People of the Plains, Then and Now
Part of the Addressing the Statue exhibition.
Part of the Addressing the Statue exhibition
People of the Plains
Native people of the High Plains hunted bison for millennia, while those of the Prairie-Plains also farmed maize and other crops. High Plains people were highly nomadic, hunting bison for food and hides, and living for part of the year in skin-covered tents, or tipis.
Members of Blackfoot Nation, early 1900s.
AMNH Library
AMNH Library
Buffalo hide depicting Crow people on horseback, date unknown.
E358167-0, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
E358167-0, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
Sitting Bear, leader of the Arikara people of the Plains, 1908. Eagle-feather headdresses carry with them great honor and responsibility; leaders receive them as gifts and only certain people can wear them.
Historica Graphica Collection/AGE Fotostock
Historica Graphica Collection/AGE Fotostock
Enduring Cultures of the Plains
By the time of Roosevelt’s presidency, many Native people of the Plains had been driven from their homeland through violence, introduced diseases, forced removal and pressures to assimilate. Yet Plains people have adapted and survived.
Gavin (left) and Alex (both Lakota) play in the front yard of their grandmother’s house in Fort Yates, North Dakota, located on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The boys are first cousins but have grown up like brothers. In Lakota culture, kinship is very important: aunts and uncles are more like second mothers and fathers and first cousins are treated as siblings.
© Carlotta Cardana
© Carlotta Cardana
Danielle Ta'Sheena Finn (Hunkpapa Lakota) from Bismarck, North Dakota, works as a judge for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She and her mother made her traditional dress and accessories. Ribbons in the background reflect Danielle’s winning titles in pageants she entered during law school to earn scholarships and to represent herself and young women from her nation.
© Carlotta Cardana
© Carlotta Cardana
Julian Ramirez and his son Elijah (both Lakota) live on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Julian is a single father who struggled with alcohol addiction but decided to sober up and be a positive influence for his son. Native Americans were introduced to alcohol during colonization and today have among the highest rates of alcohol disorders of any group in the country.
© Carlotta Cardana
© Carlotta Cardana