Compare And Contrast Sioux And Comanche Tribes

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To start with, Sioux and Comanches were native American tribes of the Great Plains whose ancestors were indigenous habitants to the lands of North America. "Lakota" and "Dakota" Sioux inhabited the areas that are now known as Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota. They are actually the same tribe with different pronunciation and little variations in language, the meaning of the name is “the allies”. Both tribes have their own language but when they became bilingual they preferred to be called Sioux in English that means “little snakes”. The Comanche tribe located in the southern areas of the Great Plains – nowadays California, Southwest Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. Comanches called themselves in Comanche language “true humans” (Nermurnuh).…show more content…
People lived in tent-like homes were joists bolstered up the tent and were covered with weatherproof animal skins. Their homes were called tepees. Pyramid shaped tepees had flaps and openings and were rounded at the base (12 to 16 feet in diameter) and tapered to an open smoke hole at the top. Buffalo skins were used for seating, bedding, and covers. Both Sioux and Comanche’s villages were well planned and highly organized in regular streets and squares that allowed easy movement of their horses. Moreover, both tribes were dependent upon buffalos as they ate them and used their hides to make warm clothing. Their diet included the meat that was available in their vicinity (buffalo, deer, elk, bear, wild turkey). Meat was mixed with roots and wild vegetables (spinach, prairie turnips and potatoes) and flavoured with wild herbs. They also ate wild berries and fruits. The main weapons were bows and arrows. Another similarity between the two tribes is the clothing. The clothing was sewn from soft tanned skins of deer and buffalo, it was functional and beautiful. The clothes worn by men consisted of breechcloths, fringed buckskin, tunics or shirts and leggings. Women wore knee-length dresses and leggings. Furthermore, clothing included moccasins. During the colder seasons warm buffalo robes were worn to protect people against the rain and…show more content…
For example when person from Lakota tribe dies at home the tribe will wait about day and half before they bury their dead. Lakota mourners dress the body in fine clothes and wrap them tightly in robes. When a Comanche is dying and the natural warmth has not departed from the body, the knees of the dying person are strongly bent upon the chest, and the legs flexed upon the thighs and the head bent forward upon the knees. Comanche tribe then wraps a blanket around the dead body and cords it tightly. Burial practices vary in both tribes – they use traditional earth burial, air burial, burial under mounds or rocks and even tree burial, in which the limbs of a tree stand in for a scaffold. These methods vary depending on the tribe, location and

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