Revolutionizing the Great Plains: The Wild West

The Wild West you see in movies, with nomadic tribes hunting buffalo on horseback,

was actually created by Europeans. Horses had been extinct in North America for 13,000

years until the Spanish reintroduced them. This single change revolutionized life

on the Great Plains. Some groups, like the Cheyenne, gave up farming entirely to become

nomads, following the buffalo. This brought incredible prosperity, but also new,

deadlier conflicts over territory, fueled by European guns. At the same time,

diseases like smallpox devastated populations, killing up to 90% of some tribes. The West wasn't

an empty wilderness; it was a world already in upheaval.