Explanation:Plains Native Americans lived in both sedentary and nomadic communities.
They farmed corn, hunted, and gathered, establishing diverse lifestyles and healthy diets.
When horses arrived on the Plains along with the Spanish colonizers, or conquistadores, they disrupted agricultural norms and intensified hunting competition between Native American groups.The Plains region spreads to the east of the Rocky Mountains, up to 400 miles across the flat land of the center of the present-day United States. The Plains were very sparsely populated until about 1100 CE, when Native American groups including Pawnees, Mandans, Omahas, Wichitas, Cheyennes, and other groups started to inhabit the area.
The climate supported limited farming closer to the major waterways but ultimately became most fruitful for hunting large and small game.These hunting-agrarian groups were mostly divided at the level of the band. A band could consist of a dozen to a few hundred people who lived, hunted, and traveled together. Often, bands would unite in a village setting to farm or hunt a large herd of bison. Villages usually had fluid populations and little to no political structure.
It is nearly impossible to generalize the religious traditions of the Plains region since every group had its own practices. Rituals often revolved around the sun and nature, with the Earth as the mother of all spirits. Cheyennes, for example, performed the Sun Dance, which forced people to sacrifice something personal for communal benefit. Lakotas believed that certain individuals were blessed to be spiritual leaders or medicine men. Indigenous people on the Plains regarded the buffalo and their migration patterns as sacred.
With the introduction of horses, Plains societies became less egalitarian; the men with the most horses had the most political impact, social status, and economic power. As European colonists arrived, the Sioux, in particular, began to trade with them. They received guns and horses in exchange for buffalo robes, blankets, and beads.
Intertribal conflict increased due to this heightened competition, with groups stealing each others' horses for economic gain and glory. This began a pattern of violence between the Native American groups and Euro-American colonists as they settled across the Plains during the centuries to come.
