What Was The State Of Native American Cultures Living In The Great Plains In The Mid-1800s

How did Native Americans stay warm and survive the winters? Especially those living in the Northeast and Midwest facing bitter winters. What was housing, clothing, and food preservation like?

There’s an old canard from back in the day that goes “Indian build small fire, stay close, stay warm, White man build big fire, stay warm gathering wood, feeding fire all night.” Indians were more attuned to their environment than the later arriving groups because they were raised from childhood in the areas where they live. They were taught from an early age to live off the land, notice what was going on around them and to construct sufficient housing and make preparations necessary for winter in their area. They weren’t locked into a design that worked well in a country that was now far away and having food stored to prepare for their winter.Each tribe prepared for their winter, knowing their condition and having a warning from nature around them as to the harshness probably ahead of them that year. They had been on the land here for a long time and understood what they faced. They did this without the help of the US Weather service and the Old Farmers Almanac and make no bones about it, when they were wrong, people died, Sometimes the old sacrificed themselves to save the young. What they did was as natural to them as putting on a heavier coat would be to us.Thanks Allen, for the A2A.

Which native American tribes lived in teepees?

The Plains Indians like the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Kiowa, and Lakota, lived in tepees. A lot of the woodland tribes, including my tribe, the Potawatomi, built wigwams. Wigwams are made from bent poles that were striped together and covered with bark, hides, or mats. The woodland provided the resources for such a dwelling.The Plains tribes did not have building materials handy, and so had to have mobile dwellings. Tepees were the mobile home of that day. A tepee (tipi, teepee) is a Plains Indian home. It is made of buffalo hide fastened around very long wooden poles, designed in a cone shape. Tepees were warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Some were quite large. They could hold 30 or 40 people comfortably.TEPEEOne would suppose that the nomadic tribes would move to an area and stay there until the hunting, fishing, and gathering ran out, or possibly the area became too polluted to use. They would then move to another area, and after a few years, Mother Nature would work her magic and restore the old area.

What native American were the most violent?

Comanche. Read T. R. Fehrenbach’s book of that name. The Comanche tribe eventually virtually destroyed the Apaches, terrorized the unarmed Mexicans and usually defeated all the Europeans North of Mexico. They alone barred the development of the West for over forty years.All Amerindian tribes were warlike. None were pacifist. Some were more violent than others, such as the Kiowa and Apache, but none were as powerfully violent as the Comanche. Those famous horse warriors terrorized the Great Plains down into Mexico for decades.Status in each tribal band partially came from hunting prowess, but that became easy for them after the Comanches stole enough Spanish horses so that each brave had a small personal herd for buffalo hunting. Most important all the time was courage in battle and prowess in stealing, ambushing and insulting (via coup, scalping, mutilation or torture) members of other tribes or outsiders like Mexicans or European settlers. Their culture demanded that young braves earn status by regular raids to kill and steal. There was no other path to prestige, wealth, family and band respect. That was how they proved their strength and ability to provide in their harsh subsidence level lifestyle dominated by obedience to custom and tradition. Comanche women were the consummate torturers who perpetrated the most cruel tortures on their captives.I have been stunned by the well documented facts about the Cheyenne, Apache (frequently blamed for Comanche depredations) and Comanche tribes in particular. Seems that the Indian Bureau of the Dept. of the Interior engaged in years of horribly dishonest misdealing, treaty-breaking, record falsifications and obfuscations about the realities of the Amerindian situation. The farther Americans lived from the Plains Amerindians, the more they idealized them as simple peaceful noble savages provoked by the nasty settlers and abused by gun-happy soldiers.Most Indians either killed each other in their continual habitual intertribal wars or died of European diseases against which they had no immunities. Relatively few were ever killed by the US Army, and those casualties mostly came after the post-war Army was freed from its many decades of “no shooting” constraints and allowed (unofficially) to retaliate by fighting indian-style. Ugly stories, but unfortunately very well documented.

How were the Native Americans affected by the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad?

One of the worst impacts was that the railways brought in (and employed) hunters that slaughtered almost to extinction the buffalo that the nomadic plains tribes used a the primary source of food, clothing, etc.They organised train loads of hunters who would kill all buffalo within range of the train tracks. The bodies were just left to rot. The population of buffalo that had numbered in the millions fell to under a thousand entirely because of this activity.This was considered by the US Army at the time a legitimate attic to weaken the native tribes - and ensured that the tribes became dependent on the government for food, needed to permanently settle close to where the government wanted to feed them and ultimately became compliant in living in whatever worthless area the settlers didn't want as reservation.

What was the average life span of Native Americans prior to the arrival of Europeans?

There is a general consensus that Native Americans were on the decline before Europeans arrived. Why? That doesn't seem to have been answered.Skeletal remains are the only thing they can study and few have been found in comparison to their assumption of up to 90 million people from Canada to South America here, in 1491.Many mass graves with young (some all girls) (some all men) found in places such as Mesoamerica and Cahokia, are believed to have been sacrificed.Earlier remains from 1000 years ago seem healthy compared to younger remains near cities. Once corn became a staple food it caused some problems. Anemia for one.Diet and lifestyle are said to play a role in general health. Go figure. Coastal people had a better diet and longer life.After horses became useful to the plains tribes, their health improved. Yeah thats a few hundred years after Columbus.So from the earliest ruins (Norte Chico 5000yrs ago) near the coast, in Peru where they used Whalebones for chairs and ate seafood, up to 1491, people evolved, cultures rose and declined, much like in Europe.Average lifespans varied from as young as 20s up to 70s depending on when where and diet.Many mounds were destroyed when settlers first migrated inland from the east coast. Artifacts and remains were tossed aside so this question and alot of questions can't be answered as well as they should.Cahokia is one of the few sites still standing and recently upgraded to a national park.