Nebraska
Art, History & Archaeology Sites & Museums

Part of the country’s Midwestern Heartland, Nebraska became a state in 1867. Dominated by open plains, Nebraska was once home to indigenous groups like the Omaha, Oto, Pawnee, and Oglala. Spanish claims to the region in the 18th century gave way to French control in 1800, only for the French to sell it to the United States in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Initially regarded largely as an area to pass through en route further west, over the course of the 19th century Nebraska saw growing numbers of European Americans settle to take up farming. In the 1870s, the U.S. government relocated many of the state’s indigenous communities to reservations in modern Oklahoma and South Dakota.