The plains indians that lived near my farm in MT were nomads. They were, in effect, an early version of a snowbird. They migrated north, following the buffalo herds in the spring and followed the herds south in the late fall. It is amazing how much the temps can vary in a couple hundred miles and they capitalized on that. Not that it can't get cold along the Yellowstone valley, but cold lasts much longer along the Canadian border and gets much more severe. Their teepees and teepee poles were portable so they could be picked up and moved. Their ideas of permanent quarters mostly consisted of rocks left in teepee rings that could be used in old campsites that they visited along the way and at the ends of their seasonal migrations.

There is a very interesting historical site concerning early indians at a buffalo jump just north of Havre, Mt. The digs and artifacts found there go back more than a thousand years. They pre-date the age of the bow and arrow. Their primary killing tool then was the atlatl and a tipped projectile. They boiled the bones and meat from slaughtered buffalo in kettles made from buffalo hides and could actually boil water faster in a hide bowl than our ancestors could in an iron pot.

The human brain and opposed thumb serve to place us humans at the top of the food chain, even though we're not much for strength and natural equipment when it comes to surviving the extremes of nature and nature's predators.