The Pawnee are a Central Plains Indian tribe that historically lived in Nebraska and northern Kansas but today are based in Oklahoma. They are the federally recognized Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, who are headquartered in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Their Pawnee language belongs to the Caddoan language family, and their name for themselves is Chatiks si chatiks or "Men of Men".
The Platte River is a major river in the State of Nebraska. It is about 310 mi (500 km) long; measured to its farthest source via its tributary, the North Platte River, it flows for over 1,050 miles (1,690 km). The Platte River is a tributary of the Missouri River, which itself is a tributary of the Mississippi River which flows to the Gulf of Mexico. The Platte over most of its length is a broad, shallow, meandering stream with a sandy bottom and many islands—a braided stream.
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.
The Otoe are a Native American people of the Midwestern United States. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and closely related to that of the related Iowa, Missouria, and Ho-Chunk tribes.
El Cuartelejo, or El Quartelejo, is a region in eastern Colorado and western Kansas where Plains Apache cohabited with Puebloans. Subject to religious persecution, Puebloans fled the Spanish Nuevo México territory and cohabitated with the Cuartelejo villagers in the 1600s.
Quivira was a province of the ancestral Wichita people, located near the Great Bend of the Arkansas River in central Kansas, The exact site may be near present-day Lyons extending northeast to Salina.
Étienne de Veniard, Sieur de Bourgmont was a French explorer who documented his travels on the Missouri and Platte rivers in North America and made the first European maps of these areas in the early 18th century. He wrote two accounts of his travels, which included descriptions of the Native American tribes he encountered. In 1723, he established Fort Orleans, the first European fort on the Missouri River, near the mouth of the Grand River, and present-day Brunswick, Missouri. In 1724, he led an expedition to the Great Plains of Kansas to establish trading relations with the Padouca.
Fort Orleans was a French fort in colonial North America, the first fort built by any European forces on the Missouri River. It was built near the mouth of the Grand River near present-day Brunswick. Intended to be the linchpin in the vast New France empire stretching from Montreal to New Mexico, the fort was occupied from 1723–1726. It was the first multi-year European settlement in what is today the U.S. state of Missouri.
Jean L'Archevêque was a French explorer, soldier and merchant-trader. One of the few survivors of the ill-fated French colony Fort Saint Louis (Texas), L'Archevêque, the son of a merchant-trader from Bayonne, France, indentured himself to merchant-trader Sieur Pierre Duhaut in order to participate in the expedition to find the colony. L'Archevêque is known to have been the decoy that led René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle into an ambush in which Duhaut shot La Salle. While Duhaut was killed by expedition members to avenge La Salle's murder, L'Archevêque escaped the same fate because he was viewed more favorably and was thought to be less guilty. L'Archevêque was killed in 1720 near what is now Columbus, Nebraska by Native Americans of the Pawnee tribe during the Villasur expedition.
The Pike-Pawnee Village Site, or Hill Farm Site, designated 25WT1 by archaeologists, is a site near the village of Guide Rock in Webster County, in the south central portion of the state of Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States. It was the location of a village of the Kitkehahki band of the Pawnee people, in a region of the Republican River valley that they occupied intermittently from the 1770s to the 1820s.
Antonio Valverde y Cosío was the architect behind the disastrous Villasur expedition wherein the famous Spanish colonial scout José Naranjo perished.
Pierre Antoine and Paul Mallet, brothers and French Canadian voyageurs, were the first Europeans known to have crossed the Great Plains from east to west. They first journeyed to Santa Fe, New Mexico from Kaskaskia, Illinois in 1739.
French people have been present in the U.S. state of Nebraska since before it achieved statehood in 1867. The area was originally claimed by France in 1682 as part of La Louisiane, the extent of which was largely defined by the watershed of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Over the following centuries, explorers of French ethnicity, many of them French-Canadian, trapped, hunted, and established settlements and trading posts across much of the northern Great Plains, including the territory that would eventually become Nebraska, even in the period after France formally ceded its North American claims to Spain. During the 19th century, fur trading gave way to settlements and farming across the state, and French colonists and French-American migrants continued to operate businesses and build towns in Nebraska. Many of their descendants continue to live in the state.
The Skidi is one of four bands of Pawnee people, a central Plains tribe. They lived on the Central Plains of Nebraska and Kansas for most of the millennium prior to European contact. The Skidi, also known as the Wolf band lived in the northern part of Pawnee territory.
The soldados de cuera served in the frontier garrisons of northern New Spain, the Presidios, from the late 16th to the early 19th century. They were mounted and were an exclusive corps in the Spanish Empire. They took their name from the multi-layered deer-skin cloak they wore as protection against Indian arrows. When New Spain's visitador José de Gálvez organized the Portola Expedition, he was accompanied by a party of 25 soldiers, the "finest horsemen in the world, and among these soldiers who best earn their bread from the august monarch whom they serve".
Pedro Vial, or Pierre Vial, was a French explorer and frontiersman who lived among the Comanche and Wichita Indians for many years. He later worked for the Spanish government as a peacemaker, guide, and interpreter. He blazed trails across the Great Plains to connect the Spanish and French settlements in Texas, New Mexico, Missouri, and Louisiana. He led three Spanish expeditions that attempted unsuccessfully to intercept and halt the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Philipp Segesser was a German-speaking Swiss Jesuit missionary who spent much of his career in Sonora, Mexico.
Juan de Ulibarrí or Uribarrí (1670-1716) was a Spanish or Criollo soldier and explorer who lived in New Mexico. In 1706 he led an expedition to El Cuartelejo on the Great Plains of western Kansas and eastern Colorado. Ulibarrí's diary survives and is an important source for the history of Spanish exploration of the Great Plains and relationships with the Apache and Pueblo Indians. The purpose of Ulibarrí's expedition was to find and escort back to New Mexico about 60 people from Picuris Pueblo who had earlier fled Spanish rule in New Mexico and established communities on the Great Plains. The Cuartelejo Ruins in Kansas are a remnant of the Pueblos who lived on the plains.
José Naranjo was a Puebloan of partial African ancestry who served the Spanish government of New Mexico. His father may have helped lead the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and Naranjo initially opposed co-operation with the Spanish, successfully escaping from Spanish custody.
