The Great Plains Indians Complete Text - Lingua

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During this time, the great cities were replaced by small agricultural villages. Then, as the Europeans expanded across the continent, the surviving tribes were pushed ever westward into a constantly redefined and shrinking Indian territory. However, during the middle of the 18 th century two parallel events occurred on the North American continent: The creation of a new type of nation – The United States of America and the creation of a new kind of Indian culture – the warrior 10 horse culture: Two remarkable human transformations that would eventually clash in bitter conflict. Buffalo and Horse Two large mammal species 11 played an equally critical role in creating the remarkable Plains Indians culture. One was the horse, an animal brought to the New World by the Europeans. The other, a member of the cattle family, was the American buffalo, indigenous 12 to the continent. The American buffalo can trace its ancestry 13 back to the Pleistocene 14 era when its relatives roamed 15 among the mastodons, mammoths, giant wolves and lions. 10 warrior – a person who fights in battle – der Krieger 11 mammal species – a class of animals that give birth to live babies and feed them on milk from the breast – die Säugetiere 12 indigenous – belonging naturally to a place – einheimisch 13 ancestry – people or race from which one is descended – die Abstammung, Herkunft 14 Pleistocene – an ice age period – die Pleistozänzeit 15 roamed – to roam – to move about without any definite aim or destination – umherstreifen Lingua-Video.com – Ubierstraße 94 – 53173 Bonn – Tel: 0228 / 85 46 95-0 – Fax: 0228 / 85 46 95-79 4
In fact, the buffalo is the lone survivor from that ancient time. A herd animal, the buffalo is covered with long dark brown woolly hair. It has a massive head, high humped 16 shoulders and a tufted 17 tail. Fully grown, buffaloes are five to six feet high at the shoulders and can weigh as much as a ton. Like other members of the cattle family, they thrive on grasses. Prior to the 1800s, it is estimated that the buffalo population ranged somewhere between 60 to 80 million. They were found wherever prairie grasses grew, from Canada to Texas and from the Rockies to Ohio and Kentucky. It was said that when one of the vast herds moved through an area it kicked up a cloud of dust darkening the sky. For 10,000 years buffalo had been hunted on foot by the Native American tribes but were never the principal source of food and material for the Indians as the deer or elk were. That changed with the arrival of the Europeans and their horses. The horse was particularly important to the Spanish in their conquests 18 and explorations 19 . The Spanish Iberian mustang was not a huge grain-fed animal like the horses from northwestern Europe and the British Isles. It was a desert-bred animal that could live entirely off grasses and go for long periods without water. It was capable of carrying a man in heavy armor 20 over miles of burning desert and dry high plains. In 1680 there was a massive uprising by the Pueblo Indians against their Spanish overlords 21 . When the surviving Spanish fled they left behind their sheep, cattle and horses. The Pueblo, a sedentary 22 people having little use for the thousands of Spanish horses, simply let them roam free. These horses thriving on the short grass prairies formed the nucleus 23 of the great mustang herds of the Southwest and Southern Plains. This great horse dispersal 24 produced perhaps the most rapid cultural transformation hitherto 25 ever witnessed on the planet. Within 100 years, a number of native American tribes on both sides of the Great Plains had transformed themselves into nomadic buffalo hunting horse cultures; horse cultures with names like the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Comanche, the Kiowa and the Arapahoe. 16 humped – a hump – a round projecting part on the back of an animal – buckelig 17 tufted – a tuft – a bunch of hair, feathers etc. growing or held together at the base – gebüschelt 18 conquests – to conquer – to take possession and control by force- die Eroberungen 19 explorations – to explore – to search through or travel through new lands for discovery – die Erforschungen 20 armor – a protective metal covering for the body worn when fighting – die Rüstung 21 overlords – people with supreme powers over many others – die Oberherren, Herrscher 22 sedentary – settled in one place – sesshaft 23 nucleus – the central part of something – der Kern 24 dispersal – to disperse – to go in different directions, to spread over a wide area – die Verbreitung, Verstreutheit 25 hitherto – until now – bis jetzt Lingua-Video.com – Ubierstraße 94 – 53173 Bonn – Tel: 0228 / 85 46 95-0 – Fax: 0228 / 85 46 95-79 5
Page 1 and 2: Complete Text Lingua-Video.com
Page 3: Early Indians People have occupied
Page 7 and 8: Their ancestral home 31 covered a l
Page 9 and 10: 1600s. Around 1700, they reached th
Page 11 and 12: Around 1700 they acquired 60 horses
Page 13 and 14: Cheyenne The first historical recor
Page 15 and 16: It was the Lakota band that first t
Page 17 and 18: Gathering these materials, hunting
Page 19 and 20: Depending upon the time of year, th

The Great Plains Indians Complete Text - Lingua

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