The native american women were responsible for building shelter and gathering crops. The women made sturdy, portable tipis, storage containers, clothing, and moccasins. Buffalo skin hide was the most important source although, deer, antelope, mountain lion, and other skins were valued as well. Except for the large scale earth lodges and grass lodges of a few tribes, almost all arts on the plains were eminently portable. The expression of individual identity and achievement through adorment of oneself and one's possesions was one of the most important functions for art. Men, women, children, and horses were all beautifully dressed and adorned with amulets, feathers, claws, and other items derived from or modell upon the natural world. A universe of meaning could be discerned in the painted, quilled, and beaded designs on clothing, and in the way that people presented themselves. Ideas about the spirit world and humans relationship to it are expressed in beaded and painted garments. Men and women brought complementary skills to the making of ceremonial clothing. In some cases men and women might work on one object men war shirt, for example combined quilled and beaded panels by women along with painted and fringed ornaments made by men. Men might work communally on a pictorial history, while women would work collectively on a large tipi.

 Individual women tanned hides and decorated them in geometric or semi abstract designs which contrast with the narrative, figure designs painted by men. Women painted abstract designs on their robes, dresses, tipi liners, and storage boxes. Pourous buffalo bones, thin reeds, and even buffalo tails were uses as brushes for hair grooming. A crow myth gives insight into native beliefs about female artistic power and co-operation. It describes a woman who was warned by her fiance that he would only marry her if she were powerful. He will demanded her to tan a buffalo hide and ebellish it with quillwork all in one day. Woman gained expertise in designing, constructing, and ornamenting a tipi was one of the highest female aspirations, even into the twentieth century. The making of a tipi or lodge was recognized  as so demanding a task that if a women made one by herself  carrying out  every step from tanning and sewing the skin, cutting the lodge poles, producing all of the interior, and exterior quill or beadwork. She's considered as an expemplary individual means and powerful. The intension to make a tipi was public announced and a feast shall be held for the hard work. A high ranking member of the guild who was an experienced lodge maker would be responsible for the design, fit of the skins, arranging them, and tacking them together before the other women completed the sewing. When all the work was completed, the poles were raised, and the new tipi stretched upon them. The edges would be pinned to the ground and a fire laid inside the tipi to smoke the skins. This would keep them flexible throughout the repeated soakings and dryings afforded by the harsh weather on the great plains. 

 A man wearing  such a painted robe was publicly displaying his own personal history and would use it as a visual aid in his autobiographical narrations. There are very few areas of indigenous north america where art was concerned with the chronicle of recent historical events, or with the keeping of time in a linear sense. Yet on the great plains, a profound sense of history has long compelled  men to illustrate important events in their lives pictorially. Images chipped or painted on rock faces served for centuries as a large scale in a public way of marking historical events and visionary experiences. Narrative scenes on buffalo hide robes, tipis validated, and memorialized a man exploits in war or success in hunting. In catlinite, a soft stone quarried principally for the making of pipe bowls, plains men fashioned human and animal images. War clubs carved of wood and antler combined utility and elegance, while the delicate faces of elk and birds often graced ceremonial whistles. Spoons and feast bowls were carved of wood, or of steamed and bent horn. Among the best known of plains sculptures are the handsome horse effigies that were carried in dance performances, whose streamlined forms, and expressive quality of movement have greatly appealed to twentieth century connoisseurs. In all ceremonial performances, including the Sun Dance, visual display of fine clothing, horse trappings and other art objects was an important aspect. While both men and women had important ritual roles to play, male roles were more public, and often involved impersonating game animals in a kind of ancient hunting magic.  

 Early in the nineteenth century, trade beads were such a valued and unique commodity on the great plains that one horse would be exchanged for only 100 beads. Indian women quickly recognized beads were used alongside quillqork for extra richness of ornamentation. But in many regions of the great plains, they came to replace quillwork by the mid nineteenth century. strong and durable with a vivid range of non fading colors, beads were easy to work with, compared to quills. Yet, like quills, beads could be used to form small, discrete color areas, as well as larged monochromatic ones. Easily sewn to both hide and cloth, they could be used to outline a form, or to ornament a fringe. In some areas of the plains, as in the Great Lakes region, small hand looms were used to weave beads into panels which would then be sewn to cloth.