The Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, Cheyenne, Crow, and many other Indian tribes of the Great Plains depended on the buffalo as the foundation of life. While some tribes lived in stable villages and most followed a nomadic way of life, buffalo linked many Plains Indian cultures through food, clothing, shelter, religion, and social belief. Many regarded buffalo as brothers, and their presence on the prairie shaped the lifestyle of nomadic tribes. Buffalo skulls were sacred and decorated with feathers, quillwork, and medicine bundles, and buffalo masks and headdresses were used in ceremonial dances, including dances intended to attract herds to hunting lands. Plains Indians used nearly every part of the buffalo: horns became cups and spoons, stomachs cooking pots, tails flyswatters, manure baby powder, bones tools, ribs helped straighten arrow shafts, bladders held water, hides were tanned for use, and meat was dried into jerky for long storage. Buffalo provided material for implements, weapons, blankets, garments, ropes, houses, glue, bowstrings, and twine, and for many people little was wasted because survival on the prairie depended on the animal. In the mid-1800s, westward expansion by pioneers, increased trade, and improved weapons doomed the buffalo, and the destruction of the great herds brought the decline of many Plains Indian cultures, forcing a new and unfamiliar way of life and ending an era that had been perfected over 300 years.