People of the Poudre - Cache la Poudre National Heritage Area

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Chapter 3- Protohistoric and Historic StagesIn this book two lines of evidence for the presence of native people in the Poudre valley--thearchaeological record and historic documents--are examined. As seen in the previous chapter, the archaeologicalrecord can provide important insight into how long people have used the Poudre valley and how they used it, but ittells little about individuals and non-preserved cultural aspects like language and music. Unlike the archaeologicalrecord with its time depth of thousands of years, historic documents provide a time depth of about 400 years onthe Plains and about 150 years in the Poudre valley. Within this time horizon, these documents provide a richnessof knowledge about individuals and insight into the thoughts of individuals which the archaeological record doesnot. The historic record, however, has been primarily produced by Europeans and Euroamericans, and this recordneeds to be interpreted within that context.During the Middle Ceramic stage, during the 1200s and 1300s, the Plains experienced a severe drought(Table 2). Some researchers speculate poor grazing conditions caused bison to abandon the drier parts of thePlains. Nomadic groups reliant upon bison are also thought to have abandoned the Plains during this time. Innortheastern Colorado and along the Poudre River, the evidence for cultural continuity through the droughtperiod is sketchy. The repopulation of the area beginning around AD 1500 and the concurrent availability ofwritten records makes the early 1500s a convenient starting point to examine which cultural groups were innortheastern Colorado at the onset of the Protohistoric stageProtohistoric IssuesBy the Protohistoric stage with the availability of written records, there begins to be an ability to tiegroups found through archaeology to modern tribes. Identifying “who was where when” is still difficult since thematerial remains of nomadic Historic Plains groups is by nature ephemeral [SB] and somewhat non-distinctive(Figure 7). Over the last 400 years the Colorado Plains have been used by a variety of groups at different and evenoverlapping times--especially historically. George Bent, a Cheyenne relating his experiences in the 1860s, describesmany camps containing Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux bands. 83 Figure 7. Location of culture and ethnic groupsFrom an archaeological perspective, the camp remains of cooking debris, trash middens, tool discards,stone circles or teepee rings, cooking and heating hearths, and possibly corrals show little distinction amonggroups. Camp arrangement offers a potential way to assign tribal affiliation. Some groups arranged their teepeesin a preferred ways, say linear camps, while other groups arranged their lodges in circles. Availability of suitableteepee locations in the camp area limited how well these ideal camps could be arranged. Specific groups alsopreferred certain types of sites over others, for example, in valley bottoms near water or in trees versus on a nearbyopen upland. These traits are hardly sufficient, however, to assign a given occupation site a particular tribalassociation in the absence of historic evidence. Another distinction between groups was their choice of teepee poleframework: Ute and Shoshone and other mountain-based groups used four main poles while Plains tribes used26 People of the Poudre
three. 84 Three-pole frameworks may be more stable in high winds than four-poles because the cone is tilted. 85 Ateepee based on four poles is shorter and wider than a three pole framework; from this an observer could identify acamp as belonging to a mountain or a plains group.Table 8. Tribal distinctions.Main tipiCamp sites/Group pole count arrangementsBurial practicesHollows in winter Scaffold3 Scaffold, cave, cliff ledge, crevice,teepee4 Shallow grave, cave, creviceKiowa 3Kiowa-4 BurialApache4Ute 4 Open areas,doors toward eastCave, crevice, shallow grave,scaffoldSources: Carlson, Plains Indians, 60,108; Crum, People of the Red Earth, 80; Foster and McCollough,“Plains Apache,”932; Fowler, “Arapaho,” 848; Kavanagh, “Comanche,” 895; Moore et al., “Cheyenne,” 868,872; Simmons, The Ute Indians, 23, 95.Hoping to tease out more concrete camp distinctions by tribe, researchers analyzed over 350 photographsof northwestern Plains Indian camps taken as early as the 1850s up to the early 1900s. 86 The photographs werecompared with rock art, paintings of the 1830s, and ledger art from the 1870s through the early 1900s hoping todiscern distinctive patterns of camp arrangement, size, associated features (such as drying racks), setting, seasonalvariation, and use of rocks or teepee