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1991
For the most part the Plains Indians were very diverse in their cultures which are profiled in some detail. But a common aspect was their horse culture made possible when the Spanish, defeated by the Navaho, abandoned their livestock and their horses thrived in the wild prairie environment. The mobility made possible by the Indians taming the feral horses enabled a return to a nomadic lifestyle that favored hunting over the agrarian lifestyle predominate among Indians since the sixteenth century. But history better remembers the warfare with neighboring tribes and the Europeans encroaching on the Plains that was facilitated by the horse culture.