Lake Scott State Park
Lake Scott State Park is the site of a ruined Taos Pueblo. The Taos arrived in western Kansas in 1664. After having escaped the Spanish colonial rule in New Mexico. They formed an alliance with a group of Plains Apache. The Taos Indians built the protective pueblos and an irrigation system from a nearby spring to water their crops. The settlement, known as El Cuartelejo, was occupied for 20 years before the builders returned to their home territory. The pueblo was reoccupied in 1696 by a group of Picuri Indians. The Picuris were compelled to retreat to their homelands in colonial New Mexico ten years later.
Tiguex War
The Tiguex Province was described as the most prosperous area the expeditionaries had seen, with the Rio Grande flowing through a wide, level, desert with vast irrigated cornfields. Alvarado notified Coronado that the expedition should move there for the oncoming winter. To establish a headquarters, Cárdenas commandeered a pueblo the Spaniards renamed as Coofor, forcing the Pueblo inhabitants out with nothing but the clothes they wore. Although Spanish accounts imply the Puebloans left Coofor voluntarily, archaeological excavations in the 1930s prove that an unreported battle took place there.