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Lower Plains: Kansas, Nebraska

west of the Mississippi River. This area, called Louisiana after King Louis XIV, included present-day Kansas. Territorial disputes with Great Britain, however, led to the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754. In order to thwart Great Britain, France ceded all of this territory, including Kansas, to its ally Spain in 1762. France regained the area from Spain in 1800. Three years later, how- ever, the United States bought it from the French as part of the Louisiana Purchase. President Thomas Jefferson soon ordered an expedition into the newly acquired lands. Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark were put in charge. Between 1804 and 1806, they covered more than 8,000 miles (12,875 km). Their goal was to explore and map the territory, chart a route westward to the Pacific Ocean, and develop trade rela- tions with local Indian tribes. Lewis and Clark first reached Kansas in June of 1804—just over a month into their expedition. They camped at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers, along

Lewis and Clark spent a short time in Kansas during their 1804–06 exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. In their notes, they wrote about the abundance of game and the beauty of the prairie.The spot where their group origi- nally camped for several days, Kaw Point, is near present-day Kansas City.

what today is Kansas’s northeastern border. On July 4, they celebrated Independence Day in present-day