Pat,
Sorry, Senor. A Delaware friend of mine started me using NDN and NDNZ
as short hand for Indian and Indians. Not sure about the other one you
mention.
Yes, game migrated then and now.
I'm headed out to TX this morning, but should have the pdf for the War Zones and Game Sinks article when I get back. It talks about the impact of NDN hunting and warfare on game distributions in the West as well as disease in NDNZ. Drop me a line if you want it, and I'll send it out when I get back.
Sean
--- On Tue, 6/17/08, Pat Quilter <pat_quilter@???> wrote:
From: Pat Quilter <pat_quilter@???>
Subject: RE: MtMan-List: Wonderings about Yellowstone Area
To: neotoma_mexicana@???, "Wynn" <wheels@???>
Cc: hist_text@???
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 6:09 PM
I give up! This has been a great discussion (especially the diet
article) but what do NDNZ and " " mean?
Thanks
Pat Quilter
PS, the journals mention areas with "inexhaustible rivers of game" -
not
just buffalo - and other game-free areas, which appear to have been
anticipated (they were preparing jerky etc). Could there have been
migratory patterns to the game?
-----Original Message-----
From: hist_text-bounces@???
[mailto:hist_text-bounces@???] On Behalf Of Sean Kyle
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2008 5:00 PM
To: Wynn
Cc: hist_text@???
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Wonderings about Yellowstone Area
A few thoughts on this off the cuff:
1) Moose were really not in the West in any #'s during the period we're
talking about. Whether they were kept out by NDNZ, people, or
prior fluctuations in climate or habitat, we may never know. But
they do tend to use very linear habitats in the West (riparian
corridors). Such habitats are much easier to exploit by predators
(2-legged or 4) than those they use in say Ontario.
2) Bison were a big resource in certain areas for limited times.
They did not cover the entire Plains as some would have us think.
They were migratory. Tribes struggled to find them on the plains,
and feasted on them when they were available. They
also horded the protein they were able to get from them in the form of
pemmican and jerk. Bison #s began declining fairly early on in the
fur trade, primarily because harvests focused on cows and calves.
Tribes who did not have direct access to buffalo took significant risks
to get them, by moving into enemy territory to do it.
3) Even tribes who did have access to buffalo took significant numbers
of other game. Tribes like the Ute were famous for their buckskins
of deer and sheep hide, but other tribes like the Blackfoot also traded
in a lot of deer and elk hides. See the most recent Rocky Mountain
Fur Trade journal for an article on the buckskin trade in the West.
4) Yes, bears eat ungulates when they can. They are omnivores
which means they also eat a lot of plant material.
5) Yes, changes in fire and even climate have also had big effects on
ungulate populations. Fire affects shrubs which are
browse. However, fire won't do it alone. Ungulate
populations are also limiting some types of browse like aspen.
Aspen comes in after fire, but currently Elk populations are pretty much
limiting aspen regeneration west-wide. If you want a lot of aspen,
you need fire and less elk and cattle.
6) There are a lot of papers out there that have demonstrated very
significant increases in shrubs like willow after the wolf was added
into the YNP system. Wolf pressure keeps elk, moose, and bison
from sitting along riparian corridors eating the 'ice cream foods' like
willow and increases their use of the uplands.
Overall what we are talking about here with ungulate populations during
the fur trade is a very complex situation that is continental in scale
and has a lot of spatial and temporal variation. It is affected by
changes in climate like the Little Ice Age which affects primary
productivity (plants or food),
changes in human populations and hunting methods, changes in
disturbance like fire. The idea that it was a wilderness where
there were deer, elk, and bison everywhere is not born out by period
journals.
Sean
--- On Tue, 6/17/08, Wynn <wheels@???> wrote:
From: Wynn <wheels@???>
Subject: Re: MtMan-List: Wonderings about Yellowstone Area
To: davmscot@???, "Wynn" <wheels@???>,
"Christopher
Ferguson" <ferguson@???>
Cc: hist_text@???
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 2008, 1:58 PM
Well David I dunno why we wouldn't want your input. At
least this way we can have some conversation unlike your
requests for knife info which leaves me thinking, "If I had
knife questions I would be asking him." Just a couple
comments
>
I'm just going to throw out some thoughts, maybe good,
> maybe worthless- I'm the last guy you want to talk to on
> game management science.
>
> Wolves and moose seem to be rather plentiful in northern
> Ontario when I used to knock around there. If you walked
> along a river you could n't go much over fifty yards
> without seeing tracks of both. The water there
however is
> deeper than a lot of the western streams and I believe
> water is the santuary of moose, they will often head for
> it when shot,
This is good info because I might have overstated that
wolves are the death of moose without it.
>> In the West, I'm not sure how much of an influence
the
> Indian had on Elk and Moose population control. It seems
> to me the Indians survived almost solely on the buffalo
> and when the buffalo were gone so were the Indians,
their
> food supply dried up.
This is an inaccurate assumption. The tribes of the
Misouri, plains and West were heavily dependant on the
buffalo but they obviously did not eat only buffalo
because they would have gotten scurry and died. Estimates
have said that even the nomads ate approximately 50%
plant based diet.Also, those Indians wore buckskin often
mentioned to be made of mountain sheep. I doubt they
threw the meat away. And lets not forget puppy dog stew my
favorite. I mean seriously would you ride past a
huckleberry patch to go shoot a buffalo when you had
eaten nothing but buffalo for a month?
The mountain man caravans speak of
> eating nothing but boiled corn until getting to the
> buffalo country even though some elk may have been in
the
> area.
Once again I can not believe they would ride past fresh
meat to go boil corn. There
was probably just nothing
there to shoot.
> In Ontario about twenty years ago there was a study on
> predation of white tail fawns, it was found black bears
> were the culprits, not wolves or yotes. Wouldn't
grizzlies
> do the same?
Yes and even yes. Both black bears and griz prey on elk
moose and etc. I can not say for sure but it would be
reasonable to say the numbers of both are higher in the
park than twenty years ago when they were being deported
and shot for mooshing dinner from tourists. So it is not
that the wolf is alone as a preditor but their population
has grown rapidly along with a decline in moose and elk.
It is just that the elk needed thinning very badly so it
is not as big a loss. From what I saw at the parks info
centers bears have a wider food source and also sleep the
winters. Wolves eat a lot of elk all winter long. A
little
moose at birthing could make a big difference.
> And, good point on the alders/willows etc along the
> riparian borders. Beaver food! and cover for the NDNS.
> Never thought about it before but all the journals, etc
> describe things that way.
>
I wonder if the addition of wildland fires would have
effected this also. The old forests would have burned off
and left more sun and acres to fast growing willow and
quakies.
So add all this and the fact that the mountain men
considered the towns we live in mountains and probably
stayed away from the steep rough areas we go play in and
we have a different view of the landscape they were in.
Interesting ideas.
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