• The Great Plains (1939).
• Culture adapts to environment.
• Technologies are key in European supremacy.
• Six shooter, steel plow, barbed wire, windmill, railroads, harvesting machines.

4. Great Plains Rainfall Map

5. Great Plains Grasses

6. Desert Grasses

• Sagebrush.
• Creosote Bush.
• Rainfall less than 10 inches per year.

• Animals of the Plains.
• Require little water.
• Fast speed.
• Antelope is grass eater.
• Coyote is predator, trickster.

• Lewis and Clark, 1806: "The moving multitude darkend the whole plains."
• 1860s-1890s: Hunters killed bison for meat, skins, bone, and sport.
• Skeletons used for fertilizer.

• 1874, Stretching, drying, and hauling hides.
• Trainloads of hides and bones sent to east depletes Kansas herds.

11. Indian Removals

12. Trail of Tears

• 1831, Choctow; 1836, Creek; 1837, Cherokee gathered up and sent to Oklahoma.

14. Indian Relocations,1860-1890

15. Indian Reservations, 1880s-90s

16. Indian Land Policy

• 1830. Indian Removal Act. Cherokee Trail of Tears.
• 1871. "Hereafter no Indian nation" will be recognized "as an independent power" for making treaties.

• General Allotment Act.
• U.S. could allot communally held tribal lands to individual Indians in 160-acre parcels.
• Secretary of Interior could negotiate with Indians to sell remaining lands to non-Indians.
• 90 million out of 155.5 million acres sold to non-Indians over next 50 years. 

• Administered the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887. Divided reservation lands into 160 acre tracts. By 1937 tribes lost 2/3 of reservation lands.
• 1934. Indian Reorganization Act. "New Deal" for Indians. John Collier of BIA.
• Prohibited further Dawes Act allotments of reservation land and encouraged tribes to recreate themselves as corporate entities. 

• 1968. U.S. government denies the states civil and criminal jurisdiction over Native American lands without tribal consent.

• Should the Great Plains be returned to bison and Indians?
• How can an ecologically sustainable way of life be created on the Great Plains?