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Animals of the Great Plains - Ep 02
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In this episode of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast, host Carlton Shield Chief Gover takes you on a journey through the diverse and fascinating world of the animals that have roamed the Great Plains for thousands of years. From mighty bison herds to elusive prairie dogs, the animals of the Plains have played an essential role in the lives of Indigenous peoples, shaping their cultures, diets, and spiritual practices. We'll explore how these creatures have influenced the archaeological record, offering clues to past lifeways and helping us better understand the deep connection between humans and the natural world. This episode also highlights the significance of key species in Plains ecology and their impact on the landscape.
Youtube: https://youtu.be/llKpPcN1z20
Links:
- Organization of bison hunting at the Pleistocene/Holocene transition on the Plains of North America by KC Carlson & Leland Bement (2013)
- American Serengeti: The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains by Dan Flores (2016)
- The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains by Douglas B. Bamforth (2021)
- Archaeology on the Great Plains Edited by W. Raymond Wood (1998)
- Carlton's KU Anthropology Faculty Bio
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode, go to: https://www.archpodnet.com/great-plains-archaeology/02
Contact:
- Instagram: @pawnee_archaeologist
- Email: [email protected]
Affiliates
Transcript
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. You're listening to the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. Join me as we uncover the rich histories of North America's Great Plains, exploring the latest archaeological discoveries and past cultures that shaped this storied region. Welcome to the podcast.
00:00:23
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 2 of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I am your host, Professor Carlton Schiele, Chief Gover, and I am thrilled to have you join me on this exciting journey through the rich and fascinating histories of North America's Great Plains. So here on Episode 2, we're going to be talking about the basically just the animals, the four leggeds and the birds and all that other good stuff that you find in the Great Plains, particularly during the Holocene. But just you know another reminder, there is a video portion of this podcast available on YouTube. And for those that are watching on on YouTube, I'm trying to figure out angles to where I want to shoot in the office. So I mean, like I shot
00:00:58
Speaker
shot, quote unquote, I recorded episodes one and two same day. That's why if you're watching wearing the same shirt, but during the episodes I went to the frigging bookstore across campus and got the adapter I needed to run both my microphone and my external camera so I could actually use my laptop more efficiently for this episode. So if you're watching online and have recommendations for how I can better visually present myself in my surroundings. Because for those that are just listening, I'm just got my giant wall of books behind me in my office. And this is being recorded here at the University of Kansas. So yeah, happy to get your thoughts and suggestions. Contact information is at the end of the ah episode, at the end of each show. So hit me up on Instagram or send me an email. I'm um' totally, I want to hear from you guys as to how I can make this show better, both in terms of content, audio, and visual as well.
00:01:46
Speaker
And I will do my best because I know Chris and Rachel probably got a little aggravated in the last episode. They're the ones that edit this podcast that I kept moving away from my microphone. So ah now that I'm doing this new podcast, right, for those that might remember ruins, that was more of a static environment where I was interacting with the guests. But now it's just, just me dropping quote unquote, knowledge. So I'm a little bit more animated with this show, but without further ado, so let's get into you know the kind of the kind of fauna that are on the Great Plains that are setting the tone here for how people are sustaining themselves on the plains, right? So like I mentioned in the last episode, these first two or three are really going to be focused on big picture of the Great Plains region.
00:02:32
Speaker
What's the environment like? What's the vegetation like? What kind of animals are available? And then how are archaeological sites in the history of the Great Plains? How are they classified? How are they divided? So as we move forward in the show,
00:02:46
Speaker
When we start talking about topics to individual sites in relation to the rest of the region or the rest of the time period, these episodes up front, you know, they provide the necessary background that give you a frame of reference that you can go back to to get that. Because right within a within a 30 minute episode, there's like so much.
00:03:05
Speaker
we can really get into the nitty gritty. So last time on episode one, we talked about the Great Plains region as a whole, how it's how it's divided, the five sub regions, what kind of vegetation we can expect, where the raw stone material ah sources, where are those found? We need to get into what kind of animals are available on on the Great Plains.
00:03:28
Speaker
And there's probably one that you're already thinking of, but before we get to that one, and I want you to hold onto that in and the back of your brain, right? Like what what possible animal in the Great Plains could be so important to human behavior? And that that deserves its own, probably the other half of this but of this episode.
