D2.Geo.4.6-8: How Culture and Economic Choices Shape Places Near and Far
In plain English: D2.Geo.4.6-8 is the C3 Framework geography indicator for grades 6-8 that asks students to explain how cultural patterns and economic decisions influence environments and people's daily lives, both nearby and in distant places. Students trace chains of cause and effect that link one place to another, such as a market in one region changing the land and the work of people in another.
Explain how cultural patterns and economic decisions influence environments and the daily lives of people in both nearby and distant places.
C3 Framework for Social Studies (NCSS) · Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Concepts and Tools · Discipline: Geography · Human-Environment Interaction: Place, Regions, and Culture · Official standard
Students explain how cultural patterns and economic decisions change environments and daily lives, both close to where a decision is made and far away from it. The case is the bison (buffalo) trade on the Great Plains in the 1870s and 1880s, told through an 1889 government report by the naturalist William T. Hornaday. Source 1 shows a cultural pattern on the Plains: the many ways Plains nations used the bison. Source 2 shows economic decisions: railways built across Kansas and merchants who sent hunting parties out from railway towns. Source 3 shows how buyers in the East, far from the Plains, created a trade in bison bones.
Students use a railroad's shipping figures (Source 4) and a map of the places in the sources (Diagram 1) to link nearby and distant places. They finish by applying the same cause-and-effect model to an invented present-day scenario. Hornaday wrote as an 1880s naturalist; the lesson uses his descriptions and figures and asks students to judge him as a source.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:
Tell a cultural pattern (a shared way of living, using or valuing something) from an economic decision (a choice about making, buying or selling).
Explain how a cultural pattern or an economic decision changed an environment, using evidence from a source.
Explain how the same decisions changed the daily lives of people nearby and of people in distant places.
Read a table and a bar graph of historical trade data and connect the numbers to a written source.
Apply a cause-and-effect chain (decision, environment, daily life, place) to a new situation.
Prior Knowledge Required
Students should already be comfortable with:
Citing specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources RH.6-8.1
Reading information from maps, charts and graphs and connecting it to a text RH.6-8.7
Knowing that the Great Plains lie between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains
"Pick one thing you used today, such as a snack, a shirt or a phone. Where might it have come from? Name one way making it could change a place far away from you."
Collect three or four answers and draw each as an arrow on the board from "far away" to "here." Point out that the arrows run both ways: what people here want can change land and jobs there. Today's case is 150 years old, but the pattern is the same.
Direct Instruction15-20 minutes
Key terms for D2.Geo.4.6-8 (working definitions)
Term
What it means
Example
Cultural pattern
A way of living that a group shares and passes on: what people eat, wear, build, believe or value
Families in cold regions using heavy fur robes in winter
Economic decision
A choice about producing, buying, selling or moving goods, made by a person, business or government
A company deciding to build a railway line
Environment
The natural surroundings of a place: land, water, plants, animals and climate
The grasslands of the Great Plains
Daily life
What people do each day: their work, food, homes and travel
A teamster's job hauling goods by wagon
Nearby and distant places
Nearby means where a decision is made or where people live; distant means far away, often in another region
Kansas and New York City
Market
A group of buyers and sellers for a product, which can be far from where the product comes from
Buyers in the East for bison products
Bison (buffalo)
A large grazing animal of North American grasslands. Hornaday uses the common name "buffalo"
The southern and northern herds
Robe and hide
A robe is a skin tanned with the hair on, used like a blanket or coat; a hide is a skin made into leather
Source 1 and Source 2
Part 1: A cause-and-effect chain. Draw four linked boxes: Cultural pattern or economic decision → Change to the environment → Change to daily life → Where (nearby or distant)? Students will fill this chain for every source.
Part 2: Two facts from Hornaday to start the chain. Hornaday wrote that bison robes "were used very generally throughout the colder portions of North America as sleigh robes and wraps, and for bedding in the regions of extreme cold." He also reported that "in eight years, from 1876 to 1884, a single firm, that of Messrs. J. & A. Boskowitz, 105 Greene street, New York, paid out the enormous sum of $923,070 (nearly one million) for robes and hides." Show Diagram 1 and find New York.
