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i~ ' the local American Indian population. After the French threat was removed Spain showed little interest in the lands north of the i ~ 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 Louisiana Purchase gave the new American government control of the central and northern Great Plains as Far West as the Continental Divide. Official exploration of the new lands began with the Lewis and Clark expeditions. During the first decade of American ' ownership fur trapper Baptiste LaLande reached the Colorado Front Range to hunt, followed by many others including Ezekiel Williams and James Purcell. In 1806 the first government exploration of the area was led by Zebulon Pike. Pike did not reach the Dowe Flats ' area, but his reports spurred further governmental activity (GOetzmann 1959: 36-39). ' The next, and most famous, federal exploration of northeastern Colorado came in 1620 when Major Stephen Long led a party of ' soldiers and scientists along the South Platte River to the Front Range and then south to the Arkansas River before returning to the Mississippi Valley. While it is very doubtful that Long actually crossed the Study Area, his reports had a lasting impact on it and much of the rest of the Great Plains. Long, in his official ' descriptions, labelled the lands from the central plains to the foothills of the Rockies as the Great American Desert, proclaiming ' the land to be fit only for grazing and homelands for nomadic Indians. The image of the desert lingered and influenced the ways ' that later settlers envisioned using the lands (Goetzmann 1966:40-69). ' 31