Tongue hunts were largely for ceremony.
"And, as for the so-called “annual hunt,” you make it sound like they went out for a month or so and hunted, much like we hunt deer nowadays. The plains tribes such as the Sioux and the Cheyenne and the Arapaho (just to name a handful) followed the buffalo herds, so it wasn’t so much an “annual hunt” but a perpetual hunt until winter made logistics unmanageable(they also went after antelope, elk, deer, etc.; however, one of their main staples was dog)."
Yes, they followed the herds. Their lodges were buffalo hide weighing near a 1/2ton, so they didn't move, but maybe once a year. The annual hunt I referred to was when they killed large numbers of buffalo and brought large amounts of stuff back to camp. Their regular hunts did not involve killing large numbers, as in driving them off a cliff.
“Their lodges were buffalo hide weighing near a 1/2ton, so they didn’t move, but maybe once a year.”
With all due respect, you know absolutely nothing of the Plains Indians. They moved their village sites several times during the year. Theirs was a semi-nomadic culture, made more so because of the horse. The only time they stayed in one place for any stretch was when they went into their winter camps. The Plains Indians did not farm like their eastern or far-western counterparts. As for their lodges, they used deer hides, elk hides, buffalo hides, you name it.