precious metals and the great distance from areas of other Spanish interest resulted in little attention being paid to the to the region during the remainder of the sixteenth century.
             Early in the next century Spain began colonizing the area around Santa Fe, and Juan de Onate led a well-equipped force northeastward to spy out the region near the area of Quivira, but the Spanish had interest elsewhere and did not locate settlements there. Instead, by the early eighteenth century, the French, as claimants to the Mississippi Valley, were exploring westward and visiting the region along the Missouri River that became Kansas. Etienne Venyard, sieur de Bourgmont, led one of these expeditions early in the eighteenth century. A few years later Claude Charles Du Tisne brought another party into the area. Trade on a minor scale was attempted by Paul and Pierre Mallet between the Mississippi River Valley and Sante Fe in 1739. With so much area to exploit along the Mississippi River and in the Great Lakes Region, the French spent little energy in using the resources of Kansas. Like the Spanish, they penetrated the region many times, making friends with the Indians and claiming the land for their king. But they made little permanent impressions on the region.
             During the mid-eighteenth century wars, Spain and France became allies, and in 1763 the Spanish acquired French claims to all the land west of the Mississippi. During the Napoleonic wars of a generation later, Spain was forced to cede the area back to France, and a few years later, in 1803 the united states purchased the Louisiana Territory; the purchase included much of the area that later became the state of Kansas. The territory acquired by the United States was assumed to be the watershed region draining eastward into the Mississippi River, and that area included all of Kansas. But in 1819in a treaty with Spain defining the international boundary, about 7,500 square miles of the so...