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flashpoint

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I hear a lot about "Periods" such as "what period are you trying to represent"? Or "my persona is from the early fur trade period." Can anyone tell me the range in years such as (1846 - 1852) of when all these different "periods" started and when they ended? Also, I would also like to know the name for each period. I was thinking that one could be dressed for a particular period only to find that the shoes he was wearing in January of 1847 were actually from the period that ended in December 1846 thus not being "Period Correct". Thank you. FP
 
That can be hard to answer, you can go with Major Eras of American History with general listings like these.

Wikipedia list these periods as the most common researched:
Depending on how deep your pockets are for clothing Townsend & Son Inc. is a manufacturer and retailer of quality reproduction 18th and early 19th Century clothing and personal accessories. Townsends There are several museum quality companies that can provide hand sewn garments that are as good or better than originals, just very pricey. I have gone both direction over the years. Using the high dollar clothing for special events and the less expensive garments for encampments, trekking, on water travel where they may get distroyed.

Mix match clothing is a given, just because your a few years off dosen't hurt, if you have good clothing from a few years ago, you use it until it's worn out. If living in the day you would have used everything you had. Example: after the F&I War those same weapons showed up in the American Rev War and in some cases into the Civil War.



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Native American Periods

Pre-Paleoindian Period (17,000-12,000 BC)
: The Pre-Paleoindian Period refers to Native American occupations of the New World that date to the time before Paleoidian or Clovis. Although somewhat controversial, evidence is mounting that humans occupied the Americas earlier than previously thought.
Paleoindian Period (12,000 to 8,000 BC): The Paleoindian Period refers to the time period when people migrated to the North American continent. People during this period were nomadic hunter-gatherers who subsisted on foods obtained from the wilds, from foraging and hunting species that are not domesticated. Hunting-and-gathering peoples tend to live in social groups that consisted of between 20 to 60 people, were relatively non-hierarchical and politically egalitarian. Early evidence of these peoples includes “Clovis” points, which are long, fluted chipped stone projectile points. In South Carolina, an example of early Paleoindian site is the Allendale Paleoindian Site (Topper site).
Archaic Period (8,000 to 3,000 BC): The Archaic Period begins as the environments changed to resemble modern environments. This period is characterized as a mobile gathering-and-hunting life and a mostly egalitarian social organization. Important Archaic cultural developments included the use of notched and stemmed projectile points, the atlatl, containers of stone and pottery, and ground and polished stone artifacts. During this period, the first inland shell middens were constructed and long-distance trade was established. In South Carolina, an example of an Archaic Period site is the Spanish Sea Pines Mount.
Woodland Period (3,000 BC to 1670 AD): The Woodland Period is characterized by increasing horticultural expertise, use of ceramics, and increasing sedentism and social complexity, when compared to the previous Archaic period. Pottery technology improved allowing containers to be made in a variety of shapes and sizes for cooking, storing and serving food. A Woodland Period assemblage would include textile marked, check and complicated stamped pottery and triangular points. Mound building flourished and the first coastal shell middens and rings were constructed.
Mississippian Period (1000 to 1520 AD): The Mississippian Period is characterized by peoples who practiced maize agriculture, lived in chiefdoms, had populous villages and zones of dispersed housing, and constructed earthen mounds in some of their villages. A Woodland Period assemblage would include complicated stamped, incised & burnished pottery. An example of a Mississippian Period site is the Green's Shell Enclosure Heritage Preserve.
Exploratory Period (1520-1670 AD): The Exploratory period begins with the arrival of Europeans. At that time, the area was the home of numerous Native American groups, some of which were related, and others who spoke mutually unintelligible languages. The first Europeans to make contact in South Carolina were the Spanish in 1526. Santa Elena became the capital of La Florida, and was part of the mission concept meant to bring the native population under their control. The French made contact around 1562 and established Charlesfort on present day Parris Island, but it was soon abandoned. A result of early exploration and settlement attempts was a severe reduction in Native American populations from the introduction of European and African diseases. The archaeology of early exploration and settlement reveal the incorporation of Spanish items into Native American material culture, and Native American sociopolitical reorganization.
Historic Period (1670 AD to present): The Historic Period begins with colonization by the British in late 1600s. Trading posts, such as Ninety-Six were, established to trade deer skins. The English Colonial economy thrived on the deerskin trade and slave-labor plantations. Tensions between colonists and Native Americans led to the Yamasee War and between 1715 and 1717, various tribes from the southeast such as the Cherokee and Pee Dee, attacked colonial settlements in South Carolina in an effort to force the colonists to leave. The key archaeological features of this period are a severe reduction in Native American materials replaced with industrial mass produced European-American materials, English trade items, fire arms, and glass beads. Unable to resist the encroachment of white settlers demanding land, many Native American tribes were forced to migrate to Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma); however, the Catawba were granted a reservation in 1763 and remain in the state to this day.

