Plains indians

The war club: There are many types of clubs, hatchets, and tomahawks used across the Americas. On the Plains, we developed a particular style of stone club

The very best historical photographs from our treasured vaults define our idea of the West. In honor of our 70th year, the editors of True West have

The Carlisle Indian School was founded in 1879 by Colonel Richard Henry Pratt under authority of the US federal government. While he championed racial equality (something he set out to showcase at the school), his idea of equality was a peculiarly 19th Century one. He aimed to prove that American Indians were the equals of whites by making them as white as possible. His slogan at Carlisle was "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." Students were forbidden from speaking their own languages. Their…

For generations, Plains Indians drew pictographs to document their daily experiences. The Lakota term for winter count is waniyetu wowapi. The word Wowapi translates as “anything that can be read or counted.” Waniyetu is the Lakota word for year, which is measured from first snow to first snow.

Today for Indigenous heritage month I wanted to write about Ptecincala Ska Wakan Winan, commonly called White Buffalo Calf Woman, a sacred woman in Lakota spirituality. During a time of famine, a L…

My Grandfather, John Henry Jamison was the son of John and Hanna Jane Jamison. He was born in Rye Colorado. He came to Kansas in 1907. On June 4, 1908, he married my grandmother, Lettie Mae Smith. Seven children came to this union. My father, Charles, was the youngest. They settled in Kinsley, Kansas He was a...

This picture represents the misconceptions that people have against Native Americans. The Indian Killer scalps their victims and, because of this, the public believes them to be Native American. But, as Marie Polatkin points out, the French were the ones who brought scalping to the United States and so the Indian Killer doesn’t necessarily have to be Indian. Because of the stereotype surrounding scalping, people only come to one conclusion, regardless of how little evidence they really have.

Each week, National Geographic publishes hundreds of powerful images online. Here are 10 pictures from the past week that stood out to our photo editors.

Recently discovered data has revealed a surprising fact: Native Americans, especially equestrian Plains tribes, were the tallest people in the world! North American Indians may not have lived rich lives monetarily in the 1800s, but they were far richer than most Europeans and white Americans in terms of healthy lifestyles, exercise and nutrition.That robustness translated into their height.How do we know this? Modern-day anthropologists Richard Steckel of Ohio State and Joseph Prince of the…

Lakota woman’s dress (Teton Sioux), 1865. Leather, tiny Venetian glass seed beads, and tin cones. From the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian Installation view of “The Plains Indians: Artists of Earth and Sky” March 9 - May 10, 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, New York