| | | ||

INDIANS – THE NATIVE AMERICANS

Many tribes of Indians roamed the prairies of America where they hunted buffalo and lived in a tipi.  The white buffalo was treated as a spiritual beast as they were very rare.  Unlike today’s hunters, the Indians used the whole of the buffalo – the meat for eating; the hide for clothing and shelter; and the bones for weapons and decorations – and they only hunted the quantity they needed to survive. 

The Great Plains tribes had long relied on the buffalo for their livelihoods, then came the building of the railroad across the Plains and with it a massive increase in buffalo-hunting by white Americans.  The Native Americans were unable to prevent buffalo-hunters coming in their thousands to shoot the seemingly limitless herds.  In the south, over 4 million buffalo were shot between 1872 and 1874.  In the north, the buffalo herd was destroyed by the early 1880’s.

From 1830 the whites tried to move the Indians to reservations because they wanted more land to settle on and also areas that were rich in gold.  They made many treaties with the various tribes but each blamed the other for breaking their promises.