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4 / Business in the Hinterlands The Impact of the Market Economy on the West-Central Great Plains at the Turn of the 19th Century Cody Newton Introduction The expansion of European settlers across the North American continent was preceded by the movement of European goods. Although the implications of direct physicalcontactbetweenIndiangroupsandEuropeansarebetterdocumented, there islittledoubtthatindirectcontact,through theacquisitionof European technologies and the impacts of epidemic disease, affected Indian demographics and cultural landscapes. However, in areas such as the west-central Great Plains, largely unexplored or settled by Europeans until the 19th century, Indian societies were able to maintain, for the most part, a pre-contact existence well into the 19th century. Using archaeological evidence from two post-contact sites in the Lykins Valley of north-central Colorado in conjunction with documentary evidence, this chapter addresses the degree to which Indian groups on the western margin of the Great Plains were affected by European market economies. Specifically, material assemblages from the Lykins Valley site (5LR263) and images from a nearby rock art site (5LR293), combined with contextual historical data, will be used to show the degree that European market economies impacted Indian groups in the region. This analysis demonstrates that the American Indian occupants of Lykins Valley maintained traditional technologies, subsistence practices, and quite possibly, group identity as a consequence of their distance from the direct impacts of European markets. Beyond the Valley: European and Indian Groups in Regional Context Documented accounts from the 16th through 18th centuries provide no evidence of European exploration near Lykins Valley. However, these accounts show the 68 Cody Newton large-scale trends of exploration into the region. From the initial Spanish entradas through the later French and American expeditions, encroachment into the region increased (see Table 4.1). Undoubtedly preceded by earlier, undocumented trappers and traders, Major Steven Long led the first documented expedition into northern Colorado. Long traveled up the South Platte River, passing the mouth of the Cache la Poudre River on July 3, 1820, before continuing south along the Front Range to the Arkansas River (Benson 1988). There is no direct account of Lykins Valley at this time and Boxelder Creek does not appear on a map until 1845 (Frémont 1845). Accounts from the Long expedition, compiled by expedition member Edwin James, indicate that, at that time, the Cache la Poudre River was frequented by a band of Kiowa (Benson 1988:198). Other historic accounts document the Arapaho used the Cache la Poudre Valley as a hunting ground and often camped on Boxelder Creek (Watrous 1911:15). The movement of these groups was widespread and the dispersal and coalescence of different tribal groups on the plains during this period often resulted in camps being composed of individuals from many different tribes. Edwin James describes a location on the South Platte at the mouth of Cherry Creek near presentday Denver where a mixed group of Kiowa, Kiowa-Apache, and Arapaho had a rendezvous for trade with the Cheyenne (Benson 1988:202). Groups were known to travel great distances from their home territories. The Comanche, for example, visited the Green River Rendezvous in southwestern Wyoming during the early 19th century (Keyser et al. 2004:136). An Arapaho group traveled to the Saskatchewan River to trade at the Chesterfield House in 1801 in the company of their kin, the Gros Ventre (Binnema 2001:171). The Mexican Revolution of 1821 and the resulting expulsion of the Spanish from New Mexico paved the way for uncontested trade in the plains and mountains of western North America. The fur-trade era (1824–40) was a time of increased trade, requiring an infrastructure of trading establishments to facilitate this exchange . Numerous trading establishments appeared all over the west and provided points of contact between trappers and traders. In the western plains of Colorado, the fur trade began around 1830 and resulted in the construction of numerous competing trade forts or posts along the Front Range and on the Western Slope. Beginning with the establishment of Fort Uncompahgre in 1829, at least 21 trading forts or posts were in operation at various times until 1860 in the west-central Great Plains and central Rocky Mountains (cf. Eddy 1982; Robertson 1999). Four of these posts were located along a 20-kilometer stretch of the South Platte River roughly 90 kilometers from Lykins Valley and were in operation from 1835 to 1845. If the Lykins Valley site was occupied during the fur-trade era, it is expected that the trade-goods assemblage...

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