ABSTRACT
Native Americans on the southern Great Plains were among the first American Indians to encounter Europeans on a sustained basis. The Spanish arrived first in the sixteenth century, and by the early-seventeenth century they had established permanent settlements on the edge of the plains in New Mexico. The emerging culture placed less emphasis on agriculture and more on the hunt. On the southeastern plains the village people moved from being sedentary farmers to being seminomadic hunters who chased plains animals for hides and furs. In the process garden plots stood neglected for long periods of time, subsistence patterns changed, and the southern plains environment underwent subtle alterations. The term "native grassland" is misunderstood. Daniel Mowrey writes that it is "mistakenly perceived as a perfect vegetational state in which the plant material on a site is in complete equilibrium with local environment.
