Tamir+Reaves

Great Plains The **Great Plains** are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada.This area covers parts of the U.S. states of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota,Texas, and Wyoming, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The climate of the Great Plains changes with the seasons. It an get very cold in the winter and very warm in the summer.

The region is about 500 mi (804.7 km) east to west and 2000 mi (3,218.7 km) north to south. Much of the region was home to American Bison herds until they were hunted to near extinction during the mid/late 19th century. It has an area of approximately 1300000 km² (501,932.8 sq mi). Current thinking regarding the geographic boundaries of the Great Plains is shown by this map at the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.The term "Great Plains", for the region west of about the 96th or 98th meridian and east of the Rocky Mountains, was not generally used before the early 20th century. Nevin Fenneman's 1916 study, Physiographic Subdivision of the United States, brought the term Great Plains into more widespread usage. Before that the region was almost invariably called the High Plains, in contrast to the lower Prairie Plains of the Midwestern states. Today the term "High Plains" is used for a subregion of the Great Plains.

The first Americans (Paleo-Indians) who arrived to the Great Plains were successive indegidous cultures who are known to have inhabited the Great Plains for thousands of years, perhaps 10,000 years. Humans entered the North American continent in waves of migration, mostly over Beringia, the Bering Straits land bridge.

__**The Plains Indians time period was from 1490 - 2000**__

Historically the Great Plains were the range of the bison and of the culture of the Plains Indians, whose tribes included theBlackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche.

__**RELIGION**__

The Plains Indians followed no single religion. Animist religion was an important part of a Great Plains Indians' life, as they believed that all things possessed spirits. Their worship was centered on one main god, in the Sioux language //Wakan Tanka// (the Great Spirit). The Great Spirit had power over everything that had ever existed, and the Plains Indians believed that by worshiping him they would become stronger. Earth was also quite important, as she was the mother of all spirits. Spirits were worshiped daily. People sometimes prayed alone, while other times there were group gatherings. The most important group ceremony was the Sun Dance, in which participants danced for four days around a sacred object, and some would inflict harm upon themselves on purpose, all while staring at the sun. They believed this self-sacrifice would encourage powerful spirits to support and defend them.

The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group whose historic range consisted of present-day eastern New Mexico, southern Colorado, northeastern Arizona, southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of northwest Texas. The Comanches were hunter-gatherers, with a typical Plains Indian culture, and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semipermanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara , Mandan , Pawnee and Wichita.



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The **Great Plains** is a broad expanse of flat land ? True or False, A= True The Plains Indians followed two religions ? True or False, A= False The Plains Indians time Period was from 1490 - 200 ? True or False, A = True The Comanche are a Native American ethnic group ? True or False, A = True The climate of the Great Plains is the same all year round ? True or False, A = False