978-1-4222-3326-9

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Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska

lish trade relations with the Indians along the Missouri River. The French traded European goods, including guns, metal tools, and alcohol. In exchange, they wanted fur. Across Europe, North American furs—especially beaver furs—were in big demand. As a result, many French trappers made great fortunes from the fur trade. The Indians did not fare so well. Contact with Europeans exposed them to new diseases. Epidemics of smallpox and other infectious diseases devastated their numbers. By the end of the 1600s, France had acquired a vast stretch of land

was piqued by tales of a mythical city of gold called the “Kingdom of Quivira.” Coronado and his men trudged for more than a month across prairieland, from Texas to Oklahoma to Kansas. Eventually they found Quivira. It turned out to be a few vil- lages of Wichita Indians living in grass huts in central Kansas—no gold in sight. With their hopes for treasure dashed, the Spanish packed up and went home. The next serious attempts to explore Kansas came almost two cen- turies later. This time it was French explorers who came seeking to estab-

Statue of the Spanish explorer Francisco Coronado in the city of Liberal, in southwestern Kansas. In the 1540s, Coronado led a small Spanish army through the Great Plains in search of seven legendary cities of gold.