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36 associated with the dominant rural-agricultural lifestyle of the Study Area. 2.4.1 Exploration and the Fur Trade 1700-1895 Spain, the original European claimant of all of Colorado, held tenuous control throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by virtue of Coronado's wanderings of 1540-41. From that time until 1720 Spanish explorers, military parties and traders ventured north out of Mexico, eventually settled New Mexico, and continued north into Colorado, travelling both east and west of the mountains. The first documented Spanish incursions to reach the area of modern Denver and beyond came in 1719-20. In those years Pedro de Villasur, leading a small military detachment, moved as far north as the Platte River before falling victim to Pawnee Indians(Long i 1993:117-118). His expedition had been prompted by reports of French traders moving into the Platte-South Platte Valley and posing a threat to Spanish control of the region. The historic record is unclear about when the first French traders from the Mississippi Valley may have set foot in modern Colorado. In 1739 the Mallett Brothers' trading expedition crossed Nebraska along the Platte, followed the South Platte to the Front Range and then headed south to the Arkansas before pointing their caravan east along the Arkansas or Cimarron Rivers and returning to the Mississippi Valley. From that time until 1763, when France formally relinquished all claims to the area, the two European powers sought, through either trade or diplo- matic means, to control the local American Indian population. After the French threat was removed Spain showed little interest in the lands north of the Arkansas River until 1793. From the late 1790s until 1819 and ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaty, the Spanish army sent a number of patrols into the South Platte area(Mehls 1989a:19-20). The Adams-Onis Treaty led to official Spanish recognition of the United States claims to the area that dated to 1803 when the