Editing Great Plains (section)

==History to 1850==

===Original American contact===
{{Main|Plains Indians}}
{{See also|Paleo-Indians}}
[[File:BuffaloHunters.jpg|thumb|Buffalo hunt under the wolf-skin mask, [[George Catlin]], 1832–33.]]
The first Peoples ([[Paleo-Indians]]) arrived on the Great Plains thousands of years ago.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20287-first-americans-arrived-2500-years-before-we-thought.html |title=First Americans arrived 2500 years before we thought – life – 24 March 2011 |magazine=New Scientist |access-date=February 12, 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |last=Hanna |first=Bill |date=August 28, 2010 |title=Texas artifacts 'strongest evidence yet' that humans arrived in North America earlier than thought |url=http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/03/24/2947233/texas-artifacts-strongest-evidence.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111028193033/http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/03/24/2947233/texas-artifacts-strongest-evidence.html |archive-date=October 28, 2011 |access-date=February 12, 2014 |publisher=Star-telegram.com}}</ref> The introduction of corn around 800 CE allowed the development of the mound-building [[Mississippian culture]] along rivers that crossed the Great Plains and that included trade networks west to the Rocky Mountains.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-707 |author=Adam King |title=Mississippian Period: Overview |encyclopedia=New Georgia Encyclopedia |date=2002 |access-date=November 15, 2009 |archive-date=March 1, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120301201548/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-707 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |author=John H. Blitz |title=Mississippian Period |url=http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-1130 |publisher=Alabama Humanities Foundation |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Alabama}}</ref> Mississippians settled the Great Plains at sites now in [[Spiro Mounds|Oklahoma]] and [[Mitchell Site|South Dakota]].

[[Siouan languages|Siouan language]] speakers may have originated in the lower [[Mississippi River]] region. They were agriculturalists and may have been part of the [[Mound Builders|Mound Builder civilization]] during the 9th–12th centuries.

Pressure from other Indian tribes, themselves driven west and south by the encroachment of European settlers as well as economic incentives such as the fur trade, alongside the arrival of the horse and firearms from Europe pushed multiple tribes onto the Great Plains.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hämäläinen |first=Pekka J. |title=Lakota America: a new history of indigenous power |date=2019 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-21595-3 |series=The Lamar series in western history |location=New Haven (Conn.) |pages=11–50}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cozzens |first=Peter |title=The earth is weeping: the epic story of the Indian wars for the American West |date=2016 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-307-95804-4 |location=New York |pages=17–18}}</ref>

Among those to have lived on the Great Plains were the [[Blackfoot Confederacy|Blackfoot]], [[Crow Nation|Crow]], [[Sioux]], [[Cheyenne]], [[Arapaho]], [[Comanche]], and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived at [[Etzanoa]] and in semi-permanent villages of earth lodges, such as the [[Arikara]], [[Mandan]], [[Pawnee people|Pawnee]], and [[Wichita people|Wichita]].{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}

Wars with the [[Ojibwe]] and [[Cree people]]s pushed the [[Lakota people|Lakota]] (Teton Sioux) west onto the Great Plains in the mid- to late-17th century.<ref>Pritzker, Barry M. ''A Native American Encyclopedia: History, Culture, and Peoples''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. {{ISBN|978-0-19-513877-1}}. p. 329.</ref> The [[Shoshone]] originated in the western [[Great Basin]] and spread north and east into present-day [[Idaho]] and Wyoming. By 1500, some Eastern Shoshone had crossed the [[Rocky Mountains]] into the Great Plains. After 1750, warfare and pressure from the Blackfoot, Crow, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho pushed Eastern Shoshone south and westward. Some of them moved as far south as Texas, emerging as the [[Comanche]] by 1700.<ref>Loether, Christopher. [http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.105 "Shoshones"]. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141110000725/http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.na.105 |date=November 10, 2014 }} ''Encyclopedia of the Great Plains''.</ref>

====Arrival of horses====
[[File:George Catlin - Indian Family Alarmed at the Approach of a Prairie Fire - 1985.66.595 - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg|thumb|Indian family alarmed at the approach of a [[Wildfire|prairie fire]], George Catlin, c. 1846]]
The first known contact between Europeans and Indians in the Great Plains occurred in what is now Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska from 1540 to 1542 with the arrival of [[Francisco Vázquez de Coronado]], a Spanish conquistador. In that same period, [[Hernando de Soto]] crossed a west-northwest direction in what is now Oklahoma and Texas which is now known as the De Soto Trail. The Spanish thought that the Great Plains were the location of the mythological ''[[Quivira]] and [[Zuni-Cibola Complex|Cíbola]]'', a place said to be rich in gold.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2010-10-21 |title=The Seven Cities of Cibola |url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/seven-cities-of-cibola |access-date=2022-12-02 |website=History |language=en |archive-date=December 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221202193337/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/seven-cities-of-cibola |url-status=dead }}</ref>

People in the southwest began to acquire horses in the 16th century by trading or stealing them from Spanish colonists in New Mexico. As horse culture moved northward, the Comanche were among the first to commit to a fully mounted [[nomad]]ic lifestyle. This occurred by the 1730s, when they had acquired enough horses to put all their people on horseback.<ref>{{cite book |last=Hämäläinen |first=Pekka |author-link=Pekka Hämäläinen (historian) |title=The Comanche Empire |year=2008 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-12654-9 |pages=37–38}}</ref>

