Plains Indians compared to Steppe Nomads

Thanks, all. So major differences are (1) the Plains Indians lacked domestic herds and had not had sufficient time on horse back to come to some kind of stable, enduring relationship with bison--which meant their populations were less and (2) the Plains Indians mostly lacked the access to tribute and loot from settled civilizations around their periphery, which would have allowed for greater and more complex military and state development. Though the Comanche/Kiowa may have been a proto-example of this phenomenon, and maybe the exception that proves the rule
(1) The Comanche, Kiowa, etc. had solid herds of horses since they lived far enough south that severe cold didn't hurt their herds as much as in the Central Plains or Northern Plains. They were the conduit for more northern groups to get more horses either through trade or by force--let's recall that one of the key measures of a warrior in many of these societies was stealing the enemies's horses, since north of Kansas winters are more consistently cold and thus those groups required more replenishing of their herds. The bison thing is very true--one writer describes them as "a weed", since bison numbers were so huge because all their competitors (larger bison, horses, other megafauna) went extinct leaving the bison as dominant. Since no group could kill enough bison to put any real dent, they didn't have a real cultural concept of overhunting bison (of course they noticed when bison numbers were low like during droughts). Incidentally this drove their expansion since they so relied on bison for both themselves and external trade that during droughts they needed to push into the lands controlled by other people which prompted conflict. It was a self-perpetuating cycle--they needed more bison so they expanded to take the hunting grounds from another group which if they won would give them more bison and land for their horses which to maintain that new equilibrium pushed them into yet more conflict in the next time of need and so forth.
(2) Their version of tribute was enacting it from more sedentary peoples, and there is archaeological and early historical (i.e. 17th-18th century) records of this being the case. The settled farming villages in the river valleys of the Plains to some extent relied on more nomadic hunter-gatherers for bison hunting, and in turn, the bison hunters relied on them for additional food and other goods. The actions of the Comanche, Lakota, etc. were an exaggerated and extreme version of this tradition made possible by the reintroduction of the horse to the Plains, although not totally explained by it since even in the remote corners of the Plains (like in modern Montana with the Blackfoot, Shoshone, etc.) they were influenced by the European fur trade and indirectly by the Spanish whose trade ended up bringing horses and guns to that area before long.

I am not certain if this ecological issue was as much a factor on the Eurasian steppe, but it is certainly a major factor in explaining the actions of the Plains Indians. Considering their reliance on the bison and cultural reluctance toward shifting to other lifestyles (they had a taboo against eating horse meat for instance, and cattle herding was adopted very late--the Comanche did so in the 1860s), they were pretty much doomed to some manner of collapse (worse than before) making their dominance ephemeral. The United States simply was in an inherently good position to exploit this collapse and gained an even greater position thanks to the subsidised bison hunting.

It's also worth noting that among the Plains Indians there was no concept of a khan or other leader, since leaders gained their status solely by means of achievements (in hunting, combat, etc.), and their heirs only had status because they'd inherit their predecessor's wealth. While large gatherings of tribes existed, they didn't have the ability to coordinate campaigns or anything.

The Plain Indians only spread into the plains about a century before settlers starting moving north and west into their territory. Those settlers were technologically advanced, backed by advanced and aggressive societies.
Have steppe tribes had to deal historically with technologically advanced neighbors that were themselves expansionist? The only thing I can think of is the Russians moving on the current Ukraine / Crimea area but I don't think those were classical steppe nomads.
Some Plains Indians were on the Plains for quite a while, like the Kiowa who split from the Ancestral Puebloans, although the majority (i.e. Cheyenne, Lakota, Blackfoot) expanded there and adopted a new lifestyle as a result of no other option since they were evicted from the Eastern Woodlands as a result of conflict spurred on by the fur trade and the Indians who benefitted from it. It's interesting that the local peoples, like the Caddoans (who did a great job against the Comanche OTL, and it's a testimony to Comanche skill they managed to expand into Caddoan lands) or Mandan, failed to do so, although this is more because they had a successful lifestyle beforehand (farming in river valleys and trading for whatever they couldn't gather/hunt) so lacked the "desperation" of other groups--the Plains Indians thrived in some years but starved in others, and that drove their militancy. Also because they disproportionately suffered from disease thanks to their more sedentary lifestyle in addition to events like a US vaccination program of Indians which vaccinated many Lakota but ran out of money before other groups could be reached. The river valleys were also key trails west which meant they ecologically suffered (i.e. cutting down trees for firewood, oxen/horses overgrazing, etc.) before the rest of the Plains.

As I noted, the factor of adaption to the "Plains Indian" lifestyle was often out of desperation, and arguably they often did fight from a position of weakness. The problem hit them big time when the enemy they were fighting wasn't another Indian group with similar technology or isolated outposts of an overextended empire but an empire hellbent on expansion and very capable of supporting it. They'd backed themselves into a corner where they choice was to submit to the United States (and everything negative that brought with it) or fight them and understandably many chose the latter.
 
