Introduction

The Great Plains of North America encompass the vast grasslands that lie between forested eastern North America and the Rocky Mountains; to their north the region is bounded by the boreal forests of Canada, and to the south by the Gulf Coastal Plain. The region is subject to climatic extremes of the continent’s interior, plus the aridity resulting from lying in the rain shadow of the Rockies. This vast region nonetheless is environmentally very diverse, containing forested montane areas as well as large river systems. Major streams drain from the Rockies toward the east, and provide valley-bottom habitats that bisect this great grassland, and in the east their expansive riverbottoms provided fertile land for the gardens of later peoples (see Figures 1 and 2).

The region provided a perfect setting for the American bison, an animal that remained the preferred choice of prey for Native Americans for 11 000 years, though pronghorns and other smaller game were not neglected. Estimates of the historic bison population on the plains range from some 30 million upwards to twice that number. These huge beasts, though smaller than their Clovis - and Folsom-era ancestors, provided raw material for an astonishing range of needs: food, shelter, tools, and weapons - from housing to fly swatters. Folsom hunters were the first to develop techniques for killing bison in large numbers, techniques that were refined over the succeeding generations, and that included driving them over cliffs and into corrals and natural enclosures. For generations killing weapons were spears, or darts cast using an atlatl, or spear-thrower. The bow and arrow did not arrive on the plains until about the time of Christ.

Historically, a bison-skin tipi was used by every group on the plains, though some semi-sedentary late farmers used it principally while they were away from their villages on the hunt. Archaeological evidence for use of the tipi goes back perhaps 5000 years, though its perfect adaptation to the needs of nomadic life on the Great Plains suggests that it has far greater antiquity. Except for differences between three-pole and four-pole foundations, there is astonishingly little variation in these conical dwellings across the plains, which were quickly erected and even more rapidly dismantled (see Figure 3).