How were the early explorers important to OK history?

First Spain and then France considered the area now know as Oklahoma to be a likely spot for economic expansion in the New World. Native peoples who already lived there were seen both as a barrier to conquest and as a resource to exploit for economic and religious purposes. Oklahoma lay on the northern fringe of Spanish exploration of North America, which took place in the 1500s and 1600s, and on the western fringe of French exploration, which took place in the 1600s and 1700s. In effect, Oklahoma was a border region between those two empires in North America, and it served as a transportation corridor for their rival military and economic ventures. The value of studying their explorations of unknown territory lies in the descriptions that the explorers provided about the area's flora and fauna and its inhabitants and their cultures.