pegs. Relatively few patterns and little variation between tribes were found.Most small camps were in upland settings away from water. Group camps (a single cluster of less than 30 teepees)occurred slightly more often in woodland areas. Winter camps were also frequently in woodlands. Most picturesshowed the bottom of teepees being held in place with either pegs or logs rather than stones.While archaeology is not particularly helpful with cultural identification, the historic record has its ownset of issues. In particular, how a group is named, how that name is spelled, and to whom the name is applied canbe very inconsistent. A group may have an exonym--a name by which they are identified by those outside theirgroup--and an ethnonym--the name in their own language with which they identify themselves. 87 The termsNavajo (an exonym) and Diné (an ethnonym) provide an example. Among the plains tribes Arapaho (exonym)use the ethnonym Inunainas but have also been called Gens des Vaches (translated to Buffalo or TattooedIndians), Blue Bead, or Caveninavish with many variations in spelling. The Arapaho are sometimes included witha sister tribe the Gros Ventre (ethnonym A’anis) who are also called the Big Bellies, Minateers of the Prairies,Fall, or Rapid Indians. Crow have been referred to as Absarokas and the Shoshone as Snake Indians. Along withsignificant variations in intended spelling, handwriting on early manuscripts can be very difficult or impossible todecipher correctly.Along with confusion about specific group names, geographical references can also be inconsistent. Inearly records the term Black Hills referred to either the Black Hills of South Dakota as is the common usage todayor to what are now called the Laramie Mountains of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming. References toMexico could include all the area up to the Arkansas River, not just the land south of the Rio Grande. Going toTaos, New Mexico, was a trip to Mexico. Prior to Colorado’s becoming a state, the phrase “going to the States”referred to returning to St. Louis, Missouri or some other point from which the areas east of the Mississippi couldChapter Title Placeholder7
Page 1 and 2: People of the PoudreAn Ethnohistory
Page 3 and 4: Table of ContentsTable of Contents.
Page 5 and 6: PrefaceThe Cache la Poudre River Na
Page 7 and 8: LaporteHook and Moore GladeLarimer
Page 9 and 10: 1 C h a p t e r 1 2Geophysical Sett
Page 11 and 12: shows the average first and last fr
Page 13 and 14: Laporte, Colorado. Downstream of th
Page 15: and boulders. There was but scant g
Page 19 and 20: the size of projectile points decre
Page 21 and 22: Table 7. Key archaeological sites i
Page 23 and 24: in the Archaic Stage and the early
Page 25: Chapter Title Placeholder5
Page 29 and 30: and the tribes’ later consolidati
Page 31 and 32: With the acquisition of the horse i
Page 34 and 35: Elliott West places the Northern Ch
Page 36: Chapter 4 - Historic RecordsBroadly
Page 39 and 40: In the late 1850s, wet-plate negati
Page 41 and 42: een taken up.” 198 In theory at l
Page 43 and 44: - J. R. Todd told of being followed
Page 45 and 46: - Bingham Hill Cemetery, south of t
Page 47 and 48: Chapter Title Placeholder 47
Page 49 and 50: Tule bulrushWoven into baskets ands
Page 51 and 52: Box elderWillowCottonwoodMade a syr
Page 53 and 54: course of its lifetime and knows ho
Page 55 and 56: Chapter 6 - Euroamerican ImpactsAs
Page 57 and 58: and trappers in northern Canada--be
Page 59 and 60: early exchanges were based on dried
Page 61 and 62: Epidemics that affected the Plains
Page 63 and 64: sources; the unintentional introduc
Page 67 and 68: 4. Friendly trade partners5. Societ
Page 69 and 70: of its proximity to the mountains a
Page 71 and 72: two miles of the river) revealed a
Page 75 and 76: Differential preservationThe idea t
Page 77 and 78:
LifewaysThe generalized combination
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Tragedy of the commonsA term from e
Page 81 and 82:
Periods. Unpublished Ph. D. Dissert
Page 83 and 84:
2001 History of the United States P
Page 85 and 86:
Irrigation and Water-related Struct
Page 87 and 88:
Interaction Between the Southwest a
Page 89 and 90:
1969 A Journey to the Rocky Mountai
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Figure CaptionsFigure 1. Relief map
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(Endnotes)1 Notes:Cache La Poudre R
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57 Cassells, The Archaeology of Col
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161 Watrous, Larimer County, 51.162
Page 99 and 100:
256 Gates, Marino Medina, 10-11. Ho
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Chapter Title Placeholder01
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