(continued).
 
Here are just a few periods referred to in North American History

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_fur_trade
A Brief History of the Fur Trade
The mountain man and his part in western history has been shaded in myth. The image of the lone trapper taking his leave of “civilization” and daringly plunging into the wilderness to meet grizzly bears, harsh winters, mountain lions, and American Indians has sparked the imaginations of millions. Stripped of its romanticism, the fur trade was a hard business, and its labor force was as overworked, underpaid, and subject to hardships as any other nineteenth century occupation. Bent over by the strains of their livelihood, few trappers remained in the business past the age of forty.

The commerce for American furs and hides, including deer, otter, raccoon, muskrat, mink, wolf, fox, and beaver, lured Europeans to the Americas from the beginning. For the French in Canada to the English and Dutch in New York, the trade for furs was a driving force for relations between European and American Indians well into the colonial period and beyond. The fur trade also attracted a cosmopolitan mix of ethnic and cultural groups—French-Canadian, American Indian, African American, Hispanic, British, Irish, German, and Russian trappers and traders all worked side by side with Missourians, Ohioans, Pennsylvanians, and Virginians.

The peak of the Rocky Mountain fur trade ran for a very short period of time, from 1820 to 1840. This was the time that Americans became more interested in the politics and geography beyond the Mississippi River; it was a time of expansion and experimentation. Thomas Jefferson’s vision of an expanding republic sent Lewis and Clark on their exploration of the Far West to discover any resources that could be used to expand America’s economic base. Returning from their explorations, the captains encountered trapping brigades traveling along their back trail. Fur traders such as Manuel Lisa, Pierre and August Chouteau, and William Henry Ashley established strong mercantile traditions in towns such as St. Louis, Westport, and Independence, Missouri. This in turn led to the westward expansion of emigration, goods, and towns.

There were two overlapping production systems used in the western fur trade of the 1820s–1840s. One system was the Rocky Mountain Trapping System based on beaver pelts and a primary work force of European-American trappers, who met at a designated rendezvous each summer to exchange their pelts for supplies needed for the next trapping season. The second system was based on the Upper Missouri Fur Trade, utilizing bison robes as a main product, and employing a labor force of American Indians to gather and process the robes. The robes were then exchanged at one of the numerous trading posts established on the Missouri River and moved to St. Louis by water transportation. A variation of the Upper Missouri River system took place in Colorado on the Arkansas and South Platte rivers. Rival trading firms such as Bent, St. Vrain, and Company; Vasquez and Sublette; and the American Fur Trading Company built competing forts to lure away the commerce of the Cheyennes and Arapahos.

Of those who decided to enter the fur trade business, many failed in their attempts to garner profits. However, those with enough experience, ability, and luck were often able to make a decent living. It must be kept in mind that this was a hard-scrabble business. Acquiring furs and transporting them to eastern markets presented a logistical nightmare. Moving pack trains of supplies into the mountains, and returning with bales of furs, was an incredible task. The thousand-mile trek through inhospitable western plains, rugged mountain passes, and lands claimed by occasionally unfriendly American Indians often invited tragedy.

Another important economic dynamic of the fur trade was the depletion of the beaver which resulted from over-harvesting. It has long been a tradition to view the environment as if resources were unlimited, and many business-minded merchants and trappers were determined to extract any resource that was easily exploitable. This attitude of short-term exploitation flourished during the fur trade and persisted after 1840, as the focus shifted from furs to minerals, timber, grass, land, and water. Over trapping led to the virtual extermination of the beavers; their exhaustion and the simultaneous decline in the popularity of beaver fur hats, replaced by fashionable silk ones, brought an end to an era.

