Horse Lords of the Plains

The first part gives background information. In the 1600’s, the Lakota people lived in the woodlands of the Upper Mississippi River, where Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa now are. They gathered wild rice and hunted small game and deer. They used dogs as pack animals, dragging their household goods on a set of poles called a travois.

By the 1700’s, horses arrived from Central America through the Rocky Mountain trade networks. These big animals were tame like dogs and did the same sort of work, so a horse was called a sun’ka wakan or “holy/mysterious dog.” They transformed the woodland people into horse people of the plains.