Other
An Introduction to North America's Native People: Plains Culture Area
A wonderful website from Cabrillo College on the Plains Indians can be found here. It gives an in-depth historical overview, profiles of numerous Plains tribes, the significance of the horse, and great information on their culture and...
Government of Alberta
Unesco: Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre
This virtual interpretive centre recreates the buffalo hunt and kill that was used by First Nations Plains tribes for over 5,500 years. Located in southern Alberta, the actual site was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
Ibis Communications
Eye Witness to History: Buffalo Hunt, 1846
Before the European settlers almost wiped out the buffalo, there were huge herds roaming the Plains.The buffalo hunts by Native Americans were essential for the survival of the tribes, and were fine tuned challenges between man and...
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Teacher Serve: Buffalo Tales: The Near Extermination of the American Bison
This National Humanities Center site offers an article which examines the main techniques on how the Plains Indian tribes hunted the buffalo.
Other
All About Shoes: Paths Across the Plains: Traditional Footwear From Great Plains
Lesson plans for two different grade levels discussing the footwear of the Plains Indians and the information one can gather from common items to find out about a culture.
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of American History: Tracking the Buffalo
This explores the role of the buffalo in the lives of the American Indians of the northern plains.
PBS
Frontier House: The Extermination of the American Buffalo
The reign of the buffalo across the plains ended in great slaughter by the end of the 19th century. This companion essay to the PBS series, Frontier House, recounts how the decimation of the buffalo occurred, hastened by both white and...
Other
Trans Mississippi and International Exposition: The Arapaho Tribe
Provides general information on the Arapaho tribe, the buffalo hunters of the Great Plains.
Other
Ethnological Museum: Native Americans of the Plains
Part of a larger exhibition about Native Americans, this page gives visitors an up-close look at the Hidatsa and the Mandan, Native Americans of the Plains. Viewable are a decorated a buffalo skin and color etchings of tribal chiefs...
Other
Distance Teaching and Learning: Uses Made of the Buffalo
Digital Dakota Network provides this site that contains a chart on the uses of various parts of the buffalo.
University of Calgary
Native Civilizations
Blackfoot, Cree and Sioux cultures inhabited the plains. They were nomadic people who followed the roaming buffalo herds, hunting as needed to supply the essentials of life.
Glenbow Museum
Glenbow Museum: Blackfoot Culture and History
A good description of the culture of the Blackfoot from pre-contact to present time. Read about the importance of the buffalo and the treaties which took away the Blackfoot land.
Legends of America
Legends of America: Arapaho Great Buffalo Hunters of the Plains
A very good overview of Arapaho history. It explains how the Arapaho split into the Northern and Southern Arapaho tribes and their relationships with the Cheyenne and the Sioux.
Khan Academy
Khan Academy: Eastern Shoshone: Hide Painting of the Sun Dance
Painting on animal hides is a longstanding tradition of the Great Basin and Great Plains people of the United States. Painting, in tandem with oral traditions, functioned to record history.Cotsiogo, a member of the Eastern Shoshone...
Library of Congress
Loc: Teachers: Journeys West
A series of lessons utilizing primary texts, including narratives, photographs, and maps, through which young scholars explore the following question: "What motivated thousands of people to journey west during the 1800s?"
Harp Week
Harpweek: The American West: Slaughtered for the Hide
Short article about hunting and stripping buffalo for their hides, published in 1874 in Harper's Weekly.
Curated OER
George Catlin and Indian Guide Approaching Buffalo Under White Wolf Skins
This National Humanities Center site offers an article which examines the main techniques on how the Plains Indian tribes hunted the buffalo.
Curated OER
Carl Wimar, Buffaloes Approaching Water Hole, 1860
This National Humanities Center site offers an article which examines the main techniques on how the Plains Indian tribes hunted the buffalo.
A&E Television
History.com: 10 Things You May Not Know About Sitting Bull
Get the facts about one of the most legendary Native Americans of the 19th century. Sitting Bull was born around 1831 into the Hunkpapa people, a Lakota Sioux tribe that roamed the Great Plains in what is now the Dakotas.
PBS
Pbs: Lewis and Clark: Yankton Sioux Indians
Read about what the Yankton Sioux wanted from Lewis and Clark and why they were disappointed when they met the Corps of Discovery on its journey up the Missouri River. From PBS.
PBS
Pbs: New Perspectives on the West
This in-depth resource presents a history of the American West from pre-Columbian times until World War I with profiles, documents, and images. It encourages visitors to link these into patterns of historical meaning for themselves....