The Great Plains were originally inhabited by Indigenous peoples, followed by European settlers who viewed it as “desert.
The first Peoples were Indians who arrived on the Great Plains thousands of years ago.The introduction of corn around 800 AD allowed the development of the mound-building Mississippian culture along rivers that crossed the Great Plains and that included trade networks west to the Rocky Mountains.Mississippians settled the Great Plains at sites now in Oklahoma and South Dakota.
Pressure from other Indian tribes, themselves driven west and south by the encroachment of European settlers as well as economic incentives such as the fur trade, alongside the arrival of the horse and firearms from Europe pushed multiple tribes onto the Great Plains.Among those to have lived on the Great Plains were the Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Shoshone . These tribes lived a partially nomadic lifestyle hunting great herd of buffalo and bison.
Many descendants of these tribes now live on reservations in the after their defeat in the American Indian Wars and the 19th century.
Nowadays landuse on the Great Plains is overwhelmingly dominated by agriculture primarily converting native grasslands into cropland for grains and livestock (cattle ranching).While historically a vast prairie, major land-use changes since European settlement include large-scale cultivation, urban growth at the edges, and development of wind energy, creating a mix of highly productive farms, sparse ranchlands, and conservation areas, all facing challenges from climate change and water scarcity.