Cultural pattern in a distant place
People across the colder parts of North America used bison robes as sleigh robes, wraps and bedding. Fill the first two boxes of the chain.
Result: Cultural pattern (distant): using warm robes in winter. This created steady demand, so the change starts far from the Plains and reaches the herds through buyers and hunters.
Economic decision in a distant place (with numbers)
One New York firm paid $923,070 for robes and hides over the eight years from 1876 to 1884. About how much is that per year?
Result: $923,070 / 8 = $115,383.75, or about $115,000 a year from one buyer. Money spent in New York paid hunters, skinners and merchants on the Plains, which kept the hunt going.
Change to daily life nearby
Hornaday writes: "After the United States Government began to support the buffalo-hunting Indians with annuities and supplies, the woolen blanket and canvas tent took the place of the buffalo robe and the skin-covered teepee, and "Government beef" took the place of buffalo meat."
Result: Daily life changed for Plains nations: shelter, bedding and food that had come from the bison now came from government supplies. The cause was a change in the environment (far fewer bison) and a government decision.
The same chain today (invented scenario)
Invented scenario: Larkfield, a made-up city, develops a taste for a fish caught in a lake 1,500 km away. Restaurants decide to buy it in large amounts.
Result: Cultural pattern (a new food habit) and economic decision (restaurants buying) in Larkfield → more fishing and fewer fish in the distant lake → fishers there earn more at first but may run short later; diners in Larkfield get a new dish. Nearby and distant places are linked by trade.
Teacher tip. Students often list effects without saying where they happened. Ask "Nearby or distant? Near to whom?" for every effect. Distance is relative: Kansas was nearby for a Dodge City merchant and distant for a New York buyer.
Guided Practice15 minutes
Sources 1 and 2. Read Source 1 aloud. It lists how the bison was used on the Plains. Then read Source 2, about the years when railways reached the southern herd. Hornaday uses "buffalo" for the bison, and "range" for the land where the herds lived.
1The body of the buffalo yielded fresh meat, of which thousands of tons were consumed; dried meat, prepared in summer for winter use; pemmican (also prepared in summer), of meat, fat, and berries; tallow, made up into large balls or sacks, and kept in store; marrow, preserved in bladders; and tongues, dried and smoked, and eaten as a delicacy.
2The skin of the buffalo yielded a robe, dressed with the hair on, for clothing and bedding; a hide, dressed without the hair, which made a teepee cover, when a number were sewn together; boats, when sewn together in a green state, over a wooden framework. Shields, made from the thickest portions, as rawhide; ropes, made up as rawhide; clothing of many kinds; bags for use in traveling; coffins, or winding sheets for the dead, etc.
3Other portions utilized were sinews, which furnished fiber for ropes, thread, bow-strings, snow-shoe webs, etc.; hair, which was sometimes made into belts and ornaments; "buffalo chips," which formed a valuable and highly-prized fuel; bones, from which many articles of use and ornament were made; horns, which were made into spoons, drinking vessels, etc.
William T. Hornaday, Uses of the bison on the Plains (Source 1) (1889). Public domain (published 1889). Source text.
1Although the range of the northern herd covered about twice as much territory as did the southern, the latter contained probably twice as many buffaloes. The number of individuals in the southern herd in the year 1871 must have been at least three millions, and most estimates place the total much higher than that.
