298 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



or at least the semihorticultural, mode of life was apparently over- 

 shadowed by the seasonal buffalo hunts, until in the late period of 

 which Dunbar writes their permanent villages were occupied only 

 long enough to plant and again to harvest the crops. With the advent 

 of the horse there seems to have come an influx of border peoples 

 from the north, east, and west. With such groups ranging over 

 the plains, outlying, unprotected villages, so common in the prehis- 

 toric period, were no longer practical, and the Pawnee appear to have 

 concentrated in large sod-walled villages in the central part of their 

 territories or else traveled en masse following the buffalo. 



If the present very incomplete archeological record is to be trusted, 

 the horse culture spread as a thin and strikingly uniform veneer over 

 the central plains, bringing with it many traits more typical of the 

 forest-hunting regions to the north than they were to the prehistoric 

 plains themselves. Given the horse, the plains with their vast bison 

 herds could not be resisted, and in the course of a century or two a 

 new mode of lifQ developed involving many peoples that were ap- 

 parently relative strangers to the region. Added to the lure of horses 

 and bison hunting was the gradually increasing pressure of an alien 

 culture in the east ; thus, while the bison herds drew newly mounted 

 tribes to the west, the guns of the traders in the hands of enemy tribes 

 to the north and east discouraged loitering. Only the fortified villages 

 along the main rivers could withstand the pressure of this influx of 

 hunters and warriors ; hence when the French and American ex- 

 plorers entered the region, the warlike nomadic tribes were completely 

 in the ascendancy, and the more advanced semihorticultural villagers 

 had already been crowded back into a narrow strip along the Missouri. 



If the situation definitely revealed in eastern and central Nebraska, 

 namely, the pre-Caucasian dominance of a more or less settled horti- 

 cultural life, can be applied to the rest of the north-central plains 

 it is obvious that the historic period saw a complete reversal of cul- 

 tural values in the area.''" Prior to the coming of the horse it was 

 the village tribes that prevailed in the area; afterward the border 

 tribes or late invaders held the balance of power. Thoroughly motile, 

 possessed of an apparently unlimited meat supply, having nothing to 

 lose by war and almost everything to gain, such peoples as the 

 Comanche. Crow, Gros Ventre, Black foot, Kiowa, Assiniboin, and 

 Teton Dakota completely dominated the scene. The others, such as 

 the Mandan Arikara, Pawnee, Ponca, Omaha, and Oto, clung to 



'"This state of affairs has recently been pointed out by Kroeber, 1928. p. 395, 

 in a brief analysis of Plains culture which foreshadows the actual archeological 

 findings in a remarkable manner. Also see Swanton, 1930. 



