Mongols and Plains Indians

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Two cultures, thousands of miles apart, show similarities that would be expected of neighboring civilizations. Both cultures arose on similar terrain. This terrain was a luscious grassland. One civilization grew up in Midwest North America, the other in Central Asia. The first civilization was the Plains Indians. The second was the Mongols. Each culture had a common form of religion. This religion was shamanism. Wordiq defines it as "a range of traditional beliefs and practices that involve the ability to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause human suffering because of a special relationship with, or control over, spirits." The cultures were also affected by the horse. According to David Nicolle, the horse appeared on the Central Plains of America during the 18th century C.E. (The Mongol Warlords: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Hulegu Tamerlane). Horses are native to the Mongolian region.

The Plains Indians and Mongols show similarities in that horses played a key role in their politics, cultures, and economies; they shared a common form of religion, shamanism, which affected politics, and practiced reverence for the dead and of high places.

The Mongols' politics were affected by the horse. According to Morris Rossabi, The Mongols valued the horse for the advantages it presented in warfare. The horse was fast and flexible in battle (All Khan's Horses).These characteristics of the horse helped the Mongols attack and to dodge enemy arrows. Morris Rossabi goes on to state that the great Mongolian general Genghis Khan used the horse to conquer central Asia. Khan was said to have used the horse to facilitate hit-and-run raids on sedentary agricultural societies and to mobilize his army(All Khan's Horses). After the raid, the horse a...

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...Shamanism states that Sitting Bull was a chief and a medicine man[shaman], a political leader and a spiritual one(philtar.ucsm.ac.uk). Sitting Bull was an

example of how religion and politics intertwined amongst Plains Indians tribes. This created a sort of theocracy in which religion and politics ruled. The sacred Black Hills caused much warfare between the whites and the Indians. According to James Boyd, the Plains Indians refused to sell the Black Hills to the Americans because they were sacred to them. This caused war between them(Recent Indian Wars 132). The mineral value of the Black Hills caused the Americans to want the land. It was believed that gold was in the Black Hills. The refusal of the Indians shows how much the Indians valued the lands due to the sacred nature of them. Many Indians gave up their lives to maintain the possession of the Black Hills.

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