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Walking Colorado: An Introduction to the Origins Section

Added by yongli on 01/20/2017 - 11:41, last changed on 02/02/2023 - 15:38
Hundreds of generations of Native American ancestors are represented in Colorado by scatters of artifacts along with the less portable evidence of shelter, the warmth of hearths, storage needs, and symbolic expression. We learn about them through archaeology and indigenous peoples’ oral traditions...

Alferd Packer

Added by yongli on 09/03/2019 - 15:23, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 09:44
Alferd E. Packer (1842–1909), also “Alfred,” was a prospector who became famous after confessing to eating his dead comrades while trapped in the San Juan Mountains in February 1874. With the group starving and disoriented, it appears likely that Packer killed another prospector in self-defense and...

Ancestral Puebloans of the Four Corners Region

Added by yongli on 05/09/2016 - 14:21, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 19:36
Formerly labeled Anasazi, the Ancestral Puebloan culture is the most widely known of the ancient cultures of Colorado. The people who built the cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde and the great houses of Chaco Canyon were subsistence farmers of corn, beans, and squash. The structures of this culture date...

Antiquities Act

Added by yongli on 05/03/2016 - 15:16, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 19:41
The Antiquities Act, enacted in 1906, was the United States’ first federal law recognizing the importance and value of the places and objects that represent the country’s history and prehistory. The act provided for protection of archaeological and historic sites, and gave the President authority...

Apishapa Phase

Added by yongli on 08/20/2015 - 16:22, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:05
The Apishapa phase is the name given to distinctive archaeological sites found primarily in southeastern Colorado that Native Americans occupied between AD 1050 and 1450. The Apishapa phase is related to both contemporaneous and more recent archaeological sites located in the Texas and Oklahoma...

Barger Gulch Site

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 15:28, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:21
There are few places in western North America richer in Paleo-Indian archaeology than Middle Park , the valley that forms the headwaters of the Colorado River in Grand County . Within Middle Park, the Barger Gulch area preserves an impressive amount of evidence from early humans, with sites dating...

Battle of Milk Creek

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 13:35, last changed on 11/16/2022 - 03:42
The Battle of Milk Creek was the major military engagement during the Meeker Incident , a revolt by a Nuche ( Ute people) community in northwest Colorado in September 1879. The battle began on September 29, when Utes opened fire from the heights above Milk Creek on an advancing column of US cavalry...

Bent's Forts

Added by Nick Johnson on 05/06/2016 - 10:52, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 09:06
In the early and mid-nineteenth century, when the western United States was in a seemingly unending state of flux as people competed for dominance over the land and its resources, three men moved to what would eventually become southeastern Colorado and there established a trading and commercial...

Bison

Added by Nick Johnson on 11/19/2022 - 09:57, last changed on 11/21/2022 - 09:26
The American Plains Bison ( Bison bison ) are large mammals in the Bovidae family, recognizable for their large head, shaggy coats, pronounced hump, and close association with the American West. Bison are commonly and incorrectly referred to as "buffalo," which are Asian and African animals. North...

Brunot Agreement

Added by yongli on 05/18/2016 - 14:41, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 09:14
The Brunot Agreement between the Nuche ( Ute ) and the US government in 1873 led to the development of mining in the San Juan Mountains by taking 3.7 million acres (about 5,780 square miles) from the Ute Reservation in western Colorado. As white encroachment continued over the next decade, tensions...

Buffalo Soldiers

Added by yongli on 06/24/2016 - 15:38, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 09:03
The so-called Buffalo Soldiers were several African American cavalry and infantry regiments that operated in the American West during the late nineteenth century. While there is no evidence that the black troops themselves adopted it, the nickname Buffalo Soldiers is widely believed to have come...

Chaco Canyon

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 13:02, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 19:41
In the eleventh century, Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico was the center of a Native American cultural region about the size of the state of Indiana. It encompassed most of southwestern Colorado, from Chimney Rock National Monument on the east to Far View House at Mesa Verde National Park...

Chimney Rock

Added by yongli on 06/02/2017 - 15:11, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 19:41
Located in the southwest corner of Colorado just north of the New Mexico border, the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area is home to hundreds of archaeological sites . One of these sites, the Chimney Rock Pueblo, is known for its dramatic setting high atop Stollsteimer Mesa, which is marked by two...

Cliff Dwelling

Added by yongli on 11/20/2015 - 14:00, last changed on 05/29/2020 - 01:07
The cliff dwellings of southwestern Colorado are among the world’s greatest archaeological treasures. The term cliff dwelling can be applied to any archaeological site used as a habitation and located in an alcove or rock overhang; however, the most famous cliff dwellings are those created by...

Clovis

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 13:59, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:20
The term Clovis refers to the earliest widespread archaeological culture to have occupied North and Central America, ca. 13,250–12,800 years ago. Since the discovery of the first Clovis artifacts in the 1930s, debate has raged over such fundamental issues as whether people who left behind Clovis...

