Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun 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.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun 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

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The fact that the stage line pulled into so many different forts along the way reflected the smoldering unrest, not yet a full-blown prairie fire, that was kindling within the various Plains Indian tribes whose ancestral homelands were being trampled daily by numberless thousands of white travelers.

    LIGHTING OUT FOR THE TERRITORY JR. ROY MORRIS 2010

  • The fact that the stage line pulled into so many different forts along the way reflected the smoldering unrest, not yet a full-blown prairie fire, that was kindling within the various Plains Indian tribes whose ancestral homelands were being trampled daily by numberless thousands of white travelers.

    LIGHTING OUT FOR THE TERRITORY JR. ROY MORRIS 2010

  • When the freely wandering buffalo was replaced by privately owned cattle fenced in by barbed wire and shipped by rail, the Plains Indian was forced to choose between remaining attached to a system which depended upon energy supplied by the buffalo, and which became every day less capable of regeneration, and attaching himself to the iron horse at the price of the abandonment of most of his traditional way of life.

    Energy and Society~ Chapter 11~ The Organization of Productive Effort 2009

  • * Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, the last living Plains Indian war chief, is the author of seminal works in Native American history and culture.

    The Obama Administration: August 1-16, 2009 2009

  • Within a decade or two, French fur traders found that men, women, and children in the Plains Indian tribes were riding horses.

    Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers 1995

  • When Claude Schaeffer, curator of the Museum of the Plains Indian, began to investigate birds in the lives of Blackft, he easily learned the names for the golden eagle (pitau), bald eagle (ksixkikini) and turkey vulture (pikoki) but the informants said there was another bird, a reeeeaaaaaally big bird: omcxsapitau or “big pitau.”

    Archive 2005-09-01 2005

  • This manifestation of what we think of as typical Plains Indian culture is anything but typical when viewed in context of their entire occupation of North America.

    Archive 2005-11-01 2005

  • This manifestation of what we think of as typical Plains Indian culture is anything but typical when viewed in context of their entire occupation of North America.

    Montana Bison Hunt 2005

  • Within a decade or two, French fur traders found that men, women, and children in the Plains Indian tribes were riding horses.

    Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers 2003

  • Within a decade or two, French fur traders found that men, women, and children in the Plains Indian tribes were riding horses.

    Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers 2003

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