2During the years from 1866 to 1871, inclusive, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railway and what is now known as the Kansas Pacific, or Kansas division of the Union Pacific Railway, were constructed from the Missouri River westward across Kansas, and through the heart of the southern buffalo range. The southern herd was literally cut to pieces by railways, and every portion of its range rendered easily accessible. There had always been a market for buffalo robes at a fair price, and as soon as the railways crossed the buffalo country the slaughter began. The rush to the range was only surpassed by the rush to the gold mines of California in earlier years. The railroad builders, teamsters, fortune-seekers, "professional" hunters, trappers, guides, and every one out of a job turned out to hunt buffalo for hides and meat. The merchants who had already settled in all the little towns along the three great railways saw an opportunity to make money out of the buffalo product, and forthwith began to organize and supply hunting parties with arms, ammunition, and provisions, and send them to the range. An immense business of this kind was done by the merchants of Dodge City (Fort Dodge), Wichita, and Leavenworth, and scores of smaller towns did a corresponding amount of business in the same line. During the years 1871 to 1874 but little else was done in that country except buffalo killing. Central depots were established in the best buffalo country, from whence hunting parties operated in all directions. Buildings were erected for the curing of meat, and corrals were built in which to heap up the immense piles of buffalo skins that accumulated. At Dodge City, as late as 1878, Professor Thompson saw a lot of baled buffalo skins in a corral, the solid cubical contents of which he calculated to equal 120 cords.
William T. Hornaday, Railways and the southern herd (Source 2) (1889). Public domain (published 1889). Source text.
Sort the uses. Prompt: make three columns, Food, Shelter and clothing, Tools and other. Put at least two uses from Source 1 in each. Teacher note: for example, tallow and marrow (food); teepee covers and bedding (shelter and clothing); thread, bow-strings and spoons (tools and other).
Find the places. Prompt: which three towns does Source 2, paragraph 2, name? Find them on Diagram 1. Teacher note: Dodge City, Wichita and Leavenworth, all in Kansas.
A comparison. Prompt: in paragraph 2, what does Hornaday compare the rush to the range with, and what does the comparison tell a reader? Teacher note: "the rush to the gold mines of California in earlier years"; it says the hunt drew huge numbers of people hoping to get rich quickly.
How big was the pile? Prompt: at Dodge City in 1878, the skins in one corral filled 120 cords. A cord is a stack of 128 cubic feet. How many cubic feet is that? Teacher note: 120 x 128 = 15,360 cubic feet, about the size of a room 40 feet long, 24 feet wide and 16 feet high.
Independent Practice15 minutes
Distant buyers. Source 3 continues Hornaday's report, about what happened to the bones left on the Plains. Source 4 gives shipping figures from one railroad.
1Bones.--Next in importance to robes and hides was the bone product, the utilization of which was rendered possible by the rigorous climate of the buffalo plains. Under the influence of the wind and sun and the extremes of heat and cold, the flesh remaining upon a carcass dried up, disintegrated, and fell to dust, leaving the bones of almost the entire skeleton as clean and bare as if they had been stripped of flesh by some powerful chemical process. Very naturally, no sooner did the live buffaloes begin to grow scarce than the miles of bleaching' bones suggested the idea of finding a use for them. A market was readily found for them in the East, and the prices paid per ton were sufficient to make the business of bone-gathering quite remunerative. The bulk of the bone product was converted into phosphate for fertilizing purposes, but much of it was turned into carbon for use in the refining of sugar.
2The gathering of bones became a common industry as early as 1872, during which year 1,135,300 pounds were shipped over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad. In the year following the same road shipped 2,743,100 pounds, and in 1874 it handled 6,914,950 pounds more. This trade continued from that time on until the plains have been gleaned so far back from the railway lines that it is no longer profitable to seek them. For that matter, however, it is said that south of the Union Pacific nothing worth the seeking now remains.
3The building of the Northern Pacific Railway made possible the shipment of immense quantities of dry bones. Even as late as 1886 overland travelers saw at many of the stations between Jamestown, Dakota, and Billings, Montana, immense heaps of bones lying alongside the track awaiting shipment. In 1885 a single firm shipped over 200 tons of bones from Miles City.
4The valley of the Missouri River was gleaned by teamsters who gathered bones from as far back as 100 miles and hauled them to the river for shipment on the steamers. An operator who had eight wagons in the business informed me that in order to ship bones on the river steamers it was necessary to crush them, and that for crushed bones, shipped in bags, a Michigan fertilizer company paid $18 per ton. Uncrushed bones, shipped by the railway, sold for $12 per ton.
William T. Hornaday, The bone trade (Source 3) (1889). Public domain (published 1889). Source text.
