This presentation concerns lifestyle of the Northern Plains before "Horse Culture." Horse Culture is often the first mental picture most people have of Plains Indians; but less than 75 years before Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery trekked West, the people of the Northern Plains had never seen a horse. Plains Indian Horse Culture didn't exist. 15th European century explorers brought the horse to North America when they arrived in the southern regions of the continent. It took 200 years before the horse showed up on the Northern Plains, making Horse Culture a very recent part of the societies that have lived here for thousands of years.

With use of maps and pictures, "Northern Plains Lifestyle Before the Horse" gives information about those millenia when extensive use of dogs as draft animals was more unique to this region than any other place on the Plains; hunting and social development was based on this. The many ancient kill sites and petroglyphs validate the thousands of years the people lived here without horses. As part of the presentation, replica animals are used--dogs with sledge and packs, and a horse (in scale) with sledge.