I've always wondered how the tribes here in Michigan dealt with the cold and heavy snows, etc., too.

and nomadic life, I expect.

wrote that an Indian warned the homesteaders that there would be a very hard winter and to prepare. Since her Little House books were autobiographical, one would assume that they could read the signs and prepared for hard weather.

Also, the Plains Indians were nomads. They did not stay in one place and would probably have headed for less open grounds.

Pre-technological humans have been living with bad weather for tens of thousands of years.

They were in touch with the earth and knew how to survive, unlike us.

In the winter they survived by using bison coats I suspect and stocking up on bison meat. Thunderstorms pass eventually. Tornadoes, just have to hope you're not in their path.

This explains why:

Wind

I've experienced it under typical sustained winds. I do know that these things have held up great (when all other tents have been flattened) under gale force winds. These have been in places like the Antarctic and Mt. Everest where the winds are legendary. Here's why:
1. The conical shape has no big flat sides to catch wind (or snow), so it swirls around it, and not against it.

As for number 2, I am sure the Native Americans used 18 inch stakes but of course not made of plastic.

2. The Tipis come with our "Dura Pegs" - made from plastic. For the prairie, I prefer our Snow and Sand stakes. These monsters are long (18 inches) and metal, and you can drive them in for a really solid stakedown. That thing's not going to budge. Now, these stakes combined with the centerpole, easily replace the need for any guy wires. We do not have them. Therefore, nothing to trip over.
3. Lastly, being floorless, the wind cannot catch an edge of the bottom and flip the tent, like so many pop-up tents. I recently read of a river runner who was canoe camping. He and his 4 year old were tending the fire when a huge gust came out of a slot canyon, caught their pop-up tent and blew the whole thing into the river, and promptly sank. The gear inside easily outweighed his kid, and had the kid not been outside, HE would have been at the bottom of the river. Anyhow, off track. Sorry. But you can see another advantage to a floorless shelter.

Snow

Again, the shape helps shed snow quite well. Depending on your geography, out in the flats, you should have virtually no build up. If you are pitched in an area where snow might accumulate (tree well, hollow, etc.) you may have to occasionally brush off a big accumulation. The Tipi, however, will not collapse. I'm going to let Patrick give you specifics on this part as well, as I've never measured amounts or rate of snowfall.
Snow Melt.
The hem of the fabric is quite snug to the ground,as the pegs drive in the anchor points below ground level, unless you're in rocks. This will keep out most moisture, wind, dust. Snow melt or heavy sustained rains you may have moisture encroach to a maximum of about 5 inches into the Tipi footprint. The ground absorbs nearly all of it, and water simply does not "sheet" under the Tipi. This leaves the vast majority of your footprint dry.

http://www.kifaru.net/tipifaqs.html

In preparation for cold weather, the (Yakama, Washington) tribe dug earth lodges, or "pit houses," into the ground. Bent wooden poles formed a dome framework overhead that was packed with dirt. Yakima family members entered and exited through the center of the roof by ladder.

and hunker down with a fire in the tipi...the top has flaps to let out smoke

Camp next to a sheltering mountain if you can....

There were as many different ways as there were different tribes to make it through winter. I suppose some times they didn't make it through a severe weather event no matter how well prepared they were.

But many generations before adapted to that harsh life, so they had it figured out.

but a teepee is warm in the winter and cool in the summer by design. Its built with two layers of hides with an air space between the two. In the winter they build a fire in the center of the teepee and the smoke goes straight up to the hole in the top, if not for feeling the warmth and seeing the light from the fire you won't know there is a fire as you don't smell the smoke or any of that. in the summer the air is allowed to enter the air space between the two layers at the bottom and it travels up and out the top taking away the heat that is generated by the sun and the high temperatures of summer leaving the inner layer cool to the touch. A teepee is actually easy to warm in cold weather and to keep cool in the hot temperatures.

Tornado's I'm not so sure what they did but probably thought the Gods had something to do with them so they probably didn't do a whole lot as they would have felt what ever happened happened for a reason. If they got their asses blown away then that was the reason or whatever.

I'm no authority on teepees but I have checked them out both in the winter and in the summer and I'm just relating what I know from experience.

