International Diplomacy and the Arrival of the "Americans"

Francisco Vásquez de Coronado

International developments and European colonial aggression exerted a profound influence on the destiny of the Plains Indians. Initiated by Coronado's unsuccessful effort to locate the fabled "Seven Cities of Cibola" on the Kansas plains in 1541, Spain was repeatedly rebuffed by unfavorable environmental conditions, the absences of precious metals and an easily exploitable native labor force, and the stern stance of the Native People they encountered.

Following Coronado's abortive journey to the Wichita villages just east of the great bend of the Arkansas River, New Mexico Governor Don Juan de Onate, in 1601, in company with a group of Indians the Spaniards called the "Escanjaques," visited the Wichita country between present Wichita and Kingman, Kansas. No more impressed than Coronado with what he encountered, Onate soon retreated to the Pueblo country around Santa Fe, where the aloof and sometimes hostile posture of the Plains Apache and possibly other Caddoan People made his decision to retreat easy. Only when France displayed interest in the region did Spain attempt to renew her efforts to establish a colonial empire on the Plains.

Always interested in extending their fur empire from its base in the upper St. Lawrence Valley and the Great Lakes country, the French dispatched various explorers to reconnoiter the Mississippi Valley. By 1763, Marquette and Joliet had reached the mouth of the Arkansas River, and in 1682 La Salle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi. Here he claimed the vast region known as Louisiana, the domain of the Plains Indians, for King Louis XIV of France. Thus was joined the struggle between Spain and France for control of the North American Plains.

Villasur and his men (center) were quickly surrounded by the Pawnee and killed. Source - Palace of the Governors Collections, Museum of New Mexico.

In 1719, the Frenchman Charles Claude du Tisne visited the Osages in western Missouri, and possibly the Kansa-Kaws and Pawnees in Kansas. That same year war broke out between Spain and France, largely over European dynastical politics, but in part over the increasing French influence in Louisiana. In 1720, the Spaniards responded by sending a military expedition led by Pedro de Villasur into the lower Platte Valley. Approximately one hundred miles west of present Omaha, Villasur was soundly defeated by the Pawnees and Kansa-Kaws, who enjoyed the support of the French.

For the next four decades the French dominated the eastern third of the Plains. In 1723, they established Fort Orleans at the mouth of the Grand River. The following year a party led by Etienne Veniard de Bourgmont visited the Kansa-Kaws, the Osages, and the Plains Apaches, from whom promises of stable commercial relationships were secured. Traveling southwest from the lower Platte Valley in 1739, a commercial party led by Paul and Pierre Mallet made it all the way to Santa Fe; and five years later, in 1744, the aggressive French traders established Fort Cavaginal just above the mouth of the Kansas River. Clearly, the long-range design of the French was to establish commercial domination over all of the Plains Indians.

The French design was disrupted in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, ending the French and Indian War. Since the 1690's France and Britain had been involved in a mighty struggle for colonial domination of North America. In the main it was a struggle for control of the Ohio Valley, but because of the Paris negotiations of 1763 awarded Louisiana to Spain, its implications for the trans-Missouri West and Plains Indians were momentous.

Between 1763 and 1800, when the Secret Treaty of San Ildefonso Spain was forced to cede Louisiana back to Napoleonic France, Spain displayed ineptitude in the exertion of effective authority on the Plains. In fact she was content to allow French fur traders and soldiers of fortune to dominate Indian-white relations. In turn the French were challenged by English traders sponsored by the British Northwest Company, with the result that violent competition worked to the disruption of normal inter-tribal relations, and worse, to the distribution of arms, ammunition, and alcohol on a regular basis.

Such prominent St. Louis families as the Sarpys, Chouteaus, Clamorgans, and Gratiots competed with the better financed English traders for domination of the Indian hinterland. From their base at Fort William on Lake Superior, the English moved swiftly through Minnesota and Iowa, to the upper-Missouri country. They armed the Dakotas and Arikaras, who gave thanks to their benefactors by defeating a Spanish military expedition under Jacques d'Eglise in 1791. The English merchants also made significant inroads among the Mandans, Iowas, Otoe-Missouris, and Osages. Never before had the Plains been the setting for more violent and disruptive socio-economic change. Then, by the Second Treaty of Paris of 1783, the revolutionary seaboard colonies obtained their independence from Britain. Two decades later, by the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the infant United States assumed ownership of the Plains. For the Native Americans, who were living there, it was the beginning of the end.