2013-04-10_PERMIT FILE - C1981019 (75)

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12 Class III Inventory, Colowyo's Collom Mine Project contemporaneous with Fremont occupations. The current project area occurs near the extreme eastern edge of the Fremont cultural area, suggesting that any cultural materials dating to the Formative era noted during this project will likely represent the Aspen tradition. The Protohistoric era (A.D. 1300- 1800s) as described in Reed and Metcalf (1999) reflects an ethnohistoric perspective of regional aboriginal cultural change and distribution. Inhabitants were highly mobile hunters and gatherers, and they constructed wickiups for shelter, manufactured brown ware ceramics, and hunted with bows and arrows. The period reflects less intensive use of the region, probably byNumic- speaking groups. Desert Side - notched and Cottonwood Triangular arrow points and brown ware ceramics are diagnostic of Numic (Ute) occupation in the region. With reference to post - Colombian European contact and trade, the Protohistoric period in the region dates to Eastern Ute contact with the Spanish during the early 1600s. Later Protohistoric period components frequently contain Euroamerican trade items. By approximately 1650, the Ute had acquired enough horses to adopt an equestrian lifestyle (Reed and Metcalf 1999). Horses stolen during the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 fostered increased availability that further enhanced the horse culture. Secoy (1953), however, states that the Ute had limited horses as late as 1700 but that they began raiding Spanish settlements forhorses with increasing frequency between 1704 and 1720. The northern boundary of the Ute territory during the early historic period was somewhere north of the Yampa River (Reed and Metcalf 1999). Numic - language- speaking Shoshone groups occupied the area to the north. Spanish explorers Dominguez and Escalante, in search of a route to California, passed through the region southwest of the current project area during their expedition of 1776 ( Hafen and Hafen 1954). American fur traders and trappers utilized the region in the early to mid- 1800s, and explorer Thomas Farnham passed through the Yampa River valley in 1839. U.S. topographic expeditions led by John Fremont and John Gunnison explored the general region in the 1840s and early 1850s, respectively (Goetzmann 1959), with Fremont passing east along the Yampa River and its tributaries in 1844 (Fremont 1845). Clarence King surveyed the western region of Colorado during his exploration 47599 TRC Mariah Associates Inc.