Source 4: Bison products carried by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (Hornaday, 1889)
Year
Skins carried
Meat carried (pounds)
Bones carried (pounds)
1872
165,721
not given
1,135,300
1873
251,443
1,617,600
2,743,100
1874
42,289
632,800
6,914,950
Total
459,453
2,250,400
10,793,350
Source 4: railroad statistics from Col. Richard Irving Dodge, The Plains of the Great West (1877), as quoted by Hornaday in The Extermination of the American Bison (1889). Diagram 2 graphs the skins and bones columns.
Task (pairs). Make a T-chart headed Nearby (the Plains) and Distant (the East and beyond). From Sources 3 and 4, add at least three effects to each side, and mark each effect E (environment) or D (daily life). Then fill one cause-and-effect chain for the bone trade.
Look for: each effect placed on the correct side with a paragraph number, at least one environmental and one daily-life effect per side, and a chain that starts with a decision or pattern and ends with a place.
Closure10 minutes
Exit ticket: "One decision made far from the Plains that changed the Plains was ... It changed the environment by ... and daily life by ..."
Teacher note on the source: Hornaday was a Smithsonian naturalist. He wanted to save the last bison, and his report is one of the main records of the trade, but it is an outsider's account written in 1889. Some passages in his report describe Native peoples in demeaning terms that were common among white American writers of the 1880s; the excerpts here leave those passages out. "Indians" in the quotations is his word. In class, name specific Plains nations, such as the Lakota, Cheyenne, Kiowa and Comanche, where you can. His numbers are estimates and railroad records, not counts made by modern methods. In Source 3, paragraph 1, "bleaching'" is the source's own spelling.
Differentiation Strategies
For Struggling Students
Give a partly filled cause-and-effect chain with the first box completed for each source.
Read Source 2 in two chunks, stopping after the sentence about the gold mines of California, and summarize each chunk in one sentence.
Provide a word bank: range, robe, hide, tallow, pemmican, teamster, depot, corral, phosphate.
For Advanced Students
Ask them to write a short paragraph about who gained and who lost from the bone trade, nearby and far away, using two sources.
Ask them to compare the bison trade with a present-day product chain they research, and to name the cultural pattern and the economic decision at each end.
Assessment Guidance
What to Look For
Strong work names a specific cultural pattern or economic decision, links it to a change in the environment and a change in daily life, says where each change happened, and quotes or cites the source. Watch for chains that skip the environment, effects with no place, and answers that treat Hornaday's 1889 estimates as exact counts.
02
Classroom Activities
3 Activities
1
Follow the Product
15 minPairs
Each pair gets 12 product cards and builds trade chains that start on the Plains and end where each product was used.
The 12 cards
Products: robe, hide, tongue, bones. Places: Dodge City, the Plains range, a New York fur firm, a Michigan fertilizer company, a sugar refinery, a home in a cold northern region. People: a hunting party, a teamster with a bone wagon.
Build
Pairs lay out at least two chains, for example bones → teamster → river steamer → Michigan fertilizer company. Under each link, they write N (nearby) or D (distant) and, where it fits, the effect on the environment or on daily life. Each link must cite a source and paragraph or a fact from Direct Instruction.
Discuss
Ask: Where in your chain did a cultural pattern push the trade? Where did an economic decision push it? Which link was the farthest from the Plains?
2
Graph the Trade
20 minPairs
Pairs graph Source 4 on paper and connect the shape of the graph to Hornaday's words.
Graph
On graph paper, make two bar graphs, one for skins carried and one for bones carried, for 1872, 1873 and 1874. Choose scales that fit: up to 300,000 skins and up to 8,000,000 pounds of bones. Check against Diagram 2.
Compute
Find the total skins carried in the three years and check it against the Total row (165,721 + 251,443 + 42,289 = 459,453). Do the same for bones (1,135,300 + 2,743,100 + 6,914,950 = 10,793,350).
Connect
Ask: Which sentence in Source 3 helps explain the shape of the bones graph? Which sentence in Source 2 helps explain why the skins graph rose at first? Each pair writes one caption for each graph that uses a number and a quotation.
