakota valued most in a person was courage, fortitude, wisdom, and
generosity .
The men hunted and engaged in battle.
The girls were taught how to prepare buffalo hide, sew the hides together, and how to
erect the teepee.
A teepee is a cone-shaped tent made b leaning log poles together, tying them at the
top, and then covering them with animal skins.
The girls also learned how to cure buffalo meat and to search for herbs.
The Lakota kept track of important events by making a special calendars called winter
counts.
The buffalo provided food and material for clothing, shelter, tools, and weapons for the
Indians.
The Indians ate the buffalo meat. They made jerky.
Jerky is dried meat.
They used the buffalo skin for clothing.
No part of the buffalo went to waste. The horns were used to make spoons, cups, and
toys. Tools and weapons were made from the bones. The tails were used as a fly brush
or whip. The stomach and intestines were used to carry water.
Native Americans of the West:
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The area where the Northwest Coastal Indians lived was a mountainous area with many
offshore islands and dense forest.
People could live here without farming because of the abundant resources. Their
resources included berries, plants, beaver, bears, deer, elk, salmon, herring, halibut,
cod, seal, sea lions, whale, shellfish, clams, and seaweed.
Salmon was their most important food.
The Salmon Run occurred when the salmon would swim from the sea against the flow of
freshwater rivers to lay their eggs.
They ate most of the salmon they caught, but they also smoked and dried the salmon
for the winter.
The sea was the most important feature of the Northwest Coastal environment.
The Tlingit was a tribe of the Northwest Coastal Indians.
Trading their resources made the Tlingit wealthy.
The Tlingit developed technology.
Technology is the design and use of tools, ideas, and methods to solve problems.
Potlatches are special feasts at which the guests receive gifts.
The Northwest Indians are known for totem poles.
Some purposes of the totem poles
are decoration, tell stories, mark special places, and show family crest.
After the Europeans arrived, the Tlingit found it difficult to keep their way of life.
Settlers, missionaries, educators, and gold prospectors took over the land and cause the
Tlingit to move away from the ocean from which they relied on.