In this presentation, author/historian Kae Cheatham gives insight into the lifestyle of the Northern Plains before the "Horse Culture." Horse Culture is often the first mental picture most people have of Plains Indians; but the people of the Northern Plains had never seen a horse until 75 years before Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery trekked West. In the early 18th Cenetury, Plains Indian Horse Culture did not exist.

15th century European 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. The many ancient kill sites and petroglyphs validate the thousands of years people lived in this region without horses.

With use of maps, pictures, and other interesting props, "Northern Plains Lifestyle Before the Horse" provides information about those millenia when the people lived using only dogs as draft animals. What was it like to travel with only dogs to help? How were villages set up? What did the people do every day? These are some of the questions answered in this presentation.