average-sized tipi, and as many as fifty to make a big one. As the hides aged, they became like parchment, and let more light through. At night, a tipi with a cooking fire inside was a cone of light. A fully equipped tipi had almost as many ropes, lines, pegs, and parts as an old-time sailing vessel. Women were in charge of putting up and taking down tipis; Kit Carson, the famous frontier scout, lived for years in a tipi with no idea how to pitch one. Tipi poles were made of the slender trunks of young lodgepole pines, and were rare items on the treeless plains. Tribes made special trips to the Rockies or the Black Hills to get them. Since the poles dragged on the ground behind horses during moves, they quickly wore down. All plains tribes constructed tipis with poles set one after the other in a central framework of three or four poles. If you lay on your back and looked out the smoke hole in the top of the tipi, the poles made a spiral going up into the sky.
In the barter system of the plains, five tipi poles might equal one horse. Price in this system varied with circumstance, but the horse served as a loose standard. One good horse might be worth a panther skin, an eagle tail of twelve feathers, eight or ten peyote beans, two gallons of shucked corn, or six tanned buffalo robes. Mules were hardier and rarer than horses, so one mule was worth at least two horses. Indian women liked to decorate their dresses with the smooth lower incisors of the elk; one horse was worth 100 to 150 elk teeth. Two knives, a pair of leggings, a blanket, a gun, a horse, and a tipi might be the price of one wife. A wife, if she worked hard, could prepare ten buffalo robes for trade in a season. At the tradersâ, one buffalo robe was worth from seven to nine cups of sugar. A white mackinaw blanket with a black stripeâIndians preferred that style, so it was more expensiveâcost two or three robes. Indian men learned that the more wives they had, the more robes they had to trade. A dressed deer skin equalled from fifteen to twenty rifle balls and powder, an elk skin from twenty to twenty-five. All the meat of one buffalo cow was worth from twenty to forty balls and powder, depending on how far away the herds were. A prime beaver pelt was worth $6 to $8 a pound. For ten months of work, setting traps in cold water, dodging Indians, starving, freezing, getting attacked by bears, a trapper made about $150. The boatmen who brought trade goods up the Missouri as far as the Yellowstone made $220 for the round trip. Prices at the trading posts averaged nine times higher than back East. There were no pennies on the Great Plainsâwest of St. Louis, the nickel was the smallest coin. Indians used gold and silver coins for buttons on their shirts. When a band of Indians plundered a Missouri River keelboat carrying $25,000 worth of gold dust in buckskin sacks, they poured the gold dust onto the sand and kept the buckskin sacks.
All kinds of Indians lived on the plains. In fact, after the coming of the horse, iron, and colored beads, but before smallpox, alcohol, and the Army, Indians generally prospered and multiplied on the plains. The Sioux, who moved there from the lake region of present-day Minnesota in the mid-eighteenth century, were also called the western or the Teton Sioux, to distinguish them from the Yankton and the Santee Sioux, who remained in the East. On the plains, the Teton Sioux soon numbered seven bands: the Hunkpapa, the Oglala, the Miniconjou, the Oohenonpa, the Sihasapa, the Sicanju, and the Itazipcho. The Siouxâs favorite enemy, the Crows, were originally Hidatsa who had moved west from the Missouri River in the 1700s after an argument between two chiefs. The Crows were also called the Absaroka, and they hunted in the Yellowstone valley. Later, other bands of Crows moved even farther west, to the Rockies, so then there were River Crows and Mountain Crows. To the north of the Crows were the Blackfeet, a tribe which
In the barter system of the plains, five tipi poles might equal one horse. Price in this system varied with circumstance, but the horse served as a loose standard. One good horse might be worth a panther skin, an eagle tail of twelve feathers, eight or ten peyote beans, two gallons of shucked corn, or six tanned buffalo robes. Mules were hardier and rarer than horses, so one mule was worth at least two horses. Indian women liked to decorate their dresses with the smooth lower incisors of the elk; one horse was worth 100 to 150 elk teeth. Two knives, a pair of leggings, a blanket, a gun, a horse, and a tipi might be the price of one wife. A wife, if she worked hard, could prepare ten buffalo robes for trade in a season. At the tradersâ, one buffalo robe was worth from seven to nine cups of sugar. A white mackinaw blanket with a black stripeâIndians preferred that style, so it was more expensiveâcost two or three robes. Indian men learned that the more wives they had, the more robes they had to trade. A dressed deer skin equalled from fifteen to twenty rifle balls and powder, an elk skin from twenty to twenty-five. All the meat of one buffalo cow was worth from twenty to forty balls and powder, depending on how far away the herds were. A prime beaver pelt was worth $6 to $8 a pound. For ten months of work, setting traps in cold water, dodging Indians, starving, freezing, getting attacked by bears, a trapper made about $150. The boatmen who brought trade goods up the Missouri as far as the Yellowstone made $220 for the round trip. Prices at the trading posts averaged nine times higher than back East. There were no pennies on the Great Plainsâwest of St. Louis, the nickel was the smallest coin. Indians used gold and silver coins for buttons on their shirts. When a band of Indians plundered a Missouri River keelboat carrying $25,000 worth of gold dust in buckskin sacks, they poured the gold dust onto the sand and kept the buckskin sacks.
All kinds of Indians lived on the plains. In fact, after the coming of the horse, iron, and colored beads, but before smallpox, alcohol, and the Army, Indians generally prospered and multiplied on the plains. The Sioux, who moved there from the lake region of present-day Minnesota in the mid-eighteenth century, were also called the western or the Teton Sioux, to distinguish them from the Yankton and the Santee Sioux, who remained in the East. On the plains, the Teton Sioux soon numbered seven bands: the Hunkpapa, the Oglala, the Miniconjou, the Oohenonpa, the Sihasapa, the Sicanju, and the Itazipcho. The Siouxâs favorite enemy, the Crows, were originally Hidatsa who had moved west from the Missouri River in the 1700s after an argument between two chiefs. The Crows were also called the Absaroka, and they hunted in the Yellowstone valley. Later, other bands of Crows moved even farther west, to the Rockies, so then there were River Crows and Mountain Crows. To the north of the Crows were the Blackfeet, a tribe which
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