ABSTRACT
The number of Europeans on the Great Plains in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was small, but the Spanish colonies in New Mexico and Texas, the French explorers and traders moving west of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, and the British factories on Hudson Bay contributed to revolutionary changes in the region nonetheless. French traders trafficked in guns, rendering warfare more lethal. Between 1731 and 1743, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vrendrye and his sons explored the lands northwest and southwest of Lake Superior in quest of new fur supplies and the long-sought water route through North America. La Vrendrye had heard intriguing tales of sophisticated, fair-skinned villagers living along a great river flowing west, and he hoped these Mandan communities could help him find a way to the Pacific. In 1754 outgoing New Mexico Governor Thomas Vélez Cachupín left advice for his successor on how best to manage relations with the Indian peoples around the colony.