Colorado Territory

Added by yongli on 02/25/2016 - 14:22, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 08:48
The Territory of Colorado (1861–76) was the predecessor to the state of Colorado , created on February 28, 1861. The territory was formed in response to the secession crisis as well as a massive influx of white immigrants during the Colorado Gold Rush . It was organized by an act of the Thirty-...

Colorow

Added by yongli on 01/23/2017 - 15:59, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 10:41
One of the best-known Nuche (Ute) leaders of the nineteenth century, Colorow (c. 1813–88) was involved in many significant events in Colorado history, from his first contact with white Americans during the Colorado Gold Rush to the Meeker Incident and his namesake “ Colorow’s War ” of 1887. Colorow...

Conejos Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 12/05/2017 - 16:41, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
The Conejos Indian Agency was established in the San Luis Valley for the Ute Indians in 1860. It was an important place where annuity goods were distributed to the Utes and treaty negotiations took place. After the Treaty of 1868 established a reservation for the Utes west of the Rocky Mountains in...

Conejos Treaty

Added by yongli on 03/12/2020 - 16:03, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:05
Signed in October 1863 at Conejos in the San Luis Valley , the Conejos Treaty was an agreement between the US government and the Tabeguache band of Nuche (Ute people). It granted the United States the rights to all land in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains east of the Continental Divide , as well as...

Culturally Modified Trees

Added by yongli on 06/23/2016 - 13:38, last changed on 01/31/2021 - 17:32
Culturally Modified Trees (or CMTs) are trees that exhibit peels, ax cuts, delimbing, wood removal, and other cultural modifications. Numerous CMTs are found in the foothills and mountains of Colorado. Research has shown that these trees are artifacts reflecting cultural utilization of trees by...

Dawes Act (General Allotment Act)

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 13:39, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 08:47
Passed by Congress in 1887, the Dawes Act—formally known as the General Allotment Act—authorized the US government to survey and divide federal Indigenous reservations into private lots for individual tribal members. The Dawes Act’s central idea of “allotment” became the foundation of federal...

Dent Site

Added by yongli on 05/09/2016 - 15:35, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 15:43
Early colonists occupied Colorado’s rich and ecologically diverse landscapes in the waning millennia of our planet’s most recent major Ice Age, the Pleistocene, between 14,000 and 12,000 years. Our best-documented evidence for Colorado’s earliest hunter and gatherer inhabitants, people we call...

Denver Museum of Nature & Science

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 16:23, last changed on 11/25/2019 - 01:07
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) is the largest natural history museum between Chicago and the West Coast of the United States. Incorporated on December 6, 1900 as the Colorado Museum of Natural History, the museum was known as the Denver Museum of Natural History throughout much of...

Earth Lodge

Added by yongli on 06/23/2016 - 16:33, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:46
An earth lodge is a distinctive type of timber-frame house built from the early 1400s to the late 1800s by a dozen different Indigenous nations on the Great Plains . These massive circular structures, often encompassing 1,500 square feet or more, featured four large support posts arranged around a...

Far View Sites

Added by yongli on 06/23/2016 - 10:50, last changed on 12/19/2019 - 01:07
The Far View group at Mesa Verde National Park consists of more than twenty sites, five of which have been excavated. Far View House began as an eleventh-century Great House and part of the region centered on Chaco Canyon . Many of the surrounding sites in the Far View Group were first built in the...

Fluted Points

Added by yongli on 12/29/2015 - 12:38, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:59
Fluted projectile points represent the earliest North American stone tool technology, although they comprise a small portion of the overall stone technology observed in the New World. These easily recognized spear points represent one form of technology used by the earliest human inhabitants of...

Folsom People

Added by yongli on 06/22/2016 - 14:59, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 21:58
Folsom groups, also called Folsom peoples or Folsom culture , occupied all of Colorado between about 13,000 and 12,000 years ago. They were not the first people in these areas, although they might have been the first in some newly unglaciated portions of the high Rockies. Nevertheless, Folsom...

Fort Davy Crockett

Added by yongli on 05/09/2016 - 16:19, last changed on 12/28/2017 - 13:41
Fort Davy Crockett was one of three known nineteenth-century forts and trading posts on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, in the drainage systems of the Green and Colorado Rivers. From the mid-1830s to 1840, Fort Davy Crockett, along with Fort Uncompahgre and Fort Uintah, served as centers...

Fort Jackson

Added by yongli on 05/03/2016 - 15:46, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:02
In the summer of 1837, Henry Fraeb and Peter Sarpy arrived at a location on the South Platte River a few miles north of present-day Fort Lupton . They arrived with $10,909.75 worth of goods for trade with the Cheyenne and Arapaho who frequented the area. Upon arrival, Fraeb and Sarpy began...

Fort Lewis

Added by yongli on 05/16/2016 - 16:16, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
Fort Lewis was a US Army post in southwest Colorado that operated from 1878 to 1891. The post had two locations: the first, Camp Lewis, in Pagosa Springs and the second south of Hesperus. Camp Lewis was founded in 1878 and moved to Hesperus in 1880 because Pagosa Springs was too far from the Ute...

