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• established. Lister and Dick (1952) excavated sites in Glade Park docu- <br />menting the presence of "Fremont-Basketmakers ," and Conner and Ott (1978) <br />recorded several Fremont petroglyph and pictograph panels in Glade Park <br />and along the Colorado River. Excavations at Jerry Creek Reservoir No. 2 <br />have produced Fremont-type projectile points (Martin et al. 1980), and <br />numerous other sites in the Grand Junction district have yielded artifacts <br />and rock art of Fremont origin (John Crouch, personal communication}. <br />The disappearance of the Fremont culture is as perplexing as its <br />origins. Among the theories put forth are that 1) the Fremont migrated <br />to the Great Plains and became the Dismal River Apache (Aikens 1966), 2) <br />the Shoshoneans moved into the area and exploited the pinyon crops to the <br />point of depletion (Madsen 1980), or 3) drought caused the Fremont to <br />move south to the Hopi area and/or caused them to revert back to an Archaic <br />hunting and gathering subsistence. A fourth possibility suggested by <br />Ambler is that a combination of factors, among them increased flash flooding <br />that wiped out irrigation ditches, depletion of soil nutrients and natural <br />• resources, overpopulation, and the stagnation of the culture due to the <br />abandonment of important trade centers such as Chaco and those of the Ana- <br />.sazi were responsible for the disappearance of the Fremont (Ambler 1980:72). <br />Ute Culture (Protohistoric/His <br />The Numic-speaking (Shoshonean) Utes are reported to have occupied <br />the central and western portions of Colorado at the time of the first his- <br />toric contact (Swanton 1953: 372). Fray Pasados, a Spanish historian of <br />the mid-1600s, described the Utes as sharing the eastern plains of Colorado <br />with the Apache, while occupying the lands north of the San Juans as far <br />northwest as Utah Lake as well (Buckles 1968: 55). The Spanish expeditions <br />of Don Juan Rivera in 1765 and Dominguez and Escalante in 1775-1776 con- <br />firmed Ute occupation of western Colorado; the latter expedition documented <br />the Tabeguache (or Uncompahgre) Utes in the west-central part of the state <br />(Bolton 1972: 35). The Tabeguache, the largest of the Ute bands, was esti- <br />. mated to comprise approximately 3000-4000 people; the total population of <br />all Ute bands probably never exceeded 10,000 (Rockwell 1956: 12). <br />17 <br />