The real beginning of the horse culture of the plains began with the [[Pueblo Revolt|Pueblo Revolt of 1680]] in New Mexico and the capture of thousands of horses and other livestock. In 1683 a Spanish expedition into Texas found horses among Native people. In 1690, a few horses were found by the Spanish among the Indians living at the mouth of the [[Colorado River (Texas)|Colorado River]] of Texas and the [[Caddo]] of eastern Texas had a sizeable number.<ref>Bolton, Herbert Eugene. ''Spanish Exploration in the Southwest'', 1542–1706. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2007 (reprint) pp. 296, 315</ref><ref name="Haines.1988">Haines, Francis. "The Northward Spread of Horses among the Plains Indians. ''American Anthropologist'', Vol 40, No. 3 (1988) p. 382</ref>

The French explorer [[Claude Charles Du Tisne]] found 300 horses among the [[Wichita (tribe)|Wichita]] on the [[Verdigris River]] in 1719, but they were still not plentiful. Another Frenchman, [[Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont|Bourgmont]], could only buy seven at a high price from the [[Kaw (tribe)|Kaw]] in 1724, indicating that horses were still scarce among tribes in [[Kansas]]. By 1770, that Plains Indians culture was mature, consisting of mounted buffalo-hunting nomads from Saskatchewan and [[Alberta]] southward nearly to the [[Rio Grande]].

[[File:Alfred Jacob Miller - Hunting Buffalo - Walters 371940190.jpg|left|thumb|This painting by [[Alfred Jacob Miller]] is a portrayal of Plains Indians chasing buffalo over a small cliff.<ref>{{cite web |publisher=[[The Walters Art Museum]] |url=http://art.thewalters.org/detail/16002 |title=Hunting Buffalo |access-date=June 20, 2021 |archive-date=May 16, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130516151812/http://art.thewalters.org/detail/16002 |url-status=live }}</ref> The Walters Art Museum.]]

The milder winters of the southern Plains favored a pastoral economy by the Indians.<ref>Osborn, Alan J. "Ecological Aspects of Equestrian Adaptation in Aboriginal North America". ''American Anthropologist'', No. 85, No. 3 (Sept 1983), 566</ref> On the northeastern Plains of Canada, the Indians were less favored, with families owning fewer horses, remaining more dependent upon dogs for transporting goods, and hunting bison on foot. The scarcity of horses in the north encouraged raiding and warfare in competition for the relatively small number of horses that survived the severe winters.<ref>Hämäläinen (2008), 10–15</ref>

Comanche power peaked in the 1840s when they conducted [[Comanche–Mexico Wars|large-scale raids]] hundreds of miles into Mexico proper, while also [[Texas–Indian wars|warring]] against the Anglo-Americans and [[Tejanos]] who had settled in [[Republic of Texas|independent Texas]].

====Fur trade====

The [[fur trade]] brought thousands of colonial settlers into the Great Plains over the next 100 years. Fur trappers made their way across much of the region, making regular contacts with Indians.

The [[Hudson's Bay Company]] (HBC) had first been granted in 1670 a commercial monopoly over the huge [[Hudson Bay]] drainage area known as [[Rupert's Land]] covering a northern portion of the Great Plains. The [[North West Company]] fur trade incumbent had also been present in the area until acquired by the HBC during the early 1820s.

The United States acquired the [[Louisiana Purchase]] in 1803 and conducted the [[Lewis and Clark Expedition]] in 1804–1806, and more information became available concerning the Plains, and various pioneers entered the areas. Fur trading posts were often the basis of later settlements. Through the 19th century, more settlers migrated to the Great Plains as part of a vast [[United States territorial acquisitions|westward expansion]] of population, and new settlements became dotted across the Great Plains.{{Citation needed|date=January 2021}}

The settlers also brought diseases against which the Indians had no resistance. Between a half and two-thirds of the Plains Indians are thought to have died of [[smallpox]] by the time of the Louisiana Purchase.<ref>"[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2008&page=24 Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States (1992)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141111160225/http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=2008&page=24 |date=November 11, 2014 }}". Institute of Medicine (IOM).</ref> The [[1837 Great Plains smallpox epidemic]] spread across the Great Plains, killing many thousands between 1837 and 1840. In the end, it is estimated that two-thirds of the Blackfoot population died, along with half of the [[Assiniboines]] and Arikaras, a third of the Crows, and a quarter of the Pawnees.<ref>{{cite book |title=First Peoples: A Documentary History of American History |last=Calloway |first=Colin G. |edition=3rd |location=Boston |publisher=Bedford/St. Martin's |year=2008 |pages=290–370 (p.297) |isbn=9780312453732}}</ref>

[[File:Gascoyne, North Dakota.jpg|thumb|Great Plains in North Dakota {{circa}} 2007, where communities began settling in the 1870s.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Great Plains region |last=Rees |first=Amanda |year=2004 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=0-313-32733-5 |page=18 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v0MpNai3xdMC |access-date=September 4, 2009}}</ref>]]