3
Then and Now: The Larkfield Scenario
20 minGroups of 3
Groups use the cause-and-effect chain on an invented present-day scenario and compare it with the bison trade. Invented scenario: Larkfield is a made-up city. Its residents start a new tradition of eating a fish called silverfin at a yearly festival. Restaurants decide to import 40 tonnes each year from Marlow Lake, a made-up lake 1,500 km away, where silverfin was once caught only by local families.
Roles
One student speaks for Larkfield diners and restaurants, one for Marlow Lake fishing families and one for the lake's environment. Each lists two effects from their point of view.
Chain
The group fills one chain: cultural pattern (the festival) and economic decision (importing) → environment (fish numbers in Marlow Lake) → daily life nearby (Larkfield) and distant (Marlow Lake).
Compare
Write two sentences: one way the Larkfield scenario is like the bison trade and one way it is different. Groups that finish early propose one decision that could reduce harm to the lake while keeping the festival.
03
Diagrams & Visual Aids
2 diagrams
Diagram 1: Places in the Bison Trade
Map of the central and eastern contiguous United States (the West Coast and the far South lie outside the frame), drawn from U.S. Census Bureau 2023 boundary files, with today's state borders. Filled dots are Plains towns named in Sources 2 and 3; hollow dots are eastern cities for reference. Kansas is shaded because Source 2 describes railways built across it; Michigan is shaded because Source 3 names a Michigan fertilizer company. Arrows show the general direction of trade toward eastern markets, not exact routes.
Diagram 2: Skins and Bones Carried by One Railroad, 1872-1874
Bar graphs of Source 4, drawn to scale: bison skins (left) and bison bones in pounds (right, M = million) carried by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. Figures are the railroad statistics that Hornaday quoted in 1889.
04
Homework Assignment
~30 min
D2.Geo.4.6-8 Homework: The Last Bison and the Kestrel Bay Scenario
Directions: Use Sources 1-4, Diagram 1 and the two new sources below. Source 5 (Hornaday, 1889): his count of "American bison running wild and unprotected on January 1, 1889": Pan-handle of Texas 25; Colorado 20; southern Wyoming 26; Musselshell country, Montana 10; western Dakota 4; total in the United States 85. He added an estimated 550 in Athabasca, in present-day Canada (635 in all North America), then the 256 in captivity and the 200 protected in Yellowstone Park, and gave 1,091 as "the whole number" then living. Source 6 (invented scenario): Kestrel Bay is a made-up coastal town. Its families have always eaten clams dug from the mudflats, a tradition celebrated each spring. A company in a city 900 km away decides to buy all the clams the town can dig, for canned chowder sold in stores across the country. Diggers start working every day instead of twice a week, and the price of clams in Kestrel Bay's own shops doubles.
Part 1: The Bison Trade (Problems 1-3)
Source 2 says the southern herd in 1871 "must have been at least three millions." Source 5 counts 85 wild bison in the United States in 1889. About how many times larger was the 1871 southern herd alone? Round to the nearest thousand.
What percent of the 85 wild bison in Source 5 were in southern Wyoming? Round to one decimal place. Then name the places in Source 5 that are in the same states as towns marked on Diagram 1, and say whether they are nearby to or distant from New York City.
Use Source 3, paragraph 3. What did travelers see at the stations between Jamestown, Dakota, and Billings, Montana, as late as 1886, and what does it tell you about how the trade had changed the land there? Quote the words you use.
Part 2: Apply the Model (Problems 4-6)
In Source 6, name the cultural pattern and the economic decision. Explain which one comes from Kestrel Bay and which from a distant place.
Describe one likely effect of the decision on the environment of the mudflats and one effect on daily life in Kestrel Bay. Then describe one effect on people in distant places.
Write a paragraph of 4-6 sentences comparing Source 6 with the bison trade in Sources 2 and 3. Name one way they are alike and one way they differ, and use at least one quotation from Hornaday.
