And so we can thank the American buffalo that once wondered the open plains for this meaning of the word buff.

VOA: special.2009.05.17

The Santee Sioux lived along the northeastern edge of the Great Plains in what is now the state of Minnesota.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

I was born on the plains where the wind blows free, and there is nothing to break the light of the sun.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

If you visit the western mountain and plains state of Montana you will know why it is known as Big Sky Country.

VOA: special.2009.08.16

All these things cost money. So a plains farmer had to grow crops that were in big demand.

VOA: special.2010.04.15

This month, more than one hundred researchers began deploying radar and other scientific instruments across America's Great Plains.

VOA: special.2010.05.11

ong before the first Europeans arrived in the New World, a strange looking animal lived on the rich grasses of the western plains.

VOA: special.2009.02.15

Instead of moving freely over the plains to hunt buffalo, the Indians would live in one place.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

The Ogallala aquifer is a major source of drinking and irrigation water for America's central plains.

VOA: special.2011.07.08

These plains Indians were always on the move, because they hunted buffalo -- the American bison.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

To farm the plains, he needed barbed wire for fences, and plows and other new equipment.

VOA: special.2010.04.15

As years passed, fewer Indians left the reservations to live the old life on the plains.

VOA: special.2010.04.08

In Eighteen-Fifty, estimates say twenty-million buffalo lived on the open plains areas of the west.

VOA: special.2009.02.15

The Indians no longer could move freely over the Great Plains to hunt buffalo.

VOA: special.2010.04.08

They did not expect an easy life. And as time passed, they found solutions to most of the problems of farming on the Great Plains.

VOA: special.2010.04.15

He points a stick at me and says: "Ha! Paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?"

VOA: special.2011.01.22

The Indians of the plains depended on the buffalo for almost everything they needed.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

They usually won. Some plains Indians tried to live peacefully with the white men.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

This included a plow that could break up the grassland of the plains.

VOA: special.2010.04.15

Only a few years before, millions of buffalo lived on the Great Plains.

VOA: special.2010.04.08

Soldiers were sent to build roads and forts in the western plains.

VOA: special.2010.04.01

The plains Indians did not want white men crossing their hunting lands.

VOA: special.2010.04.01