Native American History Jeopardy

Cultural regions, nations, leaders, and history in a Native American review for upper elementary US history. Free to copy, with phone buzzers.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Every clue on this board

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Cultural Regions

$200
Nations of the Great Plains depended on this large, shaggy animal for food, clothing and shelter.
What is the buffalo?
$400
Nations of the Pacific Northwest carved these tall wooden poles with family and animal figures.
What are totem poles?
$600
The Pueblo peoples live in this dry region of the United States.
What is the Southwest?
$800
Nations like the Ojibwe and Lenape hunted, fished and farmed in this forested region of the eastern United States.
What are the Eastern Woodlands?
$1,000
Peoples like the Shoshone and Paiute gathered seeds and roots in this dry region between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.
What is the Great Basin?

Homes and Ways of Life

$200
Plains peoples lived in these cone-shaped homes made of poles and animal hides.
What is a tepee?
$400
The Three Sisters crops were corn, beans and this.
What is squash?
$600
The Haudenosaunee lived in these large bark-covered homes, each shared by many related families.
What is a longhouse?
$800
Pueblo peoples built many-storied homes from this sun-dried clay brick.
What is adobe?
$1,000
On hunting trips, Inuit families of the Arctic built this dome-shaped shelter from blocks of snow.
What is an igloo?

Nations and Tribes

$200
This Northeastern nation shared a harvest feast with the Pilgrims in 1621.
What is the Wampanoag?
$400
The Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples are often grouped under this name.
What is the Sioux?
$600
The warrior Geronimo was a leader of this Southwestern nation.
What is the Apache?
$800
When it was first formed, the Iroquois Confederacy united this many nations.
What is five?
$1,000
The Hopi, a Pueblo people, live on mesas in this state.
What is Arizona?

Leaders and Heroes

$200
This Patuxet man, who had learned English, taught the Pilgrims how to plant corn.
Who was Squanto?
$400
This Cherokee man created a writing system for the Cherokee language.
Who was Sequoyah?
$600
This Shawnee leader tried to unite many nations to resist American settlement in the early 1800s.
Who was Tecumseh?
$800
This Hunkpapa Lakota holy man and leader later toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show.
Who was Sitting Bull?
$1,000
In 1877, this Nez Perce leader led his people on a long retreat toward Canada.
Who was Chief Joseph?

Contact and Conflict

$200
This disease, brought by Europeans, killed huge numbers of Native people who had no immunity to it.
What is smallpox?
$400
The US government set aside these areas of land for Native nations, often far from their homelands.
What are reservations?
$600
In 1838, thousands of Cherokee died on this forced march west to Indian Territory.
What is the Trail of Tears?
$800
Signed by Andrew Jackson in 1830, this law pushed Southeastern nations west of the Mississippi.
What is the Indian Removal Act?
$1,000
In 1876, Lakota and Cheyenne warriors defeated this US Army officer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Who was George Custer?

Lasting Contributions

$200
Native peoples of the Northeast taught settlers to boil the sap of this tree into a sweet syrup.
What is the maple tree?
$400
First grown in the Andes Mountains of South America, this crop is now eaten worldwide as fries.
What is the potato?
$600
In World War II, hundreds of US Marine Code Talkers in the Pacific sent secret messages in this Native language.
What is Navajo?
$800
This state's name comes from Choctaw words meaning red people.
What is Oklahoma?
$1,000
English words like moose, raccoon and skunk came from these.
What are Native American languages?

Final Jeopardy — Guide and Interpreter

This Shoshone woman traveled with the Lewis and Clark expedition as an interpreter, carrying her infant son along the way.

Who was Sacagawea?

How to run this board

This board treats Native American history as the history of many nations rather than one. Columns cover the cultural regions of North America and how the land shaped homes, food, and clothing, notable leaders and figures, the arrival of Europeans, and events like the Trail of Tears, along with contributions that are still part of American life today.

Keep the language specific: when a clue names a nation, like the Haudenosaunee or the Lakota, repeat the name as you read it, and accept either the nation or the region where it fits. It models the habit the unit is trying to build.

A cultural regions map at each table makes the first two columns far easier, and it keeps the conversation on how geography shaped each way of life.

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