| Founded in 1842 on the Arkansas River - which divided the United States from Mexico - El Pueblo History Museum was an important cultural crossroads of the Southwest. Here lived Anglo, French, and African-American trappers and traders; Mexican settlers and their families; and Plains, Iroquois, Delaware, and Cherokee Indians. The occupants traded, farmed, and ranched in and around this combination trading post and settlement. Made of adobe, the post and its living quarters were built around a secure interior plaza.Secure, that is, for a while. For many years relations with the Native Americans were cordial. However, after enduring many hardships under American occupation, tensions mounted with the tribes. On Christmas 1854, a party of Utes and Jicarilla Apaches suddenly attacked the post, killing or capturing those present at El Pueblo. Now El Pueblo, which had been active only intermittently since 1848, was abandoned forever. In time the skeleton of the old fort disappeared under the changing landscape of a growing city-Pueblo. Then, in 1989, archaeologists began a search to uncover El Pueblo's buried past and to expand our knowledge of cultural currents along the Arkansas River a century and a half ago. |
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