People of the Poudre - Cache la Poudre National Heritage Area

course of its lifetime and knows how to navigate within. 268 The “home range” is that portion of the familiar areawhich is used during any particular period, say a week or a season. The importance of the familiar area is thatthis is the area within which a bison seeks food and migrates. Bison prefer new plant growth over old and seekout these areas. They may remember where they have recently grazed and return to those areas after a delay tolet new grass sprout and grow. Bamforth feels that bison movement patterns can to some degree be predicted andgeneralized so that hunting groups (like those he studied on the southern Plains) can reliably find bison.On the northern Plains, there are indications that native people used fire to both direct bison to desiredareas and to stimulate new grass growth and to attract bison at a future time. 269 Omer Stewart, Native Americanethnographer, in his extensive search for evidence of the use of fire by native people found no specific referencesto fire in Colorado. 270 He felt, however, that fire was used on the plains of Colorado in much the same way as hehad found evidence for its use in Kansas. A Colonel R. I. Dodge wrote in 1877 that “The Indians burn portions ofthe prairie every fall, setting fires so as to burn as vast an extent of country as possible, and yet preserve unburneda good section in the vicinity where they purpose to make their fall hunt. The buffalo finding nothing to eat onthe burnt ground, collect on that unburnt--reducing greatly the labour of the hunt.” 271 Stewart believed that thecessation of native burns allowed the encroachment of trees and brush from the foothills onto the plains nearBoulder, Colorado. 272 Native use of fire for bison management and the resulting conditioning of the prairieecosystem have been underappreciated by historians and ecologists due to a bias for North America as a “pristineand untouched wilderness” prior to the arrival of Euroamericans.The meat value of buffalo compared to other meat sources available on the Plains is shown in Table 10.Clearly buffalo offered significantly more meat per kill than any other medium or large animal. Rocky Mountainelk are present in the mountains today. The extinct Manitoba elk were the larger elk once hunted on the plains.Interestingly, even though elk provides a large amount of meat through the Archaic and Ceramic periods, elk wasone of the least preferred meat sources ranking below rabbit based on archaeological faunal assemblages at easternColorado sites. 273 This may be due to availability of deer over elk, food preference, or even cultural beliefs.Table 10. Comparison of large animal yields.Liveweight(kg)Dressedweight (kg)Animalsneeded for 1weekto feed 100peoplefor 1 yearSpeciesBison 627 425 2 117Deer 75 52 18 950Pronghorn 47 20 49 2400Manitoba elk 314 213 4 230Rocky Mountainelk 272 184 5 265Source: Butler, “Cultural and Climatic Patterns,” Table 8, with correction to antelope values.Across prehistory the Plains in general, and the Poudre area in particular, was an area rich in grazinganimals and possibly adequate in plant products based on the continued occupation seen in the archaeologicalrecord and the occupancy patterns offered in the historic record. The Poudre area has had a succession ofoccupants, and the climate has varied on both a short term and long term basis. This said, the “Poudre area” is aloosely defined concept as is the Plains in general. There are no natural barriers to keep people or animals eitherin or out. Past occupants were free to come and go as resources changed and in response to internal and externalpressures.Chapter Title Placeholder 53