The Northern Plains--that vast grassland extending from the Mississippi and Red Rivers westward to the Rocky Mountains, and from the valley of the Saskatchewan River in Canada southward to the Platte in Nebraska and Wyoming--is the home of a score of Indian tribes--the Algonquian-speaking Arapaho, Cheyenne, Gros Ventres, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwa, and the three Blackfoot tribes; the Siouan-speaking Assiniboine, Crow, Hidatsam Mandan, and the seven divisions of the Dakota or Sioux; the Caddoan-speaking Arikara, and the small Athapascan-speaking tribe of Sarsi.

No other Indians are more widely known than are those of this region. They and ...