The Inter-tribal Balance of Power on the Great Plains, 1760–1850

Abstract

The culture of the equestrian nomads of the Great Plains was relatively short-lived. The more sedentary inhabitants of the plains — the Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Pawnee, Wichita — had cultures stretching back hundreds of years. By contrast, that of the mounted hunting tribes — the Kiowa, Comanche, Crow, Blackfoot, Arapaho, Cheyenne and Sioux — developed rapidly with the acquisition of the horse, flourished for perhaps a century, then began its death throes under the pressure of white settlement and the catastrophic effects of European disease. The destruction of the buffalo herds removed the plains nomads' economic base, and their whole civilization finally collapsed in military defeat at the hands of the United States Army. Older, white-oriented studies of Indian history tended to concentrate on the years when this culture was in decline and to neglect earlier periods and developments. Such an approach is understandable, and to some extent inevitable, given the historical sources available, but it conveys an inaccurate impression of the situation on the Great Plains prior to white settlement. This paper considers the Plains Indians in their heyday and examines intertribal trade and warfare at a time when the spread of horses and guns was causing great upheavals in native power structures.Non-Indian powers on the peripheries of the Great Plains tentatively penetrated the region and largely determined the flow of horses, trade, and guns, while their conflicts caused shifts in location, allegiance, and power among the tribes.