1600 CE was a pivotal time in the history of Nebraska,and there are at least two compelling stories to tell.
The native people who were just moving back to the Central Plains had no way of knowing that these Europeans had ambitious plans to "conquer the New World." Those ambitions would make all the difference in the world.
The archaeological record has shown that, after tribal people left during the 1400s, they began moving back into the Central Plains around 1600 CE. This was probably because the weather changed and made it easier to grow crops and hunt for food. Earlier plains residents had lived in small groups. Now, they tended to build semi-permanent towns, planted crops along the rivers and organized large hunting expeditions that took the entire community wandering across the plains, following bison herds.
History is usually defined as the written record of time. What makes this time period, known as the “Protohistoric Period”, most difficult is that no written records have been discovered. Tribal groups at the time passed down their culture through oral tradition, that is stories told from one generation to the next, and through pictorial records left as paintings on hides or pictographs on rock walls. The prefix, “proto”, means first. So, this time period is when we mainly have to rely on archaeological evidence to piece together what life was like on the Central Plains in these early years.
As we now understand it, this is a story of the evolution of tribal cultures, of the first forays of Europeans onto the vast plains, of sporadic conflict between the Europeans to exert their dominance, and of increasing trade — for better and worse.
It is during the late 1500s and early 1600s that we can, for the first time in the archaeological record, recognize cultural complexes that ultimately gave rise to the historic tribes that we still know today. During the period 1500 to 1850, peoples moved into, through, and out of the Nebraska region. Perhaps these movements were in response to changes in environmental conditions that required new adaptations. The effects of climate changes on the growing season of corn, on bison populations, and on migration were dramatic. But gradually, the tribes settled, and Europeans began to write about their patterns of life. Archaeology and historic documents now give us a good understanding of historic tribes including the Omaha, Ioway, Oto-Missouria, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee and Arapaho.
The first Europeans known to see Nebraska and its people included the Frenchman Étienne Veniard de Bourgmont (1714), the Mallet brothers (1739), and the unlucky Spaniard, Pedro de Villasur (1720). Conversely, the first Nebraskan to see Europe may have been an Oto man who was willingly taken to meet the King of France in 1725.
Trade goods from Europe begin showing up even in the earliest Protohistoric sites. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Europeans had found their way onto the plains. Plains tribes could have gotten European goods by trading with other Native Americans from further east or south, rather than by direct trade with Europeans. But by the early 1700s, native Nebraskans had direct contact with explorers and traders, and written documents come into the historic record. European trade introduced materials that were probably beneficial to native people — horses, metal tools, iron arrow points and later guns — but they also brought disease, whiskey and a thirst for land.
