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Lecture 3 The Great American Desert is in a sense about how the image of the plains as a desert came to be. This is explained by covering the exploration of the plains by the Spanish, French, and Americans and how each group viewed the plains as a result of their findings. The Spanish came to the plains and were unsuccessful there because the plains could not offer them the wealth they were looking for. The French were there for business reasons like trading with the Indians but as a result of wars in Europe their time would be cut short. The U.S. on the other hand it seems came for purely scientific reasons in the sense that they were just trying to see what was out there. Unlike the Spanish and French whose main objective was the exploitation of the Indians in one form or another. The lecture ends for the most part with Pike and Long's first descriptions of the plains as a desert. The Pike conspiracy theory and the x files I found to be very interesting parts of the lecture. What I want to know is, who funded Pikes mission in the first place? I am curious about this because if Pike was involved in a conspiracy to separate the western half of the U.S. it would be pretty ironic if the U.S. government funded the expedition. What I find interesting about the x files section were some of the crazy things people thought were on the plains. Especially interesting is the thought of a Welsh tribe that you could only identify by sleeping with one of the women. Where did people come up with this stuff? One other point of interest would be the thought that people are trying to dispell the image of the desert but at the same time trying to keep the frontier image present. Don't these things contradict each other?