Lesson Y8-U07-L01

The Plains Indians A Way of Life Quiz: KS3 History, Unit 13

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson Y8-U07-L01, The Plains Indians A Way of Life: 20 multiple choice questions for the KS3 History (National Curriculum), Unit 13: Year 8: The Wild West, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. What does 'nomadic' mean?

    • Farming the same land for many generations without moving
    • Travelling only by sea to trade with distant peoples
    • Moving from place to place instead of settling in one spot
    • Living in a stone house in a large town with shops and schools

  2. What was a 'tepee'?

    • A stone house with a flat roof, built by settlers from the East
    • A tall, cone-shaped tent made of buffalo skins over wooden poles
    • A wooden fort built by the army to guard the railway
    • A type of canoe used on the rivers of the Great Plains

  3. What was the 'Great Spirit' in Plains Indian belief?

    • A god who lived only in the sky and never on the Earth
    • A spirit that lived only in the buffalo herds and nowhere else
    • A leader of the army who was worshipped by the settlers
    • A power that lived in all living things and in the land

  4. What is a 'band' among the Plains Indians?

    • A small group of families who lived, moved and hunted together
    • A musical group that performed at feasts and religious ceremonies
    • A large town built on the Great Plains by the settlers
    • A group of soldiers sent by the army to guard the buffalo herds

  5. What did Europeans call the Great Plains in the 1800s?

    • The Land of Thunder, a name given by the Plains Indians to the storms
    • The Golden Plain, a name given by the first settlers who arrived from Europe
    • The Empty Coast, a phrase used by the American army in its reports
    • The Great American Desert

  6. About how many buffalo are estimated to have roamed the Great Plains?

    • About 30 million
    • About 300,000
    • About 3 million
    • About 300 million

  7. About how many different Native American nations lived on the Great Plains?

    • Around 3
    • Around 10,000
    • Around 30
    • Around 300

  8. What were buffalo droppings used for by the Plains Indians?

    • They were sold to settlers as fertiliser for the new farms
    • They were used as bait to catch fish in the rivers
    • They were dried and burned as fuel
    • They were mixed with water to make paint for the tepees

  9. What was buffalo sinew used for?

    • Blankets to keep the family warm in winter
    • Knives and arrowheads for hunting
    • Water carriers and cooking bags
    • Bowstrings and thread for sewing

  10. About how long could a tepee be taken down and carried to the next camp?

    • About one week
    • About one day
    • About ten minutes
    • About one hour

  11. Who owned, made, put up and took down the tepees?

    • The children
    • The men
    • The women
    • The chief

  12. Why could the Plains Indians not live in fixed houses?

    • They were forced to live in forts by the army
    • They followed the moving buffalo herds across the Plains
    • They preferred to live in caves in the mountains
    • They were not allowed to build houses by the government

  13. Why did the Plains Indians believe the land could not be owned?

    • They believed the land was sacred and shared by all living things
    • They believed the land was too dry and empty to be worth owning
    • They believed the buffalo owned the land and had to give permission
    • They believed that the army had already taken all of the land for itself

  14. How did the Plains Indians see life?

    • As a square divided into four fixed parts with no movement
    • As a ladder that people climbed to reach the Great Spirit
    • As a straight line that started at birth and ended in a fixed place
    • As a circle, with the seasons, the sun, the camp and the tepee all round

  15. Why did many Plains peoples believe that land could not be owned?

    • Because the government had banned all land sales in the 1800s
    • Because buffalo herds had claimed the land as their own territory
    • Because the land was too dry and useless to be worth any money
    • Because they saw the land as sacred and shared by all living things

  16. Which view of Plains land was typical of many US officials in the 1870s?

    • That it was wasted unless it was farmed and settled
    • That it should be divided into private plots for sale
    • That it belonged to the buffalo herds rather than to people
    • That it was sacred and should never be owned by anyone

  17. A US official in the 1870s says the Plains were 'wasted' on the Plains Indians. Why might a Plains Indian disagree?

    • They wanted to keep the land empty so that the buffalo could be hunted for sport
    • They believed the land should be farmed by the army instead
    • They used the land carefully, moving with the herds and hunting only what they needed
    • They wanted to sell the land to the settlers for a large sum of money

  18. Which use of the buffalo provided shelter and warmth?

    • Its dung, which was dried and burned for fuel
    • Its sinew, which was used to make bowstrings
    • Its horns, which were carved into spoons for cooking
    • Its hide, which was used for tepee covers, clothes and blankets

  19. The Plains Indians used almost every part of the buffalo. Why was the buffalo described as a 'walking supermarket'?

    • Almost every part of one animal was used for food, shelter, tools and fuel
    • It was sold in markets in the towns for cash by Plains traders
    • It was the only animal that could be kept as a pet on the Plains
    • It was herded into pens and fed grain by the army each winter

  20. Which statement best explains why outsiders thought the Plains were empty?

    • They had never seen grass before arriving on the Plains in the 1850s, and thought the prairie was a desert
    • They were told by the government that the Plains were covered in ice for most of the year and could not be farmed
    • They believed that no people had ever lived on the Plains before the 1800s, when settlers first arrived
    • They judged the land by farming standards and did not see how the Plains peoples lived with it

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