Nutritional Success on the Great Plains: Nineteenth-Century Equestrian Nomads

Native Americans have often been portrayed as merely unfortunate victims of European disease and aggression, but data on human stature show--and travelers' accounts and skeletal records confirm--that the equestrian Plains nomads were ingenious, adaptive, and nutritionally successful in the face of exceptional demographic stress. Much of their extraordinary achievement can be attributed to a rich and varied diet, a modest disease load other than epidemics, a remarkable facility at reorganization following demographic disasters, and egalitarian principles of operation.