 The Great Plains is an open grassy region found east of the Mississippi and west of the Rocky Mountains. South from Canada and north from Texas. Before Europeans arrived it was home to thousands of Native American tribes. Have you ever wondered how these tribes survived? Eastern tribes were blessed with more plentiful rain and access to major rivers. This allowed them to live in villages, farming crops like corn, beans and squash. They also gathered wild plants and hunted game during the growing season, but ventured farther away for bison hunting expeditions after harvest. In the western part of the plains, rainfall was scarce, thus limiting farming opportunities. Therefore, tribes such as the Blackfeet, Arapaho, Crow and Comanche lived a nomadic lifestyle in which they were solely dependent on hunting wild game and gathering native plants for sustenance. For thousands of years, the nomadic Plains Indian tribes moved about as hunter-gatherers following the bison herds, while farming tribes moved their villages when drought or overuse of the soil made farming difficult. Although taking a different approach, all Plains Indian tribes were expert survivalists. From the University of Wyoming Extension, I'm Brian Sebade, Exploring the Nature of Wyoming.