00:03:47
Speaker
we'll be dedicated to that. Sorry, I just took a big sip of Pepsi Zero. <unk> there's it's um it's a work It's not necessarily a work day. It's still summer vacation here. But yeah, here we go, everybody. So what lives in the Great Plains, right? So the Great Plains, as a refresher, stretches from southern Canada, Alberta, Saskatchewan, ah Manitoba, down to like southwestern Texas. And we do have a diversity of of flora and fauna, right? So One, we do have, in terms of sustenance, what are people subsisting on? and There's a wide variety of ground nuts, but also prairie turnips. There are grasses and tubers and tree nuts that people are, throughout time, intensively procuring. right So it's not just meat on the plains, but there's there's a decent amount of ground nuts, and especially prairie turnips. But in terms of what other animals do we got,
00:04:49
Speaker
there's There's a wide variety, right? So there's a fantastic book and it's called the American Serengeti, The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains. And it talks about what happened to the six major species of the Great Plains in the 19th century, but also contextualizes it um through the ice age. And one of the coolest parts about that book is how it compares Great Plains fauna to the African Serengeti, right? So that's the name of the book, American Serengeti, that the United States and Canadian Great Plains region had
00:05:22
Speaker
as much biodiversity of fauna as the African Serengeti. So it had the same kinds of animals that African Serengeti does today. So like this really was an incredibly rich environment. and And the name of that book is American Serengeti, The Last Big Animals of the Great Plains. And it's written by Dan Flores. It came out in 2017. I will put a link to that in the show notes. And as always, like our major sources, especially for this section, we're turning back to ah Dr. Douglas Banforth's book, The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains.
00:06:03
Speaker
This is, this is it, right? This is our major source. And of course that will always remain in the show notes are my major sources for, for the show and Doug's book will continue to come up.
00:06:14
Speaker
I'm not making any money off of promoting his book. ah I just really do think this is a phenomenal resource. So if tug ever hears this show, thank you for putting up with my nonsense since 2018. Um, you know, but he's not giving me any for DM and I got to get onto content. Um, so what are the animals we got? we We got snapping turtles, two different kinds of rabbits. We both have cottontails, but also Jack rabbits. You know, we don't have, you know, snowshoe hairs. Those are going to be in an Alpine environment, not necessarily the Great Plains.
00:06:42
Speaker
So, prairie dogs are another huge resource. Antelope and deer. So, we think of some of these herbivores. Actually, I'm pretty sure snapping turtles, well they, I don't know what snapping turtles are. They eat fish, so they're not herbivores. When we think about like large herbivores, antelope are a pretty big resource as well as deer. Now, my understanding of Deer is mule deer are a great plains and Rocky mountain species. White tail deer, which do exist in the great plains today. I do believe, and I have no sources for this. So if I am wrong, someone emailed me and or tell me I'm an idiot on Instagram.
00:07:21
Speaker
white-tailed deer come from the East Coast and the Appalachians, and they get pushed out with Euro-American settlers moving westward, right? So mule deer, ancestral of the Great Plains. In terms of birds, right, you get the different kinds of eagles, but people aren't necessarily eating those. Eagles, hawks, bald eagles, golden eagles, falcons, these are these are pretty common. But another huge one are sandhill cranes.
00:07:46
Speaker
So sandhill cranes, aka T-bones in the sky, are a massive resource. And there is a huge sandhill crane migration through the central US airway. They cover the sky. they are like Their migration is a phenomenal event that for those that love birding or those that love nature,
00:08:07
Speaker
should try to plan a time sometime during their life to make a trip out to the Great Plains and see that migration. It's incredible. There's the Sandhill Crane Trust in Nebraska, which is um operated by like the World train Crane Trust. Heather Hanson, who is the daughter of Jim henson Hanson, the guy who played Kermit the Frog and was a famous puppeteer. That's his daughter, and she she runs it. It's an incredible incredible spot. Other than the birds, in terms of predators,
00:08:36
Speaker
We get both the, we get wolves. So we get, we get gray wolves. Yes, we get the American gray wolf. Um, we also get coyotes, wolves, coyotes, coyotes actually were originally named prairie wolves. Um, and that to term coyote actually comes from a Nahuatl word coyote or something like that. Devin Pettigrew, I think we talked about it on our life and runs at one point, but they were, you know, colloquially termed prairie wolves up until this, the Southwest and the Spanish speakers introduced coyote or coyote. But we also get.
00:09:06
Speaker
Grizzly bears, grizzly bears. I do know this grizzly bears are actually a great planes animal. Like those giant little claws, they got giant little claws. That's, that's an awesome one of those giant knives. They have her claws are meant for burrowing into the great planes, like to dig up the ground and the grasses into burrow. They are a great planes predator and they get pushed into the mountains.
00:09:32
Speaker
during Euro-American westward expansion. right