Fort Uncompahgre

Added by yongli on 08/15/2016 - 16:13, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
Fort Uncompahgre was constructed in 1828 by Antoine Robidoux , a trader based out of Mexican Santa Fé. The trading post was situated about two miles down from the confluence of the Gunnison and Uncompahgre Rivers near the present-day community of Delta in western Colorado. The precise location of...

Franktown Cave

Added by yongli on 06/22/2016 - 13:17, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:25
Located two and a half miles southwest of Franktown, Franktown Cave is a prehistoric archaeological site in a large rockshelter that contained artifacts from prehistoric occupations over 8,000 years. Some of the findings include rare perishable artifacts manufactured from hide, wood and fiber, and...

Fremont Culture

Added by yongli on 05/03/2016 - 15:31, last changed on 12/28/2017 - 13:41
Although it is on the eastern fringe of the area occupied by a people known to archaeology as the Fremont, Colorado is nevertheless important in the Fremont story, since clues to their origins and end are found there. Additionally, the presence of Fremont farmers had a profound influence on the...

George Bent

Added by yongli on 08/11/2016 - 16:23, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 08:48
George Bent (1843–1918) was a half-white, half-Native American soldier who fought in multiple battles for the Confederacy during the Civil War and for the Cheyenne people in various wars of the late nineteenth century. His life reflects the shifts in alliances and the balance of power in Colorado...

Ghost Dance

Added by yongli on 12/29/2015 - 12:16, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 09:50
Ghost Dances are key ceremonies within a broader Indigenous religious movement that developed in the late nineteenth century in response to the brutal conquest of Native American nations by the US government and white settlers. By that time, most federally recognized tribes in Colorado lived on...

Godfrey’s Ranch

Added by yongli on 07/28/2022 - 13:14, last changed on 08/01/2022 - 07:25
On January 14–15, 1865, immigrant Holon Godfrey found his family homestead in Colorado Territory under attack by about 100 Indigenous warriors engaged in a campaign of reprisal attacks after the Sand Creek Massacre of November 1864. The fierce battle at Godfrey’s Ranch was an example of a common...

Grand Junction Indian Boarding School

Added by yongli on 06/29/2021 - 15:25, last changed on 06/29/2021 - 15:25
The Grand Junction Indian School opened its doors to students in 1886 as the seventh school in the federal off-reservation residential boarding school system for Indigenous youth. The Grand Junction campus was the first boarding school in the mountain west and began operating just four years after...

Great House

Added by yongli on 06/23/2016 - 11:22, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 19:40
“Great House” refers to a class of ancient Ancestral Puebloan structures from the ninth through thirteenth century. Great Houses were monumental, geometrically formal constructions, with thick stone masonry walls made with careful craftsmanship. While inspired by the regional center in Chaco Canyon...

Gustaf Nordenskiöld and the Mesa Verde Region

Added by yongli on 08/20/2015 - 09:34, last changed on 04/03/2021 - 08:31
In 1891 the young Swedish scientist Gustaf Nordenskiöld (1868–95) arrived in Colorado, seeking both a cure for his tuberculosis and a look at the wonders of the West. His experiences over the next two years set in motion a series of events that would ultimately lead to the passage of the first...

Hannah Marie Wormington

Added by yongli on 11/19/2015 - 16:19, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:12
As a pioneering woman in a field dominated by men, Hannah Marie Wormington (1914–94) carved a scholarly niche for herself on the frontiers of American archaeology. She was a larger-than-life figure whose impact went far beyond the dozens of publications she produced to include mentorship for many...

Helen Hunt Jackson

Added by yongli on 01/07/2019 - 15:41, last changed on 08/28/2020 - 01:07
Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–85) was an accomplished poet, author, and activist in the nineteenth century. Many of Jackson’s written works, notably A Century of Dishonor (1881) and Ramona (1884) , spurred progress toward recompense for the mistreatment of the Native American peoples by the US...

Homestead

Added by yongli on 11/10/2015 - 13:09, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
Editor's note: This article was updated by CE staff on 5/19/20 to include impact on indigenous people Homesteading was the means by which large amounts of land in the Midwest and western United States came under private ownership after it was taken from indigenous peoples. Although the...

Hovenweep National Monument

Added by yongli on 04/15/2015 - 17:07, last changed on 08/06/2020 - 10:41
Hovenweep National Monument is known for its prehistoric masonry structures clustered around small canyons along the Utah-Colorado border. To protect these unique archaeological resources, Warren G. Harding issued a Presidential Proclamation to establish the monument on March 2, 1923. The monument...

Impact of Disease on Native Americans

Added by yongli on 05/16/2017 - 11:12, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:20
Newly introduced diseases originating in Europe, Africa, and Asia swept what is now Colorado in the aftermath of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage. While sparse historical and archaeological records make the effects of the earliest epidemics hard to determine, evidence is better for the eighteenth...