Rubric
Criterion
3: Strong
2: Developing
1: Beginning
Numbers
Both calculations correct with work shown
One small error
Calculations missing or wrong
Pattern and decision
Names a specific cultural pattern and economic decision and says where each happens
Names both but not where
Confuses the two
Effects near and far
Gives environmental and daily-life effects in nearby and distant places
Gives effects in only one kind of place
Effects missing or unrelated
Evidence
Accurate quotations with paragraph numbers
Evidence is general or paraphrased
No evidence
05
Quiz: 20 Questions
Interactive, with answers
Instructions
Questions 1-3 and 13 use Source 1, and Questions 4-6 and 16 use Source 2, both in Guided Practice. Questions 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15 and 18 use Source 3, and Questions 9 and 10 use Source 4, both in Independent Practice. Questions 17, 19 and 20 use several sources and Diagram 1. Choose an answer to see whether it is right; for short-answer questions, write your answer before opening the model answer.
Multiple choice: pick an option to check it. Short answer: write your answer, then reveal the model answer.
0 of 20 answered · 0 correct
Question 1 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which two foods does Source 1, paragraph 1, say were prepared in summer?
Answer: B
B is right: paragraph 1 lists "dried meat, prepared in summer for winter use" and "pemmican (also prepared in summer), of meat, fat, and berries." C names foods that were stored, but the paragraph gives no season for them. A includes fresh meat, which was eaten fresh. D treats berries, an ingredient of pemmican, as a separate food, and tongues were "dried and smoked."
Question 2 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 1, paragraph 3, what were "buffalo chips" used for?
Answer: A
A is right: paragraph 3 says "buffalo chips" "formed a valuable and highly-prized fuel." On a grassland with few trees, this mattered. B came from sinews, C from horns and D from hair or bones, all in the same paragraph.
Question 3 of 20 · Multiple Choice
What cultural pattern does Source 1 describe as a whole?
Answer: B
B is right: the three paragraphs list uses for the body, the skin, the sinews, hair, dung, bones and horns, for food, shelter, clothing and tools. A describes the later trade in Sources 2-3, not Source 1. C and D take one item from the list and treat it as the whole pattern.
Question 4 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 2, paragraph 2, what economic decision did the merchants in the railway towns make?
Answer: D
D is right: the merchants "began to organize and supply hunting parties with arms, ammunition, and provisions, and send them to the range." A was done by the railway companies, not the merchants. C comes from Source 3, about the Missouri River trade. B is not in the source.
Question 5 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 2, paragraph 2, how did the railways change the bison's environment?
Answer: A
A is right: Hornaday writes that "the southern herd was literally cut to pieces by railways, and every portion of its range rendered easily accessible." B, C and D are not claims in Source 2. C may be true of later years in some places, but this paragraph does not say it.
Question 6 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which sentence from Source 2 best shows how the trade changed daily life in the railway towns?
Answer: B
B is right: it describes what people spent their days doing. A is about the market, C about the environment and D about the size of the range, so none of them describes daily life.
Question 7 of 20 · Multiple Choice
According to Source 3, paragraph 1, what made it possible to use the bones?
Answer: C
C is right: Hornaday says the bone trade was "rendered possible by the rigorous climate of the buffalo plains," where wind, sun, heat and cold left bones "clean and bare." This is the environment shaping an economic activity. A and B have people doing what the paragraph says the weather did. D is not in the source.
Question 8 of 20 · Multiple Choice
In Source 3, paragraph 1, how were the bones used in distant places?
Answer: A
A is right: "The bulk of the bone product was converted into phosphate for fertilizing purposes, but much of it was turned into carbon for use in the refining of sugar." C repeats uses on the Plains from Source 1. B mixes up bones with skins, which made the robes and teepee covers. D is not in the source.
Question 9 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Use Source 4. By how many skins did the railroad's shipments fall from 1873 to 1874?
Answer: C
C is right: 251,443 - 42,289 = 209,154. A is the rise from 1872 to 1873 (251,443 - 165,721). B compares 1872 with 1874 (165,721 - 42,289). D adds 1873 and 1874 instead of subtracting.
