People of the Poudre - Cache la Poudre National Heritage Area

(Endnotes)1 Notes:Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area web site, http://www.nature.nps.gov/cachelapoudre, accessed 4/7/2006;Laflin, Irrigation, Settlement, and Change. The Colorado system of water law known as “first in time, first in right” or “priorappropriation” was established in the Poudre valley. In prior appropriation systems, the individual who first uses water, say forirrigation, and continues to use it productively has water rights that are senior to all other users. In times of water shortage,senior rights are allocated water before junior rights are honored. Junior rights can go unfilled during dry years. Water rightsare tangible assets in that they can be bought and sold.Prior appropriation is the water law foundation for most of the western United States. In contrast, in the eastern part ofthe country a system of riparian rights is in place. In a riparian rights system, the person who owns the banks of the watercourse owns the rights to the water flowing in the water way. This system works adequately when there is always a sufficientamount of water to serve every one’s needs. In arid areas like the West, there is no guarantee of sufficient flow and water needssuch as irrigation are often some distance from the water source. Prior appropriation, by shifting ownership to the waterrather than the water way, established a new method to allocate water. It also meant that innovations in water managementsuch as gauging and flow measurement needed to be developed to assure that water owners received their share of water andonly their share. Many of these innovations were developed along the Poudre and are still part of the local landscape. Insemi-arid environments like that found along the Poudre and many areas of the west, water allocation and delivery systemshave been essential for survival and economic growth. Availability of water has been and continues to be a major factor indevelopment of the West.2 Other reports include Laflin, Irrigation, Settlement and Change, Sunberg, Cache la Poudre Corridor, and Irrigation andWater-related Structures (author unknown).3 See for example Nabokov and Loendorf, Restoring a Presence.4 Euroamerican is an American of European descent. Many of the early fur trappers in the West were actuallyEuropeans - primarily French or British trappers out of Canada or the Far West.5 Hendon, Horsetooth Mountain Park, 119; Gray, Poudre River, 27; USGS Maps 1980a, 1982a, and 1982b; andWatrous, Larimer County, 7, 29, 43, 57-58, 161, 165. During the 1860s General William Larimer was an early settler inDenver; Lewis L. Weld was the first Colorado Territorial Secretary; and Horace Greeley was the editor of the New YorkTribune.6 See Gunnerson and Gunnerson, Ethnohistory for an ethnohistory of the High Plains region.7 This issue is described by Galloway, “Ethnohistorical Narrative,” 453-455, as follows:“In evaluating a historical text, we must consider not only the obvious factor of intentional misrepresentation, but whether,first, it is possible in principle to represent any event at all in a way that is closely congruent with the facts; second, whatform that representation should take; and third, whether a reader from subsequent reality might be capable of truthfullyreconstructing the event on the basis of that representation (always assuming we know what “truthfully” means) ... Even ifwe grant that good ethnographic observations are possible in principle, conquerors and colonists were certainly not trainedparticipant observers by any stretch of the imagination. Which is not to claim the no Colonial period observer observed trulyor learned a great deal about contact with native peoples; for the moment we may also stipulate that there might be an idealobserver. But to use ethnohistoric narrative, we must recognize that we are dealing with what is now not an observation but areported observation; not an experience, but a text describing it. If the information itself is potentially valuable, we must solvethe problems raised by the form in which it reaches us.”.8 Swan, Pleistocene and Holocene Deposits, 11; Tate and Gilmore, “Environment,” 9.9 Stone, “Social Island,” 245.10 Brunswig, Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Change, 86.11 Swan, Pleistocene and Holocene Deposits, 11-18.12 Brunswig, Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Change, 87-88; Swan, Pleistocene and Holocene Deposits, 2513 Hansen et al., Climatography, 54-56.14 Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 31.15 Brunswig, Paleoenvironmental and Cultural Change, 87-88.16 Nelson, “Weather Center,” 38.17 Taxon lists in this and the following tables have been compiled from Brunswig, Paleoenvironmental and CulturalChange, 89-90; Evans and Evans, Cache La Poudre, 137; Fitzgerald et al., Mammals of Colorado; Hart, Montana Native Plants,87; Johnson and Larsen, Grasslands of South Dakota, Swan, Pleistocene and Holocene Deposits, 26; and Whitson et al., Weeds ofthe West.18 Binnema, Common and Contested Ground, 28.19 Peden, Trophic Relations of Bison bison, 90-91.Chapter Title Placeholder 93