Indian Agencies and Agents

Added by yongli on 03/15/2016 - 12:10, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 10:41
Indian Agencies were established by the US government as part of the formal relationship with Indigenous nations as it acquired lands from them. Indian Agents were individuals responsible for cultivating relationships with Indigenous people and extending government policies. As treaties and...

Indian Annuities

Added by yongli on 04/27/2017 - 16:36, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:54
Annuities were a fixed sum of money or goods that the US government paid to Indigenous people on a regular basis for the sale of their lands. Treaties with Indigenous nations typically specified payments in dollar amounts over a period of years in return for land cessions. The payments were...

Indian Appropriations Act (1871)

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 10:31, last changed on 01/24/2023 - 17:40
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 declared that American Indians were no longer considered members of “sovereign nations” and that the US government could no longer establish treaties with them. The act effectively made Indians wards of the US government and paved the way for other laws that...

Indian Appropriations Act (1871)

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 10:30, last changed on 01/24/2023 - 17:40
The Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 declared that Indigenous people were no longer considered members of “sovereign nations” and that the US government could no longer establish treaties with them. The act effectively made Native Americans wards of the US government and paved the way for other...

Indigenous Treaties in Colorado

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 11:31, last changed on 02/28/2023 - 20:40
Treaties with Indigenous people played a major role in the conquest and formation of Colorado . Backed by the constant threat of military force, the series of treaties and agreements signed between the federal government and various Indigenous groups between 1849 and 1880 separated Indigenous...

John C. Frémont

Added by yongli on 08/03/2016 - 15:52, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:47
John Charles Frémont (1813–90) was an American explorer and cartographer for the US Topographical Engineers who crossed Colorado on various expeditions. Between 1842 and 1853, Frémont led five western expeditions with numerous objectives. He was also involved in the Mexican-American War (1846–48)...

Juan Antonio María de Rivera

Added by yongli on 03/01/2016 - 15:44, last changed on 05/15/2020 - 01:07
Juan Antonio María de Rivera (1738–?) was a Spaniard and the first Euro-American to intensively explore the territory that eventually became the state of Colorado. In 1765 he made two trips into western Colorado from New Mexico, traveling as far as the Gunnison River in Delta County . Along the way...

Kit Carson

Added by yongli on 03/14/2016 - 14:16, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:01
The life of Christopher “Kit” Carson (1809–68) represents a broad sweep of Western American history in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Carson was a Rocky Mountain fur trapper , a guide and scout for the US Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, rancher, Indian agent in New Mexico and Colorado...

Kivas

Added by yongli on 03/04/2016 - 10:39, last changed on 09/09/2020 - 15:44
Kivas were architecturally unique rooms or structures built by Ancestral Puebloans in southwest Colorado that served important ceremonial and social functions. Architecturally, they are recognized in the archaeological record in southwestern Colorado as far back as AD 500, although there are...

Lafayette Head

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 16:08, last changed on 03/16/2023 - 20:38
Major Lafayette Head (1825–97) was an Indian agent to the Ute tribe for nine years after serving in the Mexican American War. In 1877, he became the first lieutenant governor of Colorado. He was influential in the early development of towns across the San Luis Valley . Born in Hunter...

Lindenmeier Folsom Site

Added by yongli on 02/23/2016 - 11:02, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 21:59
Lindenmeier is a large Native American archaeological site dating to the end of the Pleistocene epoch, or Ice Age, in northern Larimer County . The site contains stone tools and animal bones interpreted by archaeologists as the fragmentary remains of an ancient campsite and associated bison kill,...

Little Arkansas Treaty

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 11:37, last changed on 01/26/2023 - 04:40
The Little Arkansas Treaty refers to a pair of treaties signed between the US and Indigenous nations in Kansas in mid-October 1865: one with the Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne nations and one with the Comanche and Kiowa . Of the two, the treaty signed on October 14 with the Cheyenne and...

Los Piños Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 04/29/2016 - 15:32, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:53
After the Treaty of 1868 , the Los Piños Indian Agency became the center of governmental authority for the Uncompahgre Utes on the Ute Indian Reservation in western Colorado. While largely forgotten after its abandonment in 1881, the site of the second iteration of the agency is now under...

Louis Vasquez

Added by yongli on 10/06/2016 - 16:37, last changed on 09/30/2022 - 07:41
Louis Vasquez (1798–1868) was a fur trapper and mountain man active in Colorado during the 1820s and 1830s. He reportedly constructed Fort Convenience and a hunter’s cabin that predated the majority of settlement in the region. One of the Colorado fur trade ’s more successful trappers, Vasquez is...

Lyons Sandstone

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 15:23, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
Named for the Boulder County town whose historic quarries made it famous, the Lyons Sandstone formation is a Permian age rock layer in the foothills of the Front Range from the Wyoming border to south of Colorado Springs . It is the primary formation in the scenic red rock outcrops at Garden of the...

