Warfare.
The plains indians were skilled hunters and wariors. During battle indians initially used a bow and arrows, but other things could be used such as – war clubs, tomahawks, lances and knives. They used the bow on horseback and nearly always went in to battle on horseback. Arrows would be made of bone and metal, they could fire arrows very skillfully and very quickly. Tomahawks were used for warriors fighting on the ground, but could be launched from horseback, knives were used for similar things but most importantly they would be used for scalping the victim.
Plains Indians fought against the white settlers in many battles mostly over land. But sometimes Indians may have fought with other tribes of Indians. Indian men were named Braves and every Indian boy would aim and want to be a Brave. Indians would fight over land, horses and sometimes over wifes. They fought in a very skilful way, they would think before they went in to battle so they had a plan and if twenty or thirty braves went in to battle only one or two would be killed because of their good strategy.
After a battle had been fought and victims had been killed, an Indian would cut off the top of the head of the dead enemy with a sharp knife, this was called
scalping and the number of scalps an Indian owned showed how brave and important he was and would earn respect for him throughout the tribe.
M Pearson