A summarized term for some of the Native North American tribes, living on the plains from Texas in the south to Saskatchewan, Canada in the north. In prehistoric time the plains were a sparesely populated area; smaller nomad tribes moved on the outskirts of the area, while others (Mandan, Hidatsa and Pawnee) lived in permanent villages near the larger waterstreams.

As the Europeans arrived to America the picture changed. The farming tribes in the east were driven to westwards and with horses from the Spanish in the south and rifles from the French in the north the s.c. Prairie culture was developed, based on Bison hunting. From the bison one could get food, clothes, teepees and tools. Though the culture took form not before the 1700s and lived in the 1800s it has been the symbol for the North American indians way of life.

The largest tribes on the plains were: Sioux(Lakota, Dakota and Nakota), Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfoot, Crow, Kiowa, Pawnee and Comanche. The fall of the culture came very fast as the whites in the 1880s nearly had exterminated all the bison, and in that way knocked out the basis for this culture.

To the Plains Indians culture belonged the belief in "the Great Spirit"(Manitou)and "the happy hunting grounds", a paradise after death. A yearly ritual was the "sundance" to the Spirits.

At the end of the 1800s a movement called the Ghostdance spread very fast, among these tribes. The message was that the indians by returning to their old way of living should be rid of their oppressors. But the whites understood it as a revolutionary movement and took it as an excuse for the Massacre at Wounded Knee. The tribes are now living on Reservations, often under bad circumstances. The largest is Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota with about 15 000 Oglala Sioux.

A Kiowa camp, a tribe on the south plains, who shared the area with the more well-known Comanches. The picture is from the mid 1800s, when the indians still could hunt and practise their culture.