Mantle's Cave

Added by yongli on 11/16/2015 - 11:17, last changed on 01/30/2021 - 09:57
Mantle’s Cave is the most important Fremont period archaeological site excavated in northwestern Colorado. Artifacts recovered from the cave were instrumental in defining the Fremont culture. Because the cave is dry, artifacts that are not usually seen at archaeological sites were preserved and...

Medicine Lodge Treaties

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 11:40, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:09
The Medicine Lodge Treaties were a series of three treaties between the US government and the Comanche , Kiowa , Plains Apache , Southern Cheyenne , and Southern Arapaho American Indian nations, signed in October 1867 along Medicine Lodge Creek, south of Fort Larned, Kansas. By treating with...

Meeker Incident

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 14:21, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
The Meeker Incident (September 29–October 5, 1879) was a Ute uprising at the White River Indian Agency on the Ute Reservation in present-day Rio Blanco County . Tension had been building on the reservation for months as Indian Agent Nathan Meeker attempted to force the Utes to change their...

Mesa Verde National Park

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 11:50, last changed on 01/22/2022 - 11:53
Mesa Verde National Park was established on June 29, 1906. It is the largest of the National Park Service parcels protecting cultural resources in Colorado, with nearly 5,000 documented sites, including about 600 cliff dwellings . A majority of the sites are associated with Ancestral Pueblo...

Middle Park Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 12:09, last changed on 11/01/2022 - 14:40
The Middle Park Agency was established in 1862 for the Grand River, Uinta , and Yampa Utes . One of many federal Indian agencies established in Colorado during the 1860s, the Middle Park Agency mostly operated from Denver . After the Treaty of 1868 established a reservation for the Utes west of the...

Nathan Meeker

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 14:44, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:41
Nathan Cook Meeker (1817–1879) was an agriculturalist, newspaper editor, and Indian agent. He founded the Union Colony at present-day Greeley as well as the city’s oldest newspaper, the Greeley Tribune . In 1878 he was appointed Indian agent of the White River Agency in northwest Colorado. He was...

Nineteenth-Century Trading Posts

Added by yongli on 04/06/2015 - 15:43, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
The historic fur trade era in the Colorado region, which began in the early nineteenth century, ushered in a period of direct contact between Native Americans and whites. By this time, the hides and robes provided by Colorado’s furbearing animals had become valuable commodities in American and...

Niwot (Left Hand)

Added by yongli on 03/04/2016 - 09:41, last changed on 02/09/2023 - 08:40
Niwot (c. 1820s–64), known to English speakers as "Left Hand," was a prominent Arapaho leader in the mid-1800s. The tumultuous period in Colorado history followed the 1858 discovery of gold near present-day Denver , on the traditional lands of the Arapaho and Cheyenne . Diplomat, negotiator,...

Northern Ute People (Uintah and Ouray Reservation)

Added by yongli on 08/20/2015 - 15:20, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 01:43
Although the Ute Indian Tribe (Uintah and Ouray reservation) is the official designation of the tribe today, its members are frequently referred to as Northern Utes to distinguish them from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe . The Ute Indian Tribe’s reservation is located...

Old Spanish National Historic Trail

Added by yongli on 06/12/2015 - 15:58, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
The Old Spanish Trail was designated a national historic trail by an act of Congress in 2002. From 1829 to 1848, the major trade route extended 2,700 miles between Santa Fé de Nuevo Mexico (Santa Fe, New Mexico), and Alta California (Los Angeles, California). Mexico’s independence from Spain in...

Origins of Mesa Verde National Park

Added by yongli on 10/28/2021 - 13:00, last changed on 10/28/2021 - 13:00
Mesa Verde National Park was established in 1906 as the country’s ninth national park. The site was visited and considered sacred by multiple Indigenous nations before it began attracting interest from white Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While male scientists and...

Ouray

Added by yongli on 02/03/2017 - 11:37, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 06:40
Ouray (1833–80), whose name means “Arrow” in the Ute language, was a leader of the Tabeguache (Uncompahgre) band of Ute Indians in Colorado during the late nineteenth century. Even though Ouray had no ultimate authority over Colorado’s Utes and spoke little English, the US government assigned him...

Overland Trail

Added by yongli on 03/11/2016 - 16:42, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
The Overland Trail, also known as the "Central Overland Emigrant Route," was an important nineteenth-century corridor for explorers, colonists, miners, and traders that ran from Atchison, Kansas, to Fort Bridger, Wyoming. It followed preexisting Indigenous and early explorer trails throughout most...

Paleo-Indian Period

Added by yongli on 05/02/2016 - 14:08, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 21:57
The Paleo-Indian period is the era from the end of the Pleistocene (the last Ice Age) to about 9,000 years ago (7000 BC), during which the first people migrated to North and South America. This period is seen through a glass darkly: Paleo-Indian sites are few and scattered, and the material from...

Pike’s Stockade

Added by yongli on 03/07/2016 - 16:17, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
The Pike Stockade is a reconstruction of a small fortress built by the soldiers of the 1806–7 Zebulon Pike expedition. It is located on the Rio Conejos , a tributary of the Rio Grande , in the San Luis Valley , seventeen miles southeast of Alamosa . Administered by History Colorado , the stockade...