As they gathered furs, the trappers worked hand-in-hand, and sometimes competed, with American Indian tribes who had their own cultural traditions and distinct points of view. On the western plains and Rocky Mountains, the two very different cultures exchanged trade goods, but also ideas. As they came together in this wilderness, each culture would have to adapt to the other’s presence.

These two very different cultural legacies collided on the western frontier. Yet each accepted innovations from the other which suited their needs. The traders adopted American Indian foods, clothing, language, and geographic knowledge. Trappers and traders frequently took native wives, both to secure a helpmate and to solidify trading relations with specific tribes. The American Indians, in turn, welcomed manufactured trade goods such as iron awls and pots, beads, guns, and knives. Plains Indians expanded their production of bison robes to meet the new demands. In the long run, the exchange of robes for manufactured goods created a one-sided trade relationship. Many American Indians became dependent upon European-American trade goods, while others fought with each other for control of the hunting grounds. The effects of disease introduced by the European Americans seriously strained their social and cultural traditions. The strains created by the fur trade sometimes led to brief but violent conflict. Yet the traders and American Indians who exchanged goods and ideas had to meet on peaceful terms in order for the process to take place.

The fur trade and the knowledge exchanged between these two cultures would also lead to further settlement of the West. By the end of the fur trade era, the American population was ready to move west in search of new opportunities. Due to the fur trade, the migrating pioneers ventured into a landscape that was well charted, and one about which a great deal was known. Military explorers and settlers alike hired retired trappers and traders to guide them to their Western destinations. One of the major achievements of the fur trade was the conversion of the trapper’s geographic knowledge, much of which was learned from various American Indian tribes, onto maps. In this sense, the trappers and traders of the 1820s and 1830s represented the vanguard of the great western migrations of the 1840s and beyond.
History of Colorado
Westward Movement
Between the Gold Rush and the Civil War, Americans in growing numbers filled the Mississippi River valley, Texas, the southwest territories, and the new states of Kansas and Nebraska. During the war, gold and silver discoveries drew prospectors—and later settlers—into Oregon, Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Montana.

By 1870 only portions of the Great Plains could truly be called unsettled. For most of the next two decades, that land functioned as the fabled open range, home to cowboys and their grazing cattle from ranches in Texas. But by the late 1880s, with the decline of the range cattle industry, settlers moved in and fenced the Great Plains into family farms. That settlement—and the wild rush of pioneers into the Oklahoma Indian Territory—constituted the last chapter of the westward movement. By the early 1890s a frontier had ceased to exist within the 48 continental states.

See: https://www.historynet.com/westward-expansion
There is way to much history for one topic to put on here and use up Jonathan's broadband when all you need to do is use the Internet. Look around its all here.



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Buck, you have outdone yourself. You've given me super information. It was a bit confusing to me but your suggestion of getting good stuff and "use it till it's worn out" is great advice. I'm thinking you were a History Prof. in your past or you've just lived for a hell of a long time?? Thanks again for taking so much time in answering my question, it is much appreciated. FP
 
I'm thinking you were a History Prof. in your past or you've just lived for a hell of a long time??
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" just lived for a hell of a long time", that's pretty close to the truth and having lived the life style of an early settler, frontiersmen every free minute. I have experienced a bunch of failures and a few success over the last 60 years. One of the best tools available today are the resources we have from the Internet, living history encampments, etc. If you need help let me know and we working together (along with members here) can possiblily get you going in the correct direction. Don't listen to the guy standing around having not experienced anything (usually seen wearing the same outfit for years and still looks new). Those types cost you time and money with their baloney - be aware ....


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"I'm thinking you were a History Prof. in your past... "
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Studying history accounts is a very good way to get started and finding what period really appeals to you. Some of the times in history are really interesting but cost so much for equipage there are few that follow thus not a good choice. Do your research before you open you wallet. :thumbs up:


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Big John I get asked questions about "living history" all the time and how would I handle this or that. The best thing is know you basic survival skills (good backup if things aren't going as planned). Then its RESEARCH - RESEARCH - RESEARCH ..... :thumbs up:


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