Plains Indian

A member of any of the Native American peoples inhabiting the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. The Plains Indians spoke a variety of unrelated languages but shared certain cultural features such as nomadic buffalo hunting, the use of conical tepees, and a reliance on the horse in hunting and warfare.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Plains Indian

(Peoples) a member of any of the North American Indian peoples formerly living in the Great Plains of the US and Canada

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Plains′ In`dian

a member of any of the American Indian peoples of the Great Plains who shared certain cultural features, including mounted hunting of bison and shifting residence in tepees.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

Plains Indian - a member of one of the tribes of American Indians who lived a nomadic life following the buffalo in the Great Plains of North America

Buffalo Indian

American Indian, Indian, Red Indian - a member of the race of people living in America when Europeans arrived

Atakapa, Attacapan - a member of an Indian people formerly living along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Texas

Arapaho, Arapahoe - a member of a tribe of Plains Indians formerly inhabiting eastern Colorado and Wyoming (now living in Oklahoma and Wyoming)

Blackfoot - a member of a warlike group of Algonquians living in the northwestern plains

Caddo - a group of Plains Indians formerly living in what is now North and South Dakota and Nebraska and Kansas and Arkansas and Louisiana and Oklahoma and Texas

Cheyenne - a member of a North American Indian people living on the western plains (now living in Oklahoma and Montana)

Kiowa - a member of a Tanoan people living in the southwestern United States

Chippewa, Ojibwa, Ojibway - a member of an Algonquian people who lived west of Lake Superior

Pima - a member of the North American Indian people living in southern Arizona and northern Mexico

Siouan, Sioux - a member of a group of North American Indian peoples who spoke a Siouan language and who ranged from Lake Michigan to the Rocky Mountains

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

And Saxon, looking at his moody face, was suddenly reminded of a lithograph she had seen in her childhood It was of a Plains Indian, in paint and feathers, astride his horse and gazing with wondering eye at a railroad train rushing along a fresh-made track.

View in context

The museum has several top rated Plains Indian artifacts on display besides the great historic paintings.

The Nebraska museums: Omaha & Lincoln, Nebraska

The Spencer carbine played an important role in the Plains Indian Wars yet it's almost been forgotten by modern shooters.

PLAINS WAR SPENCERS: CIVIL WAR CARBINES SAW FRONTIER SERVICE

It was filled with drawings by Plains Indian warriors.

Museums & Galleries

Synopsis: Now in a fully updated and significantly expanded second edition, "Plains Indians Regalia and Customs" is an original study of Plains Indian cultures of the 19th century that is presented through the use of period writings, paintings, and early photography that relate how life was carried out.

Plains Indians Regalia and Customs, second edition

Marking the 150th anniversary of Red Cloud's War, this stunning work is illuminated by the fantastic, digitally enhanced artwork of Paul Goble, portraying in mind-stunning detail the layout of two opposed forces, the federation of Red Cloud's force of combined Oglala Sioux, Cheyenne, and other plains Indian tribes and the Union Cavalry soldiers under the command of young Captain Fetterman.

Red Cloud's War

Known collectively as the buffalo bill center of the West (formerly the buffalo bill Historical center), the complex includes the buffalo bill Museum, Cody Firearms Museum, Draper Natural History museum, Plains Indian museum, Whitney Western Art museum, and McCracken Research Library.

Buffalo Bill Center of the West: to inspire, educate, and engage global audiences through an authentic experience with the American West

Residing at Harvard University's Houghton Library, The Pictographic "Autobiography of Half Moon": A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn, compiled and interpreted by Anthropologist Castle McLaughlin, is an extraordinary nineteenth century manuscript of Plains Indian drawings of the two most significant wars fought with the United States army, Red Cloud's war (1866 - 1868) and the Little Bighorn battle (1876).

A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic "Autobiography of Half Moon"

Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian is one of those films.

Jimmy P

The author spent six years in continual communication with the women, learning about their work, lives and involvement in Plains Indian legacy.

Women and Ledger Art

Its Plains Indian Museum has the Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection, an exhibition of objects of the Native people of the Great Plains dating back to a period that artist Paul Dyck identified as the "Buffalo Culture" era, the late 1700s to pre-1890s.

Buffalo Bill Historical Center