The jobs of the Native Americans were as follows. The warriors, who were all men, went off to kill buffalo; raid other tribes for horses and protect the tribe from raiders. The woman of the tribe would do all the work at home: clean clothes, cook food, skin the buffalo and look after the children. The children did not go to school, they learnt how to ride horse, boys learnt to hunt and girls learnt how to maintain a home, basically they learnt how to survive. The old people would give advice to the council and pass down the history of their people.
The natives are very religious people and believe in a god called wakan tanka, they worship him for everything, they perform rituals such as the sun dance, war dance and the buffalo dance. The sun dance would show a warriors bravery, he would have ropes tied to him and pulled very hard and could not stop the ritual until the ropes had ripped out of his skin. It was painstaking to what but probably more painful to partake in this ritual. They also cut off their enemies scalps and ripped out their eyes in believe that when they enter the happy hunting ground , known to us as heaven, they will not be able to find them and kill them because they believed that the state you died in would be the state you would enter the happy hunting ground. The native’s rituals would look like torture from our point of perspective but are just rituals. A man called the medicine man would be in the centre of this and would perform magical dances and would be wearing clothes made up of all the animals on the plains, he is believed by the natives to have magical powers but we suspect he is just a fake acting the part.
The Indians eat buffalo a lot and is there main food, they hunt for buffalo about three times a year, and they locate the buffalo by searching the plains and sometimes using dogs. The reason why they hunt the buffalo is because the buffalo is a stupid animal, easy to kill and has many uses to the Native Americans. Such as: the buffalo skull is used in religious ceremonies and the brain is used for tanning hides; the bladder is used for bags; the tail is used for whips and fly swats; fur is used for decoration on clothes and ropes; there rawhide was used for belts, bags, containers and much more; and the buffalo pooh, or as the natives call it (buffalo chips), is used for fire fuel and they actually smoke it. These are only half the things that buffalo’s are used for in the native tribes.
To kill the buffalo the warriors of the tribe would chase the buffalo and kill them one by one. They use spears and bow and arrows, they are very skilled with their weapons and can kill a buffalo in a seconds. Sometimes they would pretend to be wolfs and sneak up on the dumb animals. They Indians would aim for the head because they new that it would be quicker and give more time to kill more buffalo, whilst this was happening the tribes people are all hidden behind a hill or out of site and when all the buffalo have gone they will come in and cut the buffalo up and put them onto a truck like thing onto the backs of their horse. There are also many dangers in hunting the buffalo. If a warrior was to fall off their horse they would probably be trampled to death. It was a very fast paced thing, and it was hard to distinguish what was where.
Young natives wanted to join in and take part because it would prove they were a brave warrior. If they did and proved themselves a worthy warriors they might be accepted into a warrior society and give themselves more respect in the tribes.
In my opinion I think these natives are alright people, I also think that we should not judge something because we do not understand. I have been there and met these people and lived their life. If there was a moral to the Native Americans story I think it would be don’t judge a book by its cover.