Question 10 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Use Source 4. About how many times as many pounds of bones were carried in 1874 as in 1872?
Answer: C
C is right: 6,914,950 / 1,135,300 = 6.1. A compares 1873 with 1872 (2,743,100 / 1,135,300 = 2.4). B compares 1874 with 1873 (2.5). D divides the three-year total by the 1872 figure (10,793,350 / 1,135,300 = 9.5).
Question 11 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Source 4 shows skins falling in 1874 while bones kept rising. Which sentence from Source 3 best explains this?
Answer: D
D is right: as live bison became scarce, there were fewer skins to take, while the bones of animals already killed were still on the ground to gather. A explains why bones sold at all, but not the timing. B and C are true details about prices and a later year in the north, not about 1872-1874.
Question 12 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which is an effect on people in a distant place, far from the Plains?
Answer: C
C is right: the company in Michigan, far east of the Plains, used bison bones in its business (Source 3, paragraph 4). A, B and D all happened on or near the Plains, so they are nearby effects. A is easy to choose because 100 miles sounds far, but the teamsters worked on the Plains.
Question 13 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Which of these is a cultural pattern rather than an economic decision?
Answer: D
D is right: it is a shared way of living passed on within Plains nations (Source 1). A, B and C are choices about buying, selling or building in order to earn money, which makes them economic decisions.
Question 14 of 20 · Multiple Choice
Source 3, paragraph 4, says crushed bones sold for $18 per ton and uncrushed bones for $12 per ton. How much more would a teamster earn for 10 tons by crushing them?
Answer: B
B is right: ($18 - $12) x 10 = $60. C is the value of 10 tons uncrushed (10 x $12), not the difference. D adds the prices before multiplying ((18 + 12) x 10). A is the sum of the two prices, $30, with no multiplying at all.
Question 15 of 20 · Short Answer
Use Source 3, paragraph 2. Explain how decisions made by buyers far away changed the environment of the Plains. Quote the source.
Model answer: Buyers in the East paid enough for bones that gathering them became "a common industry." People gathered bones until "the plains have been gleaned so far back from the railway lines that it is no longer profitable to seek them." So a decision made far away removed the bones from huge areas of the Plains, starting near the railways and moving outward. Rubric: 1 point for the distant decision, 1 for the change to the environment, 1 for an accurate quotation.
Question 16 of 20 · Short Answer
Use Source 2, paragraph 2. Describe two ways the railways and the robe market changed daily life for people living along the railway lines.
Model answer: First, many people changed jobs: railroad builders, teamsters, trappers, guides and people out of work "turned out to hunt buffalo for hides and meat." Second, the towns' businesses changed: merchants supplied hunting parties, and buildings and corrals went up to cure meat and store "immense piles of buffalo skins." Rubric: 1 point for each change, with evidence.
Question 17 of 20 · Short Answer
Use Sources 1 and 2. The hunters in Source 2 killed bison "for hides and meat." Name two uses from Source 1 that came from the hide or the meat, and explain how the hunt, an economic decision made by people from outside the Plains nations, changed their daily lives.
Model answer: Source 1 says a hide "made a teepee cover, when a number were sewn together," and that dried meat was "prepared in summer for winter use." Source 2 says hunters, supplied by railway-town merchants, "turned out to hunt buffalo for hides and meat" to sell. As the herds were killed, Plains families had far fewer animals for their homes and for the food they stored for winter, so a way of life built around the bison could no longer meet their daily needs. Rubric: 1 point for each use from Source 1 with evidence, 1 for linking the hunt in Source 2 to the change in daily life.
Question 18 of 20 · Short Answer
Use Source 3, paragraph 4. Explain how the bone trade linked the daily work of people on the Plains with a business in a distant state.
Model answer: Teamsters on the Plains "gathered bones from as far back as 100 miles" and hauled them to the Missouri River. Because steamers would take only crushed bones, they crushed them and shipped them in bags to a Michigan fertilizer company, which paid $18 a ton. A company's decision far away shaped what the teamsters did all day. Rubric: 1 point for the nearby work, 1 for the distant business, 1 for the link between them.
