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Exploration and the Fur Trade, 1700-1845 <br />• <br />Spain, the original European claimant of the Study Area, and <br />indeed all of Colorado, held control, albeit tenuous, of the region <br />throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by <br />virtue of Coronado's wanderings of 1540-41. From that point in <br />time until 1720 Spanish explorers, military parties and traders <br />ventured north out of Mexico, eventually settled New Mexico, and <br />continued to adventure further north into Colorado, travelling both <br />east and west of the mountains. The first documented Spanish <br />incursions to reach the area of modern Denver and beyond came in <br />1719-20. In those years Pedro de Villasur, leading a small <br />military detachment, moved as far north as the Platte River in <br />Nebraska before falling victim to Pawnee Indians(LOnq <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 net foot is modern <br />Colorado, but is 1739 the Mallett Brothers' trading expedition <br />crossed Nebraska along the Platte, followed the South Platte to the <br />Front Range and then headed south to the Arkansas before pointing <br />their caravan east along the Arkansas or Cimarron River and <br />returning to the Mississippi Valley. From that point until 1763, <br />when France formally relinquished all claims to the area, the two <br />European powers, Spain and France, sought through either trade or <br />diplomatic means, to control the local Native American population. <br />After the French threat was removed Spain showed little interest in <br />the lands north of the Arkansas River until 1793. From that point <br />in time until 1819 and ratification of the Adams-Onis Treaty, the <br />Spanish army sent a number of patrols into the south Platte <br />area(Mehls 1984x:19-20). <br />The Adams-Onis Treaty led to official Spanish recognition of <br />the United States claims to the area that dated to 1803 when the <br />Louisiana Purchase gave the new American government control of the <br />. 14 <br />