region, this contact was made around A.D. 1540, when the Coronado Expedition first met Native Americans in the area. It ended around A.D. 1725–50, when contact between the Native Americans of the Arkansas Valley and the Spanish colonies in New Mexico began to happen more regularly. In the interest of continuity, however, archaeologists’ understand the Protohistoric period to begin considerably earlier than first contact, with the abandonment of the area by Apishapa groups (around A.D. 1350–1450) and the arrival of Apachean peoples. These latter groups, who migrated into the area around A.D. 1450, were ancestors of the Plains Apache and were associated with the Athapascan linguistic culture (Wyckoff 1998:26; Zier and Kalasz 1999:250). Within southeastern Colorado, a number of purported Apachean sites have been reported. The Louden site (5LA.6204), located in the survey area, is dated A.D. 1435 and has been attributed to early Protohistoric Apachean occupation (Greer 1966). Other sites suggest that eastern Apachean peoples were present in the Carrizo Creek area of southern Las Animas County by A.D. 1400. Some Protohistoric sites near the survey area feature spaced stone circles (tipi rings) and earth rings (Campbell 1969:404, 407, 419; Hand et al. 1977:65-67). Micaceous tempered pottery found in associations with these sites may, however, be attributable to Taos-Picuris Puebloans rather than to Apachean peoples (Wedel 1959:593; Wood and Bair 1980:21-22), and may indicate trade with Puebloan groups. More nomadic than their Apishapa predecessors in the area, the Apache were not farmers, and were heavily dependent on bison for food and many other of life’s necessities (Wyckoff 1998:26). Although Spain claimed the Purgatoire and surrounding territory with the Coronado Expedition, a consistent non-Native presence in the Purgatoire area was still more than two centuries away. The interim was a time of upheaval and unrest. By the early 1700s, the Purgatoire region saw groups of Comanches pushing into the area from the north, forcing the Apache southward (Wyckoff 1998:31). By the end of the Protohistoric period, in the mid-1700s, regular trade existed between Native groups in southeastern Colorado and the northernmost outposts of New Spain, in what is now northern New Mexico, although conflicts were still frequent (Wyckoff 1998:29-31).
Late Prehistoric Stage Rock Art Over the many centuries people have called the High Plains Desert home, its canyon walls and rock faces have served as canvases upon which they have inscribed and painted meaningful images. The methods, forms, and scenes that rock artists have created have changed and over time. Some rock art has been pecked into rock—these are known as petroglyphs—while painted rock art are known as pictographs. Today, archaeologists have developed increasingly sophisticated methods to understand it. By applying radiocarbon dating methods to decipher how old rock art panels are, researchers now have a better understanding of the ways that rock art changed as cultures developed or as groups of people were replaced by other groups. The earliest known petroglyphs in southeastern Colorado have been documented on the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site and date to the Archaic period (5500 BC to 200 AD). These fall within a category archaeologists call the “pecked abstract style,” because they were made by scarring the faces of stone surfaces with sharp, harder stones, and because the images take abstract, nonrepresentational forms, such as wavy lines, spirals, and circles, or combinations of these forms. These forms were popular during the Middle Archaic period, between 4,600 and 3000 years ago. In the Late Archaic period, about 3,000 to 1,800 years ago, rock artists continued to produce abstract designs, but began to use rectangular forms and parallel lines. They also began to produce images around this time that could be identified as animals, although which animal being depicted was not always clear. Archaeologists categorize these latter images as the “pecked representational style” (Loendorf 2008:79) Later, during the Late Prehistoric Stage (also known as the Ceramic period), rock artists who lived in and traveled through the Purgatoire River region created both petroglyphs and pictographs. The figures depicted by the Late Prehistoric stage artists were more identifiable as people and specific animals—human figures were shown with fingers, often with arms bent. One well-known rock art panel on the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, the Zookeeper Site (5LA5993), shows a human—possibly a shaman figure— surrounded by dozens of animals, including deer, pronghorn, and others that could be coyotes or dogs. The meaning of such panels is never entirely clear, but in this case the human figure appears to be exuberantly wielding some sort of instrument to orchestrate the animals around him (Loendorf 2008:86-94). Painted rock art is rare in comparison to petroglyphs, due in part to the tendency of open-air pictographs to wear away. Those that remain are found in rock shelters and protected locations. Petroglyphs and pictographs from the Protohistoric period, beginning in the 1600s and lasting for at least the next 200 years, tend to be “biographical;” they depict events such as battles and hunts, using discernable features like bows and arrows or riders on horseback. Some rock art from this period depicts teepees. Although most rock art is thought to have been produced by Native Americans, this is not the case: Europeans and others also inscribed imagery on rock faces. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Spanish missionaries entering the area would add crosses to rock art panels in order to alter what they believed was pagan imagery. Hispanic and Anglo-American traders, and later settlers, who moved through southeastern Colorado inscribed names, dates, and pictures of cattle, horses, or other wildlife. Some figures may depict historic events; one anthropomorphic figure in Picture Canyon on the Comanche National Grassland, for instance, is covered with a dense series of dots and is believed to represent a smallpox victim.
12