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This book contains two stories. The ¤rst is a tale of the earliest European, as far as we know, to set foot on the soil of eastern Oklahoma. Although much has been made of this event, the Europeans did not stay long, members of that party never returned, and the close relationships between peoples promised during those days never came to pass. In fact, the event is considerably more important for the information it imparted about the indigenous native inhabitants than for any lasting cultural contact. The second story is a modern archaeological tale relating how stories like the ¤rst one are veri¤ed and embellished. It began through an archaeological salvage project, one of thousands conducted yearly in the United States to capture a modicum of information about our history before it is forever destroyed by road graders, backhoes, and belly loaders. It remained a salvage project through the ¤eldwork and initial inventory, but if it had retained this status subsequently, we would probably not be hearing about it now, because, by its very nature, salvage archaeology rarely involves in-depth analysis once an excavation is terminated. It took time and an academic institution for the analyses reported in this book to be completed—or even contemplated, for that matter. If I just told the contact story, it would amount to a nice, clean narrative, but it would impart little about how we know what we know. So the reader would be unable to evaluate the narrative because he or she would not be sure what evidence it was based on, and I would remain unful¤lled because the process of ¤guring out the answers to historical questions de¤nes why I do archaeology in the ¤rst place. In essence, the archaeological story enlightens the historical one, which explains why the two narratives will be interwoven in the pages that follow. I will employ the investigation of one locale to elucidate the general history of the eastern Plains during the early eighteenth century, a story that I ¤nd extremely compelling. In telling this story I will be going beyond the scope of an ordinary site report, which any account based primarily on one limited geographic location must, by de¤nition, be. I think this subject is of great interest not only to professional archaeologists and historians but Preface also to the public at large, and this book is aimed at both audiences. Those who can be satis¤ed with the basic narrative need be concerned only with the ¤rst part. Interested parties who desire the technical information on which the textual arguments are based can refer to the appendixes. I realize that satisfying both audiences is a tall order, but I think the historical questions are so compelling that I am willing to give it a try. The discerning reader will note that my approach is archaeological, not ethnohistorical. I have not delved into original documents of the period, as I had enough to do with the archaeology, but I have employed the fruits of others’ documentary and archaeological labors, a process through which I have concluded that the material remains presented here are the product of protohistoric Wichita-related peoples. Although this may be a misinterpretation , I have run across no evidence that would contradict this assertion, and I have therefore made this association throughout this volume. I feel particularly fortunate that I was given the chance to conduct the salvage operation, with all its warts and pimples, as well as the opportunity to nurture this analysis through several years and people to a point at which we can ¤nally tell a story. This is only one of the stories that could be told, of course. Another clue here, an additional analysis there, some information from a nearby site—any of these could change our perspective on what went on during this period of cultural contact almost three centuries ago. I am painfully aware of the limitations of our database and offer the following scenario as only the best approximation we can come up with at this point in our research. Despite our necessarily tentative conclusions, the studies reported here constitute the most extensive analytical attention ever given to a protohistoric site in the state of Oklahoma. Oh, yes, you might be curious about the title of this book. It relates to a famous ¤rst encounter that occurred in 1719 between Europeans and Native Americans near the banks of the Arkansas River, about which this story is written...

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