<P> The Great Plains are part of the floristic North American Prairies Province, which extends from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians . </P> <P> The first Americans (Paleo - Indians) who arrived to the Great Plains were successive indigenous cultures who are known to have inhabited the Great Plains for thousands of years, over 15,000 years ago . Humans entered the North American continent in waves of migration, mostly over Beringia, the Bering Straits land bridge . </P> <P> Historically the Great Plains were the range of the bison and of the culture of the Plains Indians, whose tribes included the Blackfoot, Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and others . Eastern portions of the Great Plains were inhabited by tribes who lived in semi-permanent villages of earth lodges, such as the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee and Wichita . </P> <P> With the arrival of Francisco Vázquez de Coronado, a Spanish conquistador, the first recorded history of encounter between Europeans and Native Americans in the Great Plains occurred in Texas, Kansas and Nebraska from 1540 to 1542 . In that same time period, Hernando de Soto crossed a west - northwest direction in what is now Oklahoma and Texas . Today this is known as the De Soto Trail . The Spanish thought the Great Plains were the location of the mythological Quivira and Cíbola, a place said to be rich in gold . </P>

The great plains states of kansas and nebraska are home to the