Indigenous Peoples Studies – Online University of the Left

The Great Plains is the huge area in the central portion of the North American continent which stretches from the Canadian provinces in the north, almost to the Gulf of Mexico in the south, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the Mississippi River in the east. This is an area which contains many different kinds of habitat: flatland, dunes, hills, tablelands, stream valleys, and mountains. It is a dry region and lacks trees except along rivers and streams. This was not a vacant land when the European invasion began, but a region inhabited by and utilized by many different Native American groups. Along the rivers, there were many American Indian villages whose people raised many different crops, including maize (corn), beans, squash, and sunflowers. There were also nomadic and semi-nomadic hunting and gathering groups whose primary beast of burden was the dog.

The first Europeans to enter the Great Plains were the Spanish who began their initial explorations of the Great Plains of North America in the 1500s. A group of Spaniards under the leadership of Hernando de Soto crossed the Mississippi River and entered what is now Arkansas in 1541. Here they encountered the highly fortified Indian village of Casqui. These Indians were not the horse-mounted buffalo hunters which would be later stereotypes used by movies and textbooks as “Indians,” but rather they were farmers who lived in permanent villages. In an article in American Archaeology, Mark Michel reports:

“According to the Spanish chronicles, Casqui was suffering from an extended drought and the chief asked for help from the European gods.”

The priests who were travelling with the Spanish party erected a massive cross on the mound where the chief’s house was located and conducted a mass.

The Spanish then turned south, and somewhere on the Great Plains de Soto died. His expedition left a legacy of the torture, mutilation, and killing of thousands of native peoples.

While de Soto’s expedition entered the Great Plains from the east, at the same time Francisco Vásquez de Coronado began his journey north from Mexico seeking the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. Coronado and his men spent the winter at the Tiwa Pueblo of Arenal on the Upper Rio Grande River, in what is now New Mexico. The Spanish forced the Indians out of the village and demanded that they provide corn and blankets. The Spanish noted that the men of the pueblo did the spinning and weaving, and that the primary textile fiber was cotton.

While at Arenal, Coronado was told of the great wealth that was supposedly to the east, on the Great Plains. One Indian slave known as the Turk described the country of Quivira which lay to the northeast and was said to be so filled with gold that even common table service was made of gold and silver. In the spring of 1541, Coronado set out to find Quivira. In her book Sun Father’s Way: The Kiva Murals of Kuaua, Bertha P. Dutton writes:

“The withdrawal of the Spanish invaders must have been cause for much relief among the Tiwas; some of their pueblos were reoccupied.”

Also travelling with them was a Wichita captive named Sopete. The expedition got lost on the Great Plains, and they became the first Europeans to encounter the great herds of buffalo. They were found by Lipan Apaches who told them of other settlements in the area.

With regard to the Apaches, Pedro de Castañedade Nájera described their sign language:

“These people are so skillful in the use of signs that it seemed as if they spoke. They made everything so clear that an interpreter was not necessary.”

In his entry on the Apaches in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Henry Dobyns reports:

“These Plains Apache killed bison, deer, and antelope during communal hunts. They reckoned descent through women; men avoided their mothers-in-law.”

Most anthropologists feel that the Spanish designation “Harrahey” actually referred to one of the Pawnee tribes. The Pawnee, a Caddoan-speaking people, had migrated north from Texas into northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas at a fairly early date.