978-1-4222-3326-9

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Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska

peared from the Plains, the entire way of life of these tribes was threatened. These tensions led to the outbreak of armed conflict between the U.S. Army and Nebraska’s Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. The clashes were part of a larger series of conflicts that took place throughout the Great Plains between about 1854 and 1890. They were a response to the encroachment onto Native American lands by European-American settlers. Collectively, these conflicts are known as the Plains Indian Wars.

The Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho were nomadic tribes living primarily in western Nebraska. Year- round, they migrated across the Plains, following herds of buffalo. They subsisted entirely off of hunting. For the Native Americans, increased European-American settle- ment meant more competition for land and resources. The construction of the railroads and the development of the cattle industry meant the who- lescale destruction of vast herds of buffalo. And as the buffalo disap-

This stone marker designates the spot where the famed Sioux chief Crazy Horse was killed at Fort Robinson, in northwestern Nebraska, in 1879.