Two cultures, thousands of miles apart, show similarities one would expect from neighboring civilizations. Both cultures were born on similar soil. This land was lush prairie. One civilization grew up in the Midwest of North America, the other in Central Asia. The first civilization was the Plains Indians. The second was the Mongols. Every culture had a common form of religion. This religion was shamanism. Wordiq defines it as "a set of traditional beliefs and practices that involve the ability to diagnose, cure, and sometimes cause human suffering due to a special relationship with or control over spirits." Cultures were also influenced by the horse. According to David Nicolle, the horse appeared in the central plains of America during the 18th century AD (Mongol warlords: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Hulegu Tamerlane). Horses are native to the Mongolian region. The Plains Indians and Mongols show similarities in that horses played a key role in their politics, culture, and economy; they shared a common form of religion, shamanism, which influenced politics, and they practiced respect for the dead and high places. The politics of the Mongols were influenced by the horse. According to Morris Rossabi, the Mongols valued the horse for its advantages in warfare. The horse was fast and flexible in battle (All Khan's Horses). These characteristics of the horse helped the Mongols attack and dodge enemy arrows. Morris Rossabi goes on to say that the great Mongol general Genghis Khan used the horse to conquer Central Asia. Khan was said to have used the horse to facilitate hit-and-run raids against sedentary agricultural societies and to mobilize his army (All Khan's Horses). After the raid, the horse... in the center of the card......Shamanism states that Sitting Bull was a chief and a sorcerer[shaman], a political and spiritual leader(philtar.ucsm. ac.uk). Sitting Bull was an example of how religion and politics were intertwined among the Plains Indian tribes. This created a kind of theocracy in which religion and politics ruled. The sacred Black Hills caused many wars between the whites and the Indians. According to James Boyd, the Plains Indians refused to sell the Black Hills to the Americans because they were sacred to them. This caused war between them (Recent Indian Wars 132). The mineral value of the Black Hills made Americans covet the land. The gold was believed to be in the Black Hills. The Indians' rejection shows how much the Indians valued the lands for their sacred nature. Many Indians sacrificed their lives to maintain possession of the Black Hills.