Question 19 of 20 · Short Answer
Look at Diagram 1. Describe the general direction of the trade and explain why the railways mattered for linking nearby and distant places.
Model answer: The trade ran from the Plains towns in Kansas, Montana and Dakota toward markets in the East. Railways let heavy, bulky goods such as skins and bones travel hundreds of kilometers quickly and cheaply, so buyers far away could reach the herds, and a price set in an eastern city could change work and land on the Plains. Rubric: 1 point for the direction, 1 for the role of the railways.
Question 20 of 20 · Short Answer
Hornaday was a naturalist writing in 1889. Name one limit of using only his report to understand how the trade affected Plains nations, and one kind of source you would add.
Model answer: Hornaday was an outsider, so his report gives his view and the figures he gathered, not how Plains nations themselves saw the loss of the herds. I would add accounts or oral histories from members of Plains nations, or letters and records written at the time by people who lived through it. Rubric: 1 point for a fair limit, 1 for a fitting source.
0 of 20 answered · 0 correct
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Frequently Asked Questions
10 Questions
What does D2.Geo.4.6-8 mean?
D2.Geo.4.6-8 asks middle school students to explain how the ways people live (cultural patterns) and the choices they make about money and goods (economic decisions) change environments and everyday life. Students have to show those effects both close to where the choice is made and in places far away.
What is the difference between a cultural pattern and an economic decision?
A cultural pattern is a shared way of living, such as what a group eats, wears or celebrates. An economic decision is a choice about producing, buying, selling or moving goods. The two often work together: a habit creates demand, and businesses decide how to meet it.
Why does D2.Geo.4.6-8 say "nearby and distant places"?
Because the effects of a choice rarely stay in one place. Trade links regions, so a decision in one city can change land and jobs hundreds of kilometers away. Students should always say where each effect happened, and nearby or distant compared with whom.
Why use the bison trade for this standard?
It is a well-documented case in which demand in eastern cities and railway building changed a whole region within a few years. An 1889 government report gives both written descriptions and railroad figures, so students can connect words, numbers and a map.
Who was William T. Hornaday?
He was a naturalist with the Smithsonian Institution who wrote The Extermination of the American Bison for the Report of the National Museum, published in 1889; the title page names him as Superintendent of the National Zoological Park. His report is a key record, but it is one outsider's account from his own time, so students should read it as a source with a point of view.
How should teachers handle the effects on Plains nations?
State the documented facts plainly: the bison had been central to the lives of many Plains nations, and its near-disappearance changed their food, shelter and economies. Keep Hornaday's 1889 perspective separate from the facts, and invite students to look for sources written by members of Plains nations.
Is D2.Geo.4.6-8 a history standard or a geography standard?
It is a geography indicator. History cases work well because the effects can be traced over time, but the focus is on places, environments and the links between regions. The same skills apply to present-day goods, which is why the lesson ends with an invented modern scenario.
What mistakes do students make with this standard?
Common ones are listing effects without saying where they happened, skipping the environment and jumping straight to people, and treating historical estimates as exact counts. A four-box chain (pattern or decision, environment, daily life, place) helps with all three.
How can students practice this with modern examples without bias?
Use invented or clearly labeled scenarios, such as the Larkfield and Kestrel Bay cases on this page, and ask students to describe effects for every group involved rather than to judge who is right. Real current debates belong in a structured discussion, not in an answer key.
What comes after D2.Geo.4.6-8 in high school?
D2.Geo.4.9-12 asks students to analyze how human and physical systems interact and influence each other in both directions, for example how a water project changes a lake and how the changed lake then forces new human decisions.
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Related Standards
5 standards
These standards connect to D2.Geo.4.6-8: prerequisites to review first, parallel standards at the same level, and next steps that build on it.
Before this lesson
RH.6-8.1Prerequisite
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources
Standard text: National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History (Silver Spring, MD: NCSS, 2013). NCSS was not involved in the production of this lesson and does not endorse it.
