Editing Great Plains (section)

====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>]]