Haiku
The big wave crashes
We all jump over the water
The birds scatter, away
The tree sways in the wind
It is graceful, and smooth
We all are silent
Footprints in the snow,
Sledding down the great big hill
hot chocolate at home
Technology in the Plains and Prairies
Native Americans in the plains and prairies had amazing technology varying from loose clothing and hunting materials, like a bow and arrow and a spear, to tipis. The plains and prairies are in middle America. It was very hot and dry in the plains and prairies. There were only a few trees because there wasn’t enough rain to water them. There were also some shrubs and a lot of grass. Some of the tribes that lived there were the Blackfoot or Blackfeet, the Cree, Sioux, Arapaho, Crow, Kiowa, and Comanche. So come on for a ride, back to a time 500 years ago when technology didn’t mean TVs and computers and iPods, but clothing and bows and arrows and houses.
Houses
Houses were very important to the Indians of the plains and prairies. Each house was unique in its own way. The tipi poles [which you needed to have to hold up the tipi] needed to be long and straight. Willow, lodge and cedar trees made the best tipi poles. First the men cut about fifteen straight trees. Then they cut off the branches and the bark, so the poles were smooth. If they were not they would rip through the tipi cover. When the plains Indians traveled the horses dragged the poles on the ground. New poles were needed every one to two years. The tipi cover was made out of buffalo hide. The plains Indians needed new hides when a new home was needed. The men hunted and killed the buffalo. Then it was the women’s job to make the tipi cover out of the buffalo hide. It took as many as fourteen buffalo hides to make a good sized home. Then the women would put smoke inside the tipi, it was called smoking the hides. Smoking the hides made the tipi hides not crack. You needed a lot of technology to make a tipi, especially technology made out of natural materials. Most of the houses and weapons and everything else were made out of natural materials.
Weapons
Weapons were very important to the Native Americans because they helped them hunt well. It was mostly the women’s job to make the weapons because the men were out hunting for many weeks at a time. The bow and arrow, which is one of the most famous Native American weapons, was made out of hard elastic wood. A connective tissue in the buffalo’s backbone called sinew made great bows if you twisted it. When Europeans came to what we now call Florida, they brought horses. They escaped to the plains and prairies. The plains and prairies Indians made smaller bows and arrows so they were easier to hold on horseback. Weapons were very important to the Native Americans of the plains and prairies because the root of survival is food and you need weapons to make that root.
Clothing
Clothing in the plains and prairies varied from furry and fluffy winter clothes to loose and light summer clothes. The people of the plains and prairies used porcupine quills that were dyed a certain color to make decorations. They didn’t use beads because they didn’t have them, but when the Europeans came to America they had beads that they gave to the Native Americans. The women in the tribes made all the clothing because the men didn’t learn how to make clothing. If you tanned [tan means to soften and preserve the hide] the buffalo hide it made a soft cloth like leather used for clothing. If you were a Native American child your mother would scrape off the debris of the hide with a bone that was used for a scraper. Next she would turn the hide over and scrapes the hair off. Hot summers were ideal for drying the hides on straight poles. Clothing in the plains and prairies was hard to make but definitely worth it because the end product was amazing [and soft].
This time [the 1500’s] was a time of greatness and the most amazing thing is that it worked. They worked together which is what we are still trying to do today, but they did it hundreds of years ago [which is a good thing to think about]. So the world seems to work faster when we have computers and TVs, but better when we don’t have TVs and computers, which is the biggest thing I got out of this. I guess technology is one thing to one culture and another to another.
