PEOPLE OF THE PLAINS

For centuries before wagons cut ruts into the Santa Fe Trail, the vast grasslands split by the route were home to tribes of Plains Indians. The Plains Indians were any of about 30 different Indigenous peoples who lived on the Great Plains of central North America. The trail brought different cultures into contact—and eventually into conflict.

A few of the Plains Indians followed a semisedentary lifestyle. Two such groups, the Osage and the Kansa, inhabited permanent villages in eastern Kansas. They raised corn, beans, and squash. Like the nearby Pawnee, they ventured