Plains Woodland

Added by yongli on 02/25/2016 - 14:13, last changed on 08/11/2022 - 07:16
The Plains Woodland period covers approximately a thousand years of Colorado prehistory across a large portion of the state. Plains Woodland describes the groups of people occupying much of the western plains from present-day Nebraska and Kansas, west of the Missouri River, to the eastern plains of...

Prehistoric Stone Quarrying in Colorado

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 14:37, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:43
From exquisitely flaked Folsom spear points to the spectacular cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde National Park , among the most visible vestiges of Colorado’s Native American history are those crafted from naturally available rock. Archaeologists and others have documented nearly 1,000 places across...

Pueblo of Santa Ana–Tamaya

Added by yongli on 06/27/2016 - 15:56, last changed on 10/19/2022 - 10:43
The Pueblo of Santa Ana is one of the seven Keres-speaking Pueblos that currently inhabit the state of New Mexico. The homes of the current inhabitants’ ancestors can be found in what is now Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Archaeological data and pueblo oral history suggest that...

Radiocarbon Dating

Added by yongli on 05/02/2016 - 16:39, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 17:45
Radiocarbon dating is the most common technique used in ascertaining the age of archaeological and paleontological sites during the last 45,000 years. Developed by a chemist born in Colorado, there are now commercial and academic laboratories across the globe that conduct radiocarbon dating...

Richard Wetherill

Added by yongli on 10/22/2015 - 10:53, last changed on 08/16/2022 - 16:30
Richard Wetherill (1858–1910) was a nineteenth-century rancher and explorer who lived in southwest Colorado. Although he is often credited with "discovering" some of the most significant Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites in the Four Corners area, the sites had already been known to various...

Rock Art of Colorado

Added by yongli on 10/29/2015 - 14:34, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 09:10
Colorado is home to a rich variety of prehistoric and historic art carved on cliff sides and boulders. Most rock art is found in river basins. The mountain areas that cut a wide vertical swath through the state are relatively devoid of rock art. There are the two types of rock art: pecked art,...

Samuel Gerish Colley

Added by yongli on 10/21/2015 - 15:28, last changed on 01/26/2023 - 10:43
Holding political offices in Wisconsin and Colorado throughout his life, Samuel G. Colley (1807–90) is best known for serving as Indian Agent for the Upper Arkansas Indian Agency from 1860 to 1865. He was responsible for managing the Cheyenne and Arapaho prior to and during the Colorado War (1863–...

Sand Creek Massacre

Added by yongli on 09/19/2019 - 13:42, last changed on 11/16/2022 - 08:05
On November 29, 1864, US volunteer cavalry killed at least 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people—mostly women, children, and the elderly—who were camped peacefully along Sand Creek in what was then Colorado Territory . Learning about the Sand Creek Massacre encourages people to reflect on the ways the...

Sand Wash Basin Tool Stone Sites

Added by yongli on 03/18/2020 - 22:34, last changed on 11/08/2022 - 11:40
Located northwest of Craig in Moffat County , the Sand Wash Basin is an area of Bridger Formation rock outcrops that prehistoric peoples mined extensively as a source for stones to make tools with. Bridger Formation chert is typically light to dark brown, though some of the chert in the basin is...

Santa Fé Trail

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 11:11, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 10:13
The Santa Fé Trail was an international overland route of both commerce and social interaction, joining the US prairie state of Missouri with the province of México Nuevo, Mexico, through much of the nineteenth century. Though its specific date of origin is unclear, it appears to have been the...

Sapiah

Added by yongli on 03/01/2016 - 16:41, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
Sapiah (1840–1936) was the preeminent chief of the Muache band of the Southern Ute Tribe beginning around 1870. He was born to a Muache father and an Apache mother, perhaps in the vicinity of Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico. The origins of his English name, "Buckskin Charley," are obscure, and later in...

Shield Cave Archaeological Site

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 15:07, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 22:39
Shield Cave is a large limestone cavern in Eagle County that contains painted rock art dating to the Historic period and deposits of the iron mineral pigment material used to make ochre-color paint. This site is one of hundreds of caverns that have developed in the Mississippian Period Leadville...

Sopris Phase

Added by yongli on 11/03/2015 - 10:35, last changed on 11/20/2022 - 22:17
Archaeologists use the term Sopris phase to refer to unique Native American sites found only on the Purgatoire River west of Trinidad, Colorado, and on the upper tributaries of the Canadian River west of Raton and Cimarron, New Mexico (Fig. 1). Sopris people were the only indigenous farmers who...

Spanish Exploration in Southeastern Colorado, 1590–1790

Added by yongli on 09/01/2015 - 14:45, last changed on 12/20/2022 - 19:42
The Spanish effort to conquer and control the lands that would eventually become southeastern Colorado tended to be slow and methodical. The lands claimed by New Spain extended from Panama to the Arctic, although the capital was located in Mexico City. Gradually, rumors of riches in the area of...

