page_title: Great Plains
section_title: Original American contact
hierarchical_section_title: Great Plains / History / Original American contact
caption_attribution_description: English: Buffalo Hunt under the Wolf-skin Mask, 1832–33 oil 24 x 29 in. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr. Before they acquired horses in the eighteenth century, Indians developed ingenious methods to hunt buffalo on foot. One method was the stealthy approach in disguise. Since more than half the calves born each year died, bison tolerated the packs of wolves that took care of the carcasses. Buffalo were unprepared, however, for Indians in wolves' clothing, who approached "within a few rods of the unsuspecting group, and easily [shot] down the fattest of the throng."
context_page_description: The Great Plains is a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, and grassland, located in the interior of North America. It lies west of the Mississippi River tallgrass prairie in the United States and east of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S. and Canada.
  It encompasses:
  The entirety of Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota
  Parts of Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming
  The southern portions of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba
  The region is known for supporting extensive cattle ranching and dry farming. The Canadian portion of the Plains is known as the Canadian Prairies. It covers much of Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, and a narrow band of southern Manitoba.
context_section_description: The first Americans (Paleo-Indians) arrived on the Great Plains thousands of years ago. Historically, the Great Plains were the range of the Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others. Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semi-permanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee, and Wichita.
  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 Cíbola, a place said to be rich in gold.
  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 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 westward expansion of population, and new settlements became dotted across the Great Plains.
  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.
caption: Buffalo hunt under the wolf-skin mask, George Catlin, 1832–33.
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