Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
FIRST PEOPLES
Recent archaeological evidence unearthed near Pinedale, Wyoming, and excavations from
Osprey Beach on Yellowstone Lake suggest that human inhabitation of the Greater Yellow-
stone region began soon after the Pinedale Glaciation period ended, between 12,000 and
14,000 years ago. Only a few thousand years before that, the Yellowstone region was al-
most completely covered in glaciers.
Archaeologists divide Greater Yellowstone's first inhabitants - ice-age hunter-gatherers
who chased spectacular megafauna such as bear-sized beavers, enormous camels, gigantic
moose, massive mastodons and 20ft-tall bison - into two distinct cultures, Clovis and Fol-
som, based on the uniquely shaped stone spearheads they fashioned.
The human presence in Greater Yellowstone increased dramatically 1500 to 2000 years
ago, coinciding with a more favorable climate, resurgent large mammal populations and
development of the bow and arrow, which replaced the
atlatl
(spear-thrower). Sheep traps
and
pishkum
(buffalo jumps) were the weapons of choice in the Rockies and Great Plains,
respectively. Obsidian from Yellowstone (still visible at Obsidian Mountain on the Mam-
moth−Norris road) made such durable spear and arrow tips that they were traded for hun-
dreds of miles.
The Tukudika (or Sheepeaters) - a Shoshone-Bannock people who hunted bighorn sheep
in the mountains of Yellowstone - were the region's only permanent inhabitants before
white settlement, though surrounding tribes such as the Crow/Absaroka (to the northeast),
Shoshone (east), Bannock (south and west), Blackfeet/Siksikau (north) and Gros Ventre
(south) hunted, traded and traveled seasonally through the region.
The Tukudika never acquired horses or iron
tools and are often portrayed as a simple and un-
developed people, but they were proficient tan-
ners whose composite sheep-horn bows were
powerful enough to send an arrow straight
through a bison (it's thought the Tukudika made
the horns more pliable by soaking them in Yellowstone's boiling hot springs). The
Tukudika, who never numbered more than about 400, spent the summers in camps of
wikiups
(tepee-like frames of leaning lodgepole branches), using dogs to transport their
gear. The last of the Tukudika were hustled off the new park territory into the Wind River
Reservation in the early 1870s to come under the control of the Shoshone chief Washakie.
One of the region's most extraordinary modern episodes involving Native Americans
was the 1877 flight of the Nez Percé, led by Chief Joseph. The Nez Percé fled their ances-
For a historical chronicle of the park's original in-
habitants, try
Indians in Yellowstone National Park,
a slim volume by Joel C Janetski.
