and children. Material culture Agriculture and plant foods The semi-sedentary, village-dwelling Plains Indians depended upon agriculture for a large share of their livelihood, particularly those who lived in the eastern parts of the Great Plains which had more precipitation than the western side. Corn was the dominant crop, followed by squash and beans. Tobacco, sunflower, plums and other plants were also cultivated or gathered in the wild. Among the wild crops gathered the most important were probably berries to flavor pemmican and the Prairie Turnip. The first indisputable evidence of maize cultivation on the Great Plains is about 900 AD. The earliest farmers, the Southern Plains villagers were probably Caddoan speakers, the ancestors of the Wichita, Pawnee, and Arikara of today. Plains farmers developed short-season and drought resistant varieties of food plants. They did not use irrigation but were adept at water harvesting and siting their fields to receive the maximum benefit of limited rainfall. The Hidatsa and Mandan of North Dakota cultivated maize at the northern limit of its range. The farming tribes also hunted buffalo, deer, elk, and other game. Typically, on the southern Plains, they planted crops in the spring, left their permanent villages to hunt buffalo in the summer, returned to harvest crops in the fall, and left again to hunt bison in the winter. The farming Indians also traded corn to the nomadic tribes for dried buffalo meat. With the arrival of the horse, some tribes, such as the Lakota and Cheyenne, gave up agriculture to become full-time, buffalo-hunting nomads. By the 1870s bison herds were depleted and beef, cereal grains, fats and starchy vegetables became more important in the diet of Plains Indians. Fruits and nuts were, especially plums and grapes were dried as winter store. Flour was made from the Indian breadroot (Pediomelum esculentum). Indian tea (lespedeza) is still sometimes consumed by Plains Indians who have retained these cultural traditions. Plums were one of the most important wild plant foods on the Oklahoma reservation. Hunting Although people of the Plains hunted other animals, such as elk or pronghorn, buffalo was the primary game food source. Before horses were introduced, hunting was a more complicated process. Hunters would surround the bison, and then try to herd them off cliffs or into confined places where they could be more easily killed. The Plains Indians constructed a v-shaped funnel, about a mile long, made of fallen