Download or read book Ritual Ground written by Douglas C. Comer and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-12-23 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From about 1830 to 1849, Bent's Old Fort, located in present-day Colorado, was the largest trading post in the Southwest and the mountain-plains region. Although the raw enterprise and improvisation that characterized the American westward movement seem to have little to do with ritual, Douglas Comer argues that the fort grew and prospered because of ritual and that ritual shaped the subsequent history of the region to an astonishing extent.