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Plains religion
The Sun Dance was an important ritual led by an aged medicine woman
who also presided in the sweat lodge ceromony and the buffelo tounge
ceromony, a sacramental ritual still practiced by the Blackfoot. Young
men go up on a hill and cry and pray for some animal to come to them.
For six or seven days they niether eat or drink and they become thin.
While in this state they dream, and whatever animal or bird they see
in in their dreams becomes their medicine, or guardian through life.
They are also told in a dream what description of herbs or roots to
gather as their medicine, and this they collect and put carefully into
a small bag to keep as a charm. They also kill he animal that they
dreamed of and keep it's skin as a charm. Nobody knows whats the
medicine they have gathered, it is a secret. The little bag is kept in
a tent, and nobody may touch it except the owner.
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Great Plains Indians
One of the great Kaw chiefs was Al-le-go-wa-ho.He fought to hold onto
Kaw lands in the 1860's but lost and was sent to a reservation. In
the Sioux tribe there are three famous indians. Red Cloud was a
leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. He had a successful war against the
U.S. goverment in the 1860s that led to the closing of the Bozeman
Trail trough Lakota land. He said,"When the Great Father in Washington
sent us his chief soldier to ask for a path through our hunting
grounds... we were told that they wished merely to pass through our
country...Yet before the ashes of the council fire are cold, the Great
Father is building his forts among us."
The Plains weapons and the way they hunted
The Weapons
The plains indians had a variety of weapons they used for hunting and
fighting. Some of them were spears (they were long sticks with sharp
points on them), tomahawks,bows and arrows,war clubs and daggers. The
spear was used for hunting and fights. Tomahawks were used for hunting
and fights, and so was the bow and arrow. The war club was only used
for war. The dagger was used for both also.
The Way They Hunted
The indians that lived onthe plains took weeks planning for a hunt.
Everyone had to work together to have a sucessful hunt. The warriors
dressed in buffalo or wolf skins and scare the buffalo toward the men
that were waiting for the buffalo to run past and then shoot them with bows
and arrows, hit them with tomahawks, stab them with daggers, throw
spears at them or any thing else they could use to kill the buffalo.
Then the women and children would drag all the meat back to the camp.
They also would hunt antelope,deer,bear,and the ocasional rabbit.
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