Great Plains Natural Resources and Geography By: Trevor 

How did the Great Plains Native Americans use natural resources in order to survive? They used Natural Resources to build their homes, tools, and lots of other stuff.

The people of the plains lived in the mid west area starting at the top of Texas and ending in the beginning of Canada. The Great Plains covered about ¼ of the U.S. The people of the plains had landforms of gently rolling hills, tall grasses, and very few trees. The grasses can be taller than a man, sometimes taller than a man on a horse.

The Great Plains land with buffalo in it
The Great Plains tall grasses

The people of the plains had different types of weather, like in the was Summer they would have very hot, and humid weather, and in the winter very cold and harsh weather. In some places it was Semiarid, Continental, or Humid subtropical.

That is a deer in the snow in the Great Plains
Fog with buffalo and elk
Their lives could be very hard at times, but sometimes their lives could be easier because there were lots of buffalo around. They used every part of the buffalo. The lack of trees made it hard for them because they did not have enough wood for tools, houses, tepees and fires. Sometimes it could be very hard to find buffalo.

Some of the natural resources that they used were every part of the buffalo. Like the buffalo horns as a shovel, the buffalo bladder as a thing to hold water, the stomach as a cooking bag, and the buffalo hide as clothes. Another natural resources they used was deer skin as clothes. Also they found turnips all over the place. They used wood from trees to make tools like bow and arrows, knifes, hammers, and bow spinning sticks. They also fowlloed the buffalo throughout the tear.

The picture in the background is a buffalo stumach

This is a buffalo bladder
Buffalo horn
And buffalo hide
Deer hide
There are a few downsides to having few trees they could not build their homes out of bark they did not have as much wood to build tools, houses, teepees, and fires. Somethings they had a good supply of were buffalo, turnips, spearmint leaves, rabbits, and deer. At some point there were 40 million buffalo in the Great Plains area.
Imagine you were an indian over 100 years ago. No video games, no iPad, no electricity and much more. The Indians built everything by hand, there were no machines. They used their hands and some tools, like hammers, that they made. So the Indians had a hard life but they made the most of it.

Sources:

If You Lived With The Sioux Indians By: Ann McGovern Illustrated By: Jean Syverud Drew

Social Studies Textbook

Discovery Education

https://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view?assetGuid=17E3B0C5-364B-41A1-9EBA-8A0D10CAD694&showBreadcrumbs=true

Created with images by USFWS Headquarters - "Great Plains LCC" • ellenm1 - "Buffalo herd" • USACE HQ - "Herd of Buffalo"

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