Peace

Any given event was likely to effect fewer people..

How often do you personally see a really severe weather event?

We know about things that happen all over, they didn't, they only had to deal with what was right there.

There are shows on cable that emulate this level of existence to an extent.

Old Lodge Skins: Don't worry my son, you will be back with us, I dreamed it last night. I saw you with your wives
Jack Crabb: Wives, Grandfather?
Old Lodge Skins: Yes, there were three... or four, it was hard to tell. It was very dark in your teepee and they were under buffalo rugs as you crawled among them. Anyway, it was a great copulation.

One of the great lines from the movie Little Big Man.

Most did, anyway.

The early pioneer settlers into the Great Plains learned a fair amount from the native population before their numbers pushed that population out into increasingly harsh areas. Moreover, the Plains were generally both grassier and populated with trees, such that the largest Native American settlements were primarily in and around the Missouri river. The Westward expansion of European whites happened to occur during the start of a global warming phase in the 19th century, and the combination of this with slash and burn agriculture destroyed most of the native light forest and grasslands, even as Europeans were giving the native population Smallpox infected blankets that reduced their numbers to 1/10th the previous numbers. Nations such as the Sioux, Apache, Blackfoot and others in this region went from settled agriculturists to nomads, after having adopted the feral Spanish horses less than a hundred years before. This meant that, far from being "one with the earth" and privy to deep secrets from the depths of times, most of the Plains Indians had been forced to adapt themselves to dramatic changes in their way of life over the course of three hundred years as they'd been forced into ever more hostile environments.

Teepees were probably never meant for long term habitation. When millions of bison and buffalo roamed the Plains, many of the earlier Sioux, et al., more likely lived in long houses or earthen berms, while the teepees were tents that made it possible to create temporary bases to hunt and process their kills, before returning to the long houses in the winter, even as the more settled communities grew maize and grains. Warming temperatures and eventually European settlers pushed the bison's habitat westward, and the hunters were forced into longer and longer treks, until eventually they reached a point where they were forced into being truly nomadic (and that only with the arrival of the Spanish horse). It's very likely that tribal populations dropped dramatically during this period, as the various peoples had to learn what they needed quickly or perished trying.

It's also worth reflecting upon the fact that while pioneers did adapt to sod houses, they never really did take to teepees. Instead, they relied upon wagon trains (and then eventually steam trains) to ship wood out into what was increasingly becoming arid grassland. Not surprisingly, as the Plains become true desert even that's becoming impractical, which is why, off of the main highways, the towns that arise during the late 1800s are now being abandoned, except in those areas where oil can be extracted, like Bakken.

They were about 100' long, made of posts and saplings that were bent over and covered with hides, branches, earth, etc. Not all indigenous Great Plains people used teepees.

in Yellowstone and in New Mexico. Probably at other sites as well.

You read my mind!

There wasn't much different in lifestyle between the East Coast forest tribes and the earliest settlers. In either case, you lived in a shelter with a dirt floor, grew or hunted for all your food, cooked and heated with an open fire, hauled water from the nearest river or lake, and made all your own clothes.

What puzzled the colonists was that often women and girls who had been captured by the Indians refused to be "rescued" when they had the chance. The reason was that women had more rights among the East Coast tribes than they did among 17th and 18th century colonists. They couldn't be beaten, they could divorce their husbands, and they had a say in the running of the community.

Not all the tribes were so egalitarian, but the ones on the East Coast mostly were.

women get a good shake but they have stories that explain it all
i dont know if divorce is the right word in some cases you get your shoes and thats about it

so the chances of a direct hit on an encampment probably was not all that frequent.

different camp areas depending on the season
a protected valley in winter may not be as harsh as you think
and in the winter camps more permanant dwellings could be erected
and have you ever been in a tipi with a fire going? its a hot summbitch
they had a system but when the whites came they could not freely access different parts of what had once been theirs

Only so much you can do about Higher Management shoving his thumb into the ground and squashing whatever's directly underneath for awhile.

The other weather's manageable with some surprisingly basic stuff, and a lot of nomadic buildings go quite a bit beyond "basic." During a bad thunderstorm or blizzard, people would just bunker down - the worst of it would usually pass within a day or so anyway.