The region known as the Great Plains occupies a significant portion of the American West, as well as parts of Canada and Mexico. The Great Plains can be defined in several ways: geographically, topographically, historically and even psychologically.
Several tribes of Native Americans made their home on the Great Plains before the arrival of white settlers, and today numerous towns and reservations are located in areas on the Plains where Native Americans traditionally camped or sheltered.
Native Americans were masters at surviving and adapting to the harsh environment of the Plains. They depended on the buffalo for food and materials for shelter (the tipi is a conical tent made from stakes and buffalo skins). Reliance on the buffalo meant following the great herds and moving camp several times throughout the year depending on the season.
In the nineteenth century, the area east of the Rocky Mountains and west of the Missouri River was called "The Great American Desert." President Jefferson referred to the area as an "immense and trackless desert." Explorers and surveyors of the area also compared it to a desert, including Zebulon Pike, Stephen Long and Edwin James. As time passed, confusion set in about the comparison as deserts were full of sand and the American plains were steppe-like and grassy; the question was whether the land could support life and be farmed.
American Indians lived well for hundreds of years in the Great Plains regions, but American settlers, unfamiliar with such an environment, considered the area uninhabitable and passed through it with interest only in settling in California and Oregon. Real settlement by Americans from the East coast did not happen on the Great Plains until new farming techniques and economic development made the area more manageable for people dependent on agriculture, rather than hunting, for sustenance.
According to Walter Prescott Webb's 1931 study of the Great Plains, the region is best defined in terms of topography and climate. He finds the three central characteristics of the plains in the western United States to be a) comparatively level surface of great extent; b) treelessness; and c) insufficient rainfall for agricultural production as the climate is sub-humid.
Webb considered the Great Plains to be a region unified by certain characteristics that exerted strong influence on any life inside its borders. He drew some controversy when he claimed that the ninety-eighth meridian marked the edge of the Great Plains, and thus every institution that crossed it was "either broken and remade or else greatly altered." Webb drew on a range of academic disciplines in his analysis, and cited the revolver, the windmill and barbed wire as signs of the new era necessary for settling a dry and treeless area like the Great Plains. Scholars of Western American history respect Webb's work, but some disagree with his conclusions.
