This book is called The Horse and the Plains Indians. It is by: Dorothy Hinshaw Patent. The Plains Indian life was rough, because the Prairie offered no shelter or resources for the Indians to live. However, the Prairie did have an abundance of the animals’ life. There were herds of buffalo, deer, prong, elk, wolves and others for the Indians to eat. The Indians that lived on the Prairie traveled in search of game, which caused them to move often, this meant they had to carry their possessions with them, by using their dogs. The dogs belonged to the women who were in charge of packing up the camp and moving it. The women also spent lots of time training the dogs. After Columbus’s arrival, other European explorers came looking for gold and other treasures. They wanted to take over the native people. A man named Hernando Cortes lived in Mexico in 1519 and he was the first person to bring horses. At first the Indians were afraid of them and this gave the Spaniards the advantage. On the arrival of the horse there were other changes to the Plains all doing the years of the 1700s and 1800s. As a result of the white settlers’ need for rich farm lands and the decline of buffalo east of the Mississippi, more tribes were forced onto the Plains. In the 1770s, plains tribes from Texas into Canada and Illinois along with plateau tribes had become horse nations. The horse quickly became the valuable possession. Continued warfare among the tribes and between Indians and Whites was unavoidable on the Prairies because eastern tribes were forced west by white settlement, putting pressure on the Plains Tribes. The U. S. Army battled the Indians who fought against White settlers taking over their land. The Comanche, were the first to require horses, and the Blackfoot, whose ancestors had roamed the Prairie for thousands of years became especially feared warriors. Some say that the last battle of the Indian wars was on December of 1890 at the Wounded Knee Massacre. It was said” that hundreds of Indians were camped on the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota and tension between the soldiers sent to guard the area and the Indians ran high.” It was all 400 years that White settlers and Indians fought over the lands of North America. At the end of the 19th century the White settlers occupied land all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and the Indian had been corralled onto reservations that consisted of a small fraction of their original land. In 1930 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed John Collier, a critic of reservation law, as commissioner of Indian Affairs. Collier helped pass the Indian Reorganization Act through Congress in 1934. This law gave the tribes more power over their own affairs and ended the takeover of reservation land. The law had flaws, however it was a start.

I chose this rating because this book was interesting and a lot to learn from. I think it was interesting to learn how the horses and the Indians had to connect in order for them to kill their food. I also like how the women and the men had separate jobs to work together to live. There was a couple of parts that I didn't think was very interesting, but overall this book was a fun book to read. I learned a lot about horses and the Plains Indians to include their way of living and fighting. Also, I like the Indians way of protecting their selves. ( )

A complementary title to The Buffalo and the Indians (Clarion, 2006), Patent and Muñoz show how the introduction of horses to North America by Europeans transformed the lives of Native Americans living on or near the Great Plains. Illustrated with contemporary color photographs and period black-and-white photos. An interesting and appealing look at Plains Indian culture and history that will interest readers wanting to explore Native American history or horse lovers. ( )