In peacetime, the primary task of the nomadic Plains Indians was buffalo hunting.  The buffalo was more than just meat; it supplied virtually everything an American Native needed to stay alive; from spoons to housing.  Because of this importance - and in tribute to its strength - the buffalo was worshiped as a sacred animal, its spirit praised before every hunt.

Every part of the buffalo not used for food was put to some other purpose.  Horns, bones, hoofs, hides, and innards became household items.  Even the dung of the buffalo was saved to use as fuel.  The most versatile portion of the animal was its hide.  The thickness (and uses) of the skin varied according to the age and sex of the animal.  The thickest skin came from old bulls and went into shields and the soles of winter moccasins.  The thinnest was that of unborn calves for berry bags.  Between these extremes was cowskin, whose intermediate thickness allowed it to be fashioned into any number of items from rafts to ball coverings for a game called "shinny."

In addition to these natural variations, the Indians treated the skins to give them different properties.  An untreated skin, called rawhide, was tough and stiff in texture, but after tanning it became soft and pliable.  For winter garments and blankets, the hair was left on the hides.  For other uses, the hides were scraped clean.  Sometimes a hide would age in such a way that it ultimately would serve two very different purposes.  The upper part of a cowhide tipi cover, made rainproof by the grease and smoke of many cooking fires, was eventually salvaged by the industrious women who would cut it up and stitch it into clothing to be worn during the wet season.

To the Plains tribes, supplying buffalo hides to the white man seemed like good business at first.  They always had hunted for their own needs, and merely by killing more buffalo they could obtain guns, tobacco, whiskey, and other goods.  By the 1840's, they were delivering at least 100,000 hides a year to traders, who shipped the pelts to Eastern markets to be sold as lap robes.

This increase in hunting by the Indians began to whittle down the total number of buffalo, though there were still an estimated 50 million at mid-century.  Soon, however, white men took over the bulk of the hunting and began to kill the animals with devastating efficiency.  Approaching a herd downwind and hiding 200 to 600 yards away behind a rock or shrub, they could pick off the animals without alarming the grazing herd.  One hunter might bag 150 buffalo in a day.  Then the skinners stripped the animals and pegged the pelts to the ground to dry.  The tongues were smoked and send East to be sold as a delicacy.

By the 1860's, the large-scale destruction of the herds by professional hunters, as well as the steady but less systematic shooting of the animals by pioneers traveling westward in covered wagons, was beginning to disrupt the migration patterns of the buffalo.  This in turn forced the Plains tribes to move away from their traditional hunting grounds in order to follow the animal that was crucial to their very lives.  But no matter where they went, the Indians were almost immediately followed by hunters, soldiers, and pioneers.  As Sioux Chief White Cloud lamented, "Wherever the whites are established, the buffalo is gone, and the red hunters must die of hunger."