The Great Plains of North America were once home to over 30 distinct Native American nations now referred to as the Plains Indians, Native Americans of the Plains and Prairie, and Indigenous Peoples of the Great Plains. Their descendants still live in the region, only now on greatly reduced lands of reservations.
Not all Native Americans today live on reservations – though many do – as their ancestors were forcibly relocated from their homelands by the policies of the US government, which saw the American Indians as an obstacle to progress and an impediment to Manifest Destiny. The reservations were often poorly suited to sustain the population; a serious challenge many Native Americans still face today along with continual encroachments on the lands left to them. The modern Land Back Movement is working to address this injustice by holding the US government to the terms of treaties they signed with the Native peoples of North America but never honored and, among these, are those referred to as Plains Indians.
The following gallery is limited in scope, relying heavily on images of the Sioux and Cheyenne, but attempts to give an impression of Native American life on the Plains in the 19th and early 20th century.
