Tipis and Puppies

After  Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears pushed many Native Americans west in 1838-1839, the available land Indians were allowed to ‘own’ grew smaller and smaller, until it was practically non existent.  Small pockets of reservation land have been maintained even today; however, the land taken from them grew exponentially as the white man colonized the North American continent from the very beginning.

Below is a photograph taken in 1891 out west on the Pine Ridge Reservation.  A young Oglala girl sits outside a tipi, her puppy basking in the sun beside her.

 

Unlike the Indian tribes of the East, the Western tribes were nomadic, moving as their food source moved.  These tipis provided this portability, as they could easily be transported and set up in a new location.