Spanish Exploration in Western Colorado

Added by yongli on 07/28/2015 - 11:09, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
The Spanish colony of New Mexico was founded in 1598. Until 1821, Colorado was part of the extensive Spanish territories governed by the colony. These territories extended far to the north of the New Mexico capital in Santa Fé. In the sixteenth century and later, some Spaniards explored the Great...

Sweat Lodge

Added by yongli on 10/29/2015 - 14:26, last changed on 03/25/2019 - 01:07
Sweat lodges are structures built to contain steam, and they play an important role in the spiritual practices of Colorado’s Native American peoples. The Arapaho , Cheyenne , Navajo , Shoshone, and Ute are historic Native American groups in Colorado who use sweat lodges as a method for cleansing...

Teenokuhu (Friday)

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 11:44, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:46
Teenokuhu (ca. 1822–81), known to English speakers as “Friday” or “Friday Fitzpatrick,” was a nineteenth-century Northern Arapaho leader. As a boy, Teenokuhu (Arapaho for “sits meekly”) was separated from his band and adopted by Thomas Fitzpatrick, a white trapper who took him to St. Louis. After...

The Archaic Period in Colorado

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 14:07, last changed on 10/03/2022 - 02:46
The Archaic period is an era in the human history of Colorado dating from ca. 6500 BC–AD 200. It is one of the three prehistoric periods used by archaeologists to characterize broad cultural changes that occurred throughout the Americas. It was preceded by the Paleo-Indian period (ca. 11,500–7000...

The Civil War in Colorado

Added by yongli on 09/13/2022 - 14:14, last changed on 10/26/2022 - 00:41
Colorado’s role in the American Civil War (1861–65) was part of a broader geopolitical contest: control of the American Southwest. The war began in 1861, just two years after the Colorado Gold Rush and mere months after Congress established the Colorado Territory . Although the territory was...

The Formative Period in Prehistory

Added by yongli on 11/03/2015 - 10:09, last changed on 08/11/2022 - 07:21
The Formative is the last of several periods in a sequence of cultural development that traces the overall progression from stone-tool-using, hunter- gatherer societies to fully developed agricultural societies. The process that occurred is analogous to the Old World’s “Neolithic Revolution.” It is...

The Fur Trade in Colorado

Added by yongli on 10/30/2015 - 13:26, last changed on 12/04/2022 - 23:39
The trading of animal skins has been a prominent activity throughout the known human occupation of Colorado. These skins—as hides, furs, or robes—provided protection from the elements as well as a valuable commodity traded for economic gain; their trade strengthened and maintained political...

The Gateway Tradition

Added by yongli on 11/13/2015 - 09:32, last changed on 11/04/2019 - 12:06
The Gateway tradition refers to a set of archaeological sites within western Montrose and San Miguel Counties, Colorado, that appear similar to Pueblo II –period (AD 900–1150) sites to the south in the core homeland of the Ancestral Puebloans (Figs. 1 and 2). The sites in Montrose and San Miguel...

Tipi

Added by yongli on 12/28/2015 - 11:20, last changed on 11/27/2022 - 08:57
The tipi, or tepee, is an iconic form of Native American housing. It has a long history of use throughout Colorado and the western plains of North America. Sturdy and secure yet portable, the hide-covered tipi has been an ideal shelter for millennia among mobile human groups. The term comes from...

Treaty of Abiquiú

Added by yongli on 03/13/2020 - 13:32, last changed on 02/28/2023 - 20:40
Considered to be the first official treaty between the United States and the Ute people of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, the Treaty of Abiquiú was made in 1849 with the intention of establishing peaceful relations between the two groups. Signed in the northern New Mexico village of...

Treaty of Fort Laramie

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 11:50, last changed on 11/23/2022 - 03:42
Signed in 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was made between the US government and several Indigenous nations of the Great Plains —including the Cheyenne , Arapaho , and Lakota —who occupied parts of present southern Wyoming and northern Colorado. The treaty was part of the government’s efforts to...

Treaty of Fort Wise

Added by yongli on 08/21/2015 - 16:14, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 11:42
The Treaty of Fort Wise was an agreement between the US government and the Cheyenne and Arapaho people who lived on the western Great Plains in present-day Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The treaty was signed in 1861 and reduced the territorial lands previously granted to the Cheyenne and...

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

Added by yongli on 06/09/2020 - 14:39, last changed on 10/25/2022 - 21:39
Signed on February 2, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War (1846–48). In the treaty, the Republic of Mexico agreed to cede 55 percent of its territory, some 525,000 square miles, to the United States. This land eventually became the present states of Arizona,...

Tree-Ring Dating

Added by yongli on 02/25/2016 - 13:19, last changed on 12/19/2019 - 01:07
Tree-ring dating is formally known as “dendrochronology” (literally, the study of tree time). It is the science of assigning calendar-year dates to the growth rings of trees, and Colorado figures prominently in its development and application in archaeology and other disciplines. Uses...

