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Toward the beginning of this lecture, "The Great American Desert," Dr. Isern spoke of William Gilpin and how he did not want the people of America to think of the plains as the Great American Desert. The expeditions of the plains did nothing to improve on the name given to the plains; the Spanish, the American, the French, and the Canadian approaches only helped to prove the name. The Spanish sent explorers, what we now call conquistadors, to explore the plains of North America in search of gold. When the Spanish had no luck they decided that even though the country was just like theirs back home, they did not want to stay any longer. The Americans sent two men to explore the new Louisiana Purchase and maybe to find the famed Northwest Passage; Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Their group was called the Corps of Discovery and included more than 45 men, one slave, one woman, and one child. They reached the Pacific Ocean by November 1805, but never did find the Northwest Passage. The French approach to the plains included Pierre and Paul Mallet, some of the greatest travelers. The French explorers mostly just wanted to explore the plains to set up trading posts were they could then trade with the Indians. Finally we made our way up into the very northern part of the plains, located in Canada, where we talked of Henry Hind and John Palliser. John Palliser had the theory of the triangle shaped fertile area and Henry Hind just spoke of a "Fertile Belt" located in Canada. They crossed each other in their travels and never actually met each other.
I really enjoyed this lecture because I love learning about what people thought about the plains and how it still affects us to this day, like the name "The Great American Desert."