In the summer of 2004 Howard University and the National Park Service through the Desert Southwest Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit began investigating Pine Springs Camp. This fieldwork was an extension of the Warriors Project, a multi-year program initiated by the Park Service in 2002 for African Americans and American Indians to discuss their mutual past on the western frontier. The project began as historical research carried out jointly by Haskell University, an American Indian institution in Kansas, and Howard University, a Historically Black College and University in Washington, D.C. By December 2003, this phase was completed and the Warriors Project turned to archaeology.
Working with archaeologists from the Mescalero Apache Tribe and with students from Howard University, the Mescalero Reservation, and elsewhere, the Mescalero-Buffalo Soldiers Archaeological Project soon discovered that this unique, multi-component site spreads out over more than 60 acres. Prominent features include a central line of military hearths, used on at least two distinct occasions and probably more, one of them by Lebo and his company. Also visible are a subsidiary line of hearths that represents a separate, single-component military occupation, a wagon road, picket stations that protected both lines of hearths, the remains of semi-permanent structures, most likely tent pads; and Apache wickiup rings, the circles formed by the cobbles used to hold down their frames of bent saplings.
Sources
A bibliography has been collected for this project.
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