Lesson Y8-U07-L01

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

In partnership with Revision Ninja

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.

Host it live on the board and students join with a game code on their own devices, or revise alone with Free Play. The answers are revealed in the game.

Host this setFree Play

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

All KS3 History quizzes