Really helpful stuff, friends.

Its interesting to think how the Plains Indians would have developed in an ATL where the horse was still introduced about the same way and the same time as in our history but there wasn't a huge expansive Anglo presence to the east (and west).
 
Did no empire or large confederation ever form through internal infighting between pastoral groups?

Most internal pastoral warfare, is of the nature that we become accustomed to around 400 BCE onward, is caused in part by way of the pushing from grazing lands of steppe folk by sedentary movements. The famous early example of this, Herodotus mentioned the story of the present distribution of the Scythian clans in the Pontic region. His description was that the Massagetae moving from what was to him, an impossibly far east pushed a the current group of Scythians westward who in turn pushed other Scythian westward. The Massagetae, themselves a Scythian branch, likely moved westward due to some happening either in the far east or depending upon the antiquity of the event, a happening within the Persian Empire. The other option, that may be the case, is that climatic changes had a hand in the movements. In other words, the inter pastoral wars and intra-Scythian wars in the steppe were created via the loss of grazing lands either by way of sedentary encroachment or by climatic devastation.

A curious point for me, in some of this discussion, is the Scythian peoples in general. My postulation works very well for the Scytho-Saka-Yuezhi-Tocharians-etc, Altaics, Magyars, in the east yet works less so for the very early ancient Scythians and the Scythians of the far west in the post Bronze Age era. Much of this admission, is from a lack of evidences on our part. For instance, we know that at some ancient past, the Scythians were forced into a period of traversing the steppe and every so often, invaded lands to the south and east. One such example, is in the Zhou dynasty, it is generally agreed that a horde of Saka descended upon China and raided some areas before returning to their homelands to the northwest. Another example, is the Scythian invasion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its predecessor invasion by the Cimmerians.

Cimmerians, arriving in Anatolia during the 8th century BCE, likely with a horde of Cimmero-Sctyhian warriors, Thracians and others, possibly proto-Dacians invaded Anatolia, both conquering and settlign vast swathes of land. Their invasion decimated the powerful kingdom of Phyrgia, slaying King Midas and subjugating the Luwian states of the interior who held to the old Neo-Hittite complex. In turn, they threatened the Assyrian Empire who had recently rebuffed Elam and defeated Urartu. Sargon II thus engaged the Cimmerians, and not gaining a truly decisive victory, was slain as Cyrus would later be, by the horde. Later Assyrian armies would battle the Cimmerians which had become rulers of Pontus and Armenia until the Cimmerians were destroyed in the later reign of Ashurbanipal, only to become the contingent of the greater and more deadly Scythian horde that arrived at the late reign of Ashurbanipal. This Scythian horde, would force Lydia to pay tribute, conquer the Pontus, vassalize Media and invade Assyria. Their invasion of Assyria, in my view, saw the Assyrian Emperor Ashurbanipal engage their army somewhere near Harran. Their, Ashurbanipal was either slain by the Scythians or was defeated so badly that his army routed en masse. Scythian hordes invaded Assyria thus and destroyed the countryside and ended the Assyrian chronicles (we have information of this time only from the Babylonian sources, which observed the situation, while Assyrian chroniclers most likely omitted this disaster until it was redressed. In short, the Scythians forced the Assyrian armies to hide in Ninevah and the Scythians raze the cities of Dur Kurigalzu, Kalhu and Assur; this invasion subsided only after the Scythians fulfilled their desires and moved to the north and east to attack the Medians and attend to their new holdings. What we learn then from Herodotus, he claims, as does later historians from the time, that the Scythians ruled the Middle East for a short time, gathering tribute from all the states in the region and periodically plundering. This coincides with what we could define as a steppe empire. Yet, I am not familiar with how this empire began or how it was structured to any degree. Perhaps the Bronze Age prior and the post-Bronze Age era, had some effects on the steppe peoples that we cannot gather as easily from later histories; some evidence that the Bronze Age was having profound effects on periphery areas, is the Tolllense battle site, where a large battle was fought between two or more unknown groups, whose composition speaks to some level of military organization and a diverse cadre of men from varied areas. essentially, something was occurring in the northern reaches of Europe and the Eurasian steppe, that we do not understand fully at the moment and possibly in the future will understand better. This then will give us some clues as to the nature of this Scytho-Cimmerian invasion into the Middle East.
 
I have the impression that the Steppe Nomads had more population than the Plains Indians. Larger polities, more population density. Is that accurate or not? If accurate, why?

Generally, anyone who knows enough to make an intelligent comparison between the Plains Indians and the Steppe Nomads, how they were similar, how different, I'd be interested.

The Comaches seem to have had a history that mirrors certain Eurasian Steppe people´s conquest historically. Minus the administration.
 
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