Yellowstone's Northern Range - Greater Yellowstone Science ...

PREHISTORIC AND EARLY HISTORIC SETTING
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Park in 1805, as reporting that European smallpox
had by then reduced the Indians of that region from
16,000 to 2,400. Such reductions would have
effects on regional ecological processes, but even
the larger number of Crow Indians, spread over a
substantial area, does not appear to be more than a
small fraction of the human population numbers
and densities required to suppress Rocky Mountain
elk herds to practically zero. Additional study and
evidence may provide clarification on this issue.
Even if such numbers are eventually clarified,
the question remains how they should be
applied to Yellowstone's elk management questions.
North American human populations did not
remain constant during the roughly 11,000 years
during which the archeological record suggests that
humans were inhabiting the Yellowstone area. The
densities and effects of these people were no more
constant than was the climate Or any other element
of the setting.
THE HISTORICAL RECORD
Analysis of early written accounts of the
Yellowstone National Park area has been by far the
most frequently employed method of attempting to
determine prehistoric wildlife abundance. As
Schullery and Whittlesey (1992) and Kay (1994a)
have suggested, there are numerous pitfalls in
assuming that conditions described in the early
historical record (from the period roughly 1800 to
1880) are a reflection of "primitive" time, that is, a
time prior to pre-Euramerican influence on the
region. Old World wildlife diseases, epidemics of
Old-World human diseases, Euramerican-introduced
horses, Euramerican firearms and other
weapons, and Euramerican trade incentives were
among the forces present in the northern Rocky
Mountain region by 1800, and any or all of these
could have influenced Indian use of local resources.
However, the historical record is of great
interest, because it is our most detailed picture of
the Yellowstone National Park area plior to its
creation and development by Euramericans. As
mentioned earlier, by the 1920s it was widely
believed that large mammals were scarce or absent
in present Yellowstone National Park prior to the
creation of the park in 1872 (Skinner 1928, Bailey
1930, Rush 1932, Grimm 1939). This position was
challenged by Murie (1940), who offered the most
thorough consideration of the early historical
record to that date, and who was supported by later
writers (Cole 1969, Lovaas 1970, Gruell1973,
Meagher 1973, Houston 1982, Barmore 1987).
Murie (1940) took various positions on the side of
large mammals being common, though not
necessarily as numerous as in modern times.
Kay (1990), on the other hand, used the same
early accounts to suggest that large mammals were
rare in the period prior to 1876. Many writers used
only a few historical accounts to prove their case;
none used more than about 20. More recently,
Schullery and Whittlesey (1992), in an analysis of
168 accounts of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem
prior to 1882, concluded that such small information
bases are simply insufficient to gain a trustworthy
idea of wildlife abundance, and even their
much larger information base was insufficient to
give more than a general idea of wildlife conditions.
They also concluded that large ungulates
and their predators were present and numerous
throughout the area during the period 1800-1882,
and were using the park as both summer and winter
range.
Perhaps most important in the context of
wildlife abundance, Schullery and Whittlesey
(1992) reported that more than 90 percent (51 of
56) of all observers prior to 1882 who commented
on the abundance of wildlife expressed the belief
that it was very abundant. This is in striking
contrast to the common perception by the early
1930s, which held that large mammals were
prehistorically rare in the area. This surptisingly
quick switch from believing in abundance to
believing in scarcity may have been a product of
many things, including the general destruction of
large game in many parts of the west between 1870
and 1900; most of the people residing in the
Yellowstone region by 1920 had no memory of
anything other than wildlife scarcity everywhere
but the park. This may have led them to assume
that the wildlife had always been scarce, and that
the park, rather than being representative of an