People of the Plains, Then and Now

Part of the Addressing the Statue exhibition.

Part of the Addressing the Statue exhibition 

People of the Plains

Native people of the High Plains hunted bison for millennia, while those of the Prairie-Plains also farmed maize and other crops. High Plains people were highly nomadic, hunting bison for food and hides, and living for part of the year in skin-covered tents, or tipis.

Three members of Blackfoot Nation stand in front of a tipi.
Members of Blackfoot Nation, early 1900s.
AMNH Library
Buffalo hide with painted imagery.
Buffalo hide depicting Crow people on horseback, date unknown.
E358167-0, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution
Sitting Bear
Sitting Bear, leader of the Arikara people of the Plains, 1908. Eagle-feather headdresses carry with them great honor and responsibility; leaders receive them as gifts and only certain people can wear them.
Historica Graphica Collection/AGE Fotostock

Enduring Cultures of the Plains

By the time of Roosevelt’s presidency, many Native people of the Plains had been driven from their homeland through violence, introduced diseases, forced removal and pressures to assimilate. Yet Plains people have adapted and survived.

Two young Lakota boys stand holding skateboards.
Gavin (left) and Alex (both Lakota) play in the front yard of their grandmother’s house in Fort Yates, North Dakota, located on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The boys are first cousins but have grown up like brothers. In Lakota culture, kinship is very important: aunts and uncles are more like second mothers and fathers and first cousins are treated as siblings.
© Carlotta Cardana
Danielle Fin sits on a bed wearing traditional dress, her pageant ribbons hang from the wall behind her.
Danielle Ta'Sheena Finn (Hunkpapa Lakota) from Bismarck, North Dakota, works as a judge for the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She and her mother made her traditional dress and accessories. Ribbons in the background reflect Danielle’s winning titles in pageants she entered during law school to earn scholarships and to represent herself and young women from her nation.
© Carlotta Cardana
Julian holds his son Elijah.
Julian Ramirez and his son Elijah (both Lakota) live on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Julian is a single father who struggled with alcohol addiction but decided to sober up and be a positive influence for his son. Native Americans were introduced to alcohol during colonization and today have among the highest rates of alcohol disorders of any group in the country.
© Carlotta Cardana

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Theodore Roosevelt Timeline What did the artists and planners intend? How is the statue understood today? Perspectives on the statue Maasai, Then and Now Mayoral Advisory Commission Report