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36 <br /> associated with the dominant rural-agricultural lifestyle of the <br /> Study Area. <br /> 2.4. 1 Exploration and the Fur Trade 1700-1845 <br /> Spain, the original European claimant of all of Colorado, held <br /> tenuous control throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and <br /> eighteenth centuries by virtue of Coronado's wanderings of <br /> 1540-41. From that time until 1720 Spanish explorers, military <br /> parties and traders ventured north out of Mexico, eventually <br /> settled New Mexico, and continued north into Colorado, <br /> travelling both east and west of the mountains. The first <br /> documented Spanish incursions to reach the area of modern Denver <br /> and beyond came in 1719-20. In those years Pedro de Villasur, <br /> leading a small military detachment, moved as far north as the <br /> Platte River before falling victim to Pawnee Indians (Long <br /> 1943: 117-118) . His expedition had been prompted by reports of <br /> French traders moving into the Platte-South Platte Valley and <br /> posing a threat to Spanish control of the region. <br /> The historic record is unclear about when the first French <br /> traders from the Mississippi Valley may have set foot in modern <br /> Colorado. In 1739 the Mallett Brothers' trading expedition <br /> crossed Nebraska along the Platte, followed the South Platte to <br /> the Front Range and then headed south to the Arkansas before <br /> pointing their caravan east along the Arkansas or Cimarron Rivers <br /> and returning to the Mississippi Valley. From that time until <br /> 1763, when France formally relinquished all claims to the area, <br /> the two European powers sought, through either trade or diplo- <br /> matic means, to control the local American Indian population. <br /> After the French threat was removed Spain showed little interest <br /> in the lands north of the Arkansas River until 1793. From the <br /> late 1790s until 1819 and ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaty, <br /> the Spanish army sent a number of patrols into the South Platte <br /> area (Mehls 1984a: 19-20) . <br /> The Adams-Orris Treaty led to official Spanish recognition of the <br /> United States claims to the area that dated to 1803 when the <br />