With the exception of the unwieldy, unreliable early firearms that might have been brought to the Plains by the Coronado entrada's search for Quivira in 1540-1542, the Plains nations would have started to regularly see firearms in the mid-seventeenth century. While horses flowed up from Mexico, or through mission communities in New Mexico, the Spanish tended to avoid supplying their Native American neighbors with firearms. When Iroquois raids caused the westward Algonkian-Huron diaspora, the refugees and their French allies brought firearms to the Upper Mississippi watershed. The French provided firearms to the Algonkian and Huron, who then used them to carve out some territory among the Quapaws, Poncas, Omahas, and Eastern Sioux. While the Sioux naturally fought against the Fox, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Kickapoo, and Miami immigrants, the Hurons tried to stem the flow of firearms to the Plains in an effort to maintain their advantage. They nurtured hostilities between the Plains nations and the French to maintain their favored trading status, though gradually the weapons made inroads into the interior of the continent.

Further south the Osages, pushed west by the reverberations of contact, remade themselves as the trade middlemen on the doorstep of the Plains. They used an alliance with the French to secure firearms, then used those weapons against Wichitas, Pawnees, and Caddos further west to raid for horses and captives. They blocked the westward expansion of firearms, in 1719 a visitor to the Wichita saw only half a dozen firearms even though the residents were eagerly trying to purchase more. The Osage were so powerful they even started attacking French traders when they encroached on their lands. When the Comanches-Wichita-Pawnee peace was struck in the late 1740s they were able to purchase weapons and go on the offensive against the Osage. The overall access to firearms on the frontier decreased during the Seven Year's War, but many of the shocks of contact, including the introduction of the horse, the gun, and the displacement of nations to the east, were already transforming the Eastern Plains.

Obviously, this is just a brief introduction to the politics of trade on the doorstep of the Plains. Calloway's One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark is a great resource if you would like to learn more.