The Plains Indians and the Horse

The horse also changed the Plains Indians’ way of life. Before they had horses, many Plains Indian families lived in villages along rivers. Their houses were earth lodges. In the summer, the men lived on the Plains to hunt buffalo. Their summer homes were teepees made of animal skins.

Hunting buffalo on foot was hard and dangerous work. Sometimes, hunters covered themselves with animal skins. Slowly, they crept up to the grazing buffalo. Then they hurled their spears. Others forced buffalo off a cliff, so they would be easier to kill. A third way to hunt buffalo was to light a circle of fire around a grazing herd. The animals would trample each other, or they might suffocate from the smoke. This approach was dangerous because a hunter could be injured by the hooves or horns of stampeding buffalo.

By the end of the 1600s, horses were living on the northern Plains.

A herd of stampeding buffalo