Before European contact, the Great Plains were home to diverse Native American tribes like the Sioux (Lakota), Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Pawnee, Crow, Blackfoot, Apache, Arapaho, Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara. These Indigenous peoples, both nomadic hunters and village farmers, frequently engaged in intertribal warfare driven by competition for hunting grounds, buffalo herds, and territory. Environmental stresses […]