Trout Creek Archaeological Site

Added by yongli on 01/14/2020 - 15:13, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 09:51
Trout Creek in east Chaffee County is an extensive archaeological site exhibiting natural outcrops of colorful jaspers that were used for thousands of years as raw material for toolmaking by many different groups of Native Americans. It is one of the best-known toolstone sources not only in central...

Upper Arkansas Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 12/06/2017 - 13:56, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 12:54
The Upper Arkansas Indian Agency was established in 1855 at Bent’s New Fort to service tribes along the upper part of the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. It was also known as the Big Timbers Agency for the extensive stands of cottonwoods along the Arkansas River. In 1866 the...

Upper Republican and Itskari Cultures

Added by yongli on 10/22/2015 - 15:03, last changed on 10/23/2019 - 11:12
Upper Republican is a name archaeologists use for a prehistoric cultural group that occupied the upper Republican River area in northeast Colorado, western Nebraska, northern Kansas, and southeast Wyoming from AD 1100–1300. As a phase of a larger cultural tradition, the Central Plains tradition,...

Ute Indian Museum

Added by yongli on 12/05/2017 - 16:26, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
The Ute people , or as they call themselves, Nuche (The People), are Colorado’s longest continuous residents. Their rich cultural heritage and history is on display at the Ute Indian Museum. Nestled in the heart of traditional Uncompahgre Ute territory in Montrose , the Ute Indian Museum is History...

Ute Treaty of 1868

Added by yongli on 01/15/2020 - 15:39, last changed on 11/26/2022 - 10:41
The Ute Treaty of 1868, also known as the “Kit Carson Treaty,” was negotiated between agents of the US government, including Kit Carson , and leaders of seven bands of Nuche ( Ute people) living in Colorado and Utah. The treaty created for the Utes a massive reservation on Colorado’s Western Slope...

Vision Quest

Added by yongli on 11/02/2015 - 16:36, last changed on 12/28/2017 - 13:41
The vision quest is a rite of passage practiced by Native American tribes of the Plains and Great Basin groups such as the Eastern Shoshone . Vision quests are not well documented for the Ute Native Americans, although a few shamans might have performed the ritual. Archaeologists and...

White River Ute Indian Agency

Added by yongli on 04/29/2016 - 15:38, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
The White River Ute Agency at Meeker , Colorado was established at the same time as the first Los Piños Agency under provisions of the Treaty of 1868 . The agency was intended to serve the White River Ute band as well as some of the other bands from northwestern Colorado. As the site of the Meeker...

Wickiups and Other Wooden Features

Added by yongli on 05/02/2016 - 16:55, last changed on 11/11/2019 - 10:14
Wickiups were temporary conical and domed shelters constructed by the Native American inhabitants of Colorado for millennia. Because of the perishable nature of their construction materials, a vast majority of wickiups and other prehistoric wooden structures have vanished from the landscape...

Willard Frank Libby

Added by yongli on 12/28/2015 - 12:30, last changed on 11/11/2020 - 01:07
Willard Frank “Bill” Libby (1908–80) was a native Coloradan who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the radiocarbon dating method. Radiocarbon dating is one of the most commonly used dating techniques by archaeologists and other scientists across the world. Willard Libby was born in Grand...

William Bent

Added by yongli on 12/29/2015 - 11:23, last changed on 11/12/2022 - 18:57
William Bent (1809–69) played a pivotal role in the early development of Colorado. He initially came to the area as a fur trapper but became a liaison between whites and Native Americans via his trading fort on the Arkansas River near present-day La Junta . The Santa Fé Trail was the strategic...

William Larimer, Jr.

Added by yongli on 05/18/2016 - 15:35, last changed on 11/02/2022 - 05:48
General William Larimer, Jr. (1809–75), was a prominent nineteenth-century town promoter, prospector, and legislator in the Kansas and Colorado Territories. He is known for establishing the city of Denver . Larimer’s life serves as an example of the pitfalls of conducting business in the American...

Yucca House National Monument

Added by yongli on 05/02/2016 - 15:29, last changed on 12/19/2019 - 01:07
Yucca House National Monument was established to protect and preserve a large Ancestral Pueblo village south of Cortez in the southwestern corner of Colorado. Yucca House is an important Ancestral Pueblo village based on its size, unique configurations, and prominent, highly visible location in the...

Zebulon Montgomery Pike

Added by admin on 08/14/2014 - 08:45, last changed on 10/18/2022 - 06:48
In 1806–7, Captain Zebulon Montgomery Pike (1779-1813) led a US Army expedition to the southwestern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase, including the area that is now Colorado. Along with Lewis and Clark’s famous journey to the Pacific in 1804–6, Pike’s was one of many Jeffersonian-era expeditions...

Zia Pueblo

Added by yongli on 05/02/2016 - 15:02, last changed on 10/20/2020 - 01:07
The modern pueblo at Zia is one of nineteen in New Mexico that can trace some part of its history to residence in southwestern Colorado. Located on a mesa above the Jemez River about thirty-five miles northwest of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pueblo of Zia has been the site of farming settlements...
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