The bison provided them with meat for food, hides for clothing and shelter, and horns and bones for tools. They would even use the bladder to hold water. For the Plains Indians, bison equaled survival.

Bison Products

• Skulls – for decorative purposes.
• Horns – are made into decorative polished costume jewelry and buttons.
• Hair – is manufactured into bison down and produced into sweaters coats and robes.
• Hides – tanned and manufactured into leather furniture, hats, coats, vests, handbags, shoes and boots.

Indians of the northern Plains wore buffalo hides for both practical and ceremonial purposes. They wore buffalo hides in winter, with the fur on the inside for warmth. When people were sick, they often wore a hide painted with symbols to hasten healing. Women sometimes wore painted hides to promote childbearing.

What did the Indians use from the buffalo? Natives & Whites, American Bison/Buffalo

Explore this exhibit: Buffalo Hide Trade The discovery that buffalo hides were suitable for industrial leather created an industry that transformed frontier Texas. Soon after the Civil War, eastern capitalists ordered as many buffalo hides as could be supplied. Texas buffalo were killed out in less than a decade.

Buffalo Parts for Containers and Tools Native Americans saved the fat for cooking and making pemmican. They historically ate the intestines raw or cooked. They also used them to make waterproof containers. Buffalo bladders are also used to make containers.

The buffalo is the very sources of life for the plains Indians. From the buffalo they got meat for food, skins for tipis, fur for robes, and anything else was for tools and things needed for everyday life.

Though the terms are often used interchangeably, buffalo and bison are distinct animals. Old World “true” buffalo (Cape buffalo and water buffalo) are native to Africa and Asia. Bison are found in North America and Europe. Both bison and buffalo are in the bovidae family, but the two are not closely related.

The Arapaho, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Shoshone, Sioux, and Tonkawa. and were all nomadic tribes who followed the buffalo herds and lived in tipis.

The tribes would use every part of the animal, whether it was the bones to make tools or the hair to make rope. Without communal hunting, killing a bison or a herd of bison could often be extremely dangerous and often unsuccessful for an individual hunter.

Corn, beans and squash, called the Three Sisters by many tribes, serve as key pillars in the Native American diet and is considered a sacred gift from the Great Spirit.

In less than three hours on November 4, 1791, American Indians destroyed the United States Army, inflicting more than 900 casualties on a force of some 1,400 men. Proportionately it was the biggest military disaster the United States ever suffered. It was also the biggest victory American Indians ever won.

Here are ten of the greatest Native American chiefs and leaders.

• 10 Victorio.
• 9 Chief Cornstalk.
• 8 Black Hawk.
• 7 Tecumseh.
• 6 Geronimo.
• 5 Crazy Horse.
• 4 Chief Seattle.
• 3 Cochise.

The Shoshone men, and some women, meanwhile, managed to kill or mortally wound 24 soldiers by gunfire. Historians call the Bear River Massacre of 1863 the deadliest reported attack on Native Americans by the U.S. military—worse than Sand Creek in 1864, the Marias in 1870 and Wounded Knee in 1890.

As the Navajo Nation now claims the largest enrolled population among tribes in the country, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that Arizona, California and Oklahoma have the highest numbers of people who identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native alone.