How the plains indians used the buffalo ?
The Plains Indians ranged over a geographical area from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from Canada in the north to Texas in the south. The Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Kiowa and Sioux were all nomadic tribes and relied heavily on hunting buffalo. They also lived in portable skin tents (tipis). The Arikara, Mandan, Osage and Pawnee were semi nomadic tribes. They spent part of every year in fixed villages where they raised crops. For the rest of the year they went on hunting trips for buffalo and lived in tipis. Every part of the buffalo was used. They provided them with food (meat), shelter (buffalo skin tipi covers), clothing (hide robes), fuel (dried buffalo dung), tools (horn spoons and bone hide scrapers), weapons (buffalo hide shields and bow strings) and equipment (ropes and rawhide envelopes for storing food). They also used hoofs to make glue, they turned bones into ornaments and buffalo tails became a fly swish.
