Editing Great Plains (section)

====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]].