Apishapa Phase
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…
Conejos Indian Agency
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…
Denver Special Indian Agency
The Denver Special Agency was established to provide goods and services to the Ute Indians visiting the plains of Colorado between 1871 and 1875. The agency served Utes who were accustomed to collecting supplies from Denver’s Middle Park Agency during…
Fremont Culture
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…
Middle Park Indian Agency
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…
Northern Ute People (Uintah and Ouray Reservation)
Paleo-Indian Period
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…
Pueblo of Santa Ana–Tamaya
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…
Sopris Phase
The Formative Period in Prehistory
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 Gateway Tradition
Upper Republican and Itskari Cultures
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…
Ute History and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe
The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe is one of three federally recognized tribes of the Nuche (Ute) people. Their tribal lands comprise 597,288 acres of trust land and 27,354 acres of fee land in southwestern Colorado, northwestern New Mexico, and small, isolated…