For reasons not yet fully known, the successful adaptation of the Central Plains tradition disappeared from the central Plains around AD 1350 – 1400.  Archaeological research indicates that groups began to coalesce in several areas on the Great Plains at this time.  Most of the sites in the central Plains show no evidence for defensive architecture, indicating that warfare was not the cause for this reorganization. Sites assigned to the Great Bend aspect (proto-Wichita), Dismal River (perhaps ancestral Apache) and Oneota (possibly ancestral Kansa) are found in central and south-central Kansas, north-central Kansas, and northeastern Kansas respectively and date to ca. AD1450 – 1750.  This late prehistoric period ends with the first evidence for European contact, noted by the scattered presence of items from several archaeological sites that were manufactured in Europe.

Great Bend sites, known from central Kansas, in the vicinity of present-day Lyons, Kansas and eastward to McPherson county, date to ca AD1450 to 1600.  Research and material culture remains documents that this was the location visited by Coronado in AD 1541.  Slightly later in time is another group of Great Bend sites in the lower Walnut River Valley of south-central Kansas.  Archaeological work in both areas has disclosed remains of large dwellings constructed of pole and grass thatching, central plaza areas, large trash middens, deep storage pits, and evidence for the presence of an extensive trade network.  

Subsistence focused on hunting of both local animals as well as periodic forays to the High Plains for bison kills.  Farming and gathering remained significant to the economy, although the diverse farming strategy developed during the earlier Central Plains tradition was replaced with an emphasis on maize and a significant reduction to abandonment of the use of native cultigens.  By the late 1500s –early 1600s, different species of squash grown by the Puebloan Indians of the Rio Grande valley were introduced into the central Plains.  A century later, domesticated watermelon, which had been carried into the New World by the Spanish, is recovered from Dismal River sites located in western Kansas.