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A bit of Background: The Fremont were a diverse group of horticulturalists and hunter gatherers who shared common material like one-rod-and-bundle baskets, and pit houses. They lived in Utah, western Colorado, and Southern Idaho from about 750-1250 A.D. Today they aren't very well known,and some people think that we are really dealing with a couple of cultures with similar traits to each other. The reason for their disappearance is not known, but two common ideas are that Uto-Aztecan peoples (like the Ute and Shoshone) migrated into the area at that time, and that their was significant drought.


What if they didn't disappear?


I think the way to create some kind of similar culture as a successor with minimal differences from OTL is to lessen the impact of the Uto-Aztecans, and have them assimilate more. If we change climate, thats way to many butterfly's for my taste. We still won't be able to create a culture in much of their former range, due to climactic conditions, but I think we could create a culture of small villages (and a few larger) scattered down western Utah to the Colorado. I don't think this will cause major changes later on, and I think the first big difference we will see is how the Spanish react to them. There are a couple of possibilities on how the Spanish deal with them in my view:
a)Ignore them, there just unimportant little villages way off on the frontier.
b)Send a few expeditions of conquistadors/explorers (not mutually exclusive obviously), but don't do much else with them.
c)Send missionaries to save their souls. I feel this one's pretty likely as it would correlate with what the Spanish did in other places.
Send missionaries and then later send soldiers as protection. Again following OTL patterns.
d)Conquer.


d) leads to the obvious question of Why? and I don' think there would be that much of a reason for them to go after these villages


Thoughts?


heres what a few minutes of searching brought up on the Fremont Culture:
http://www.nps.gov/archive/care/petpull.htm
http://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/People/fremont.htmhttp://www.cpluhna.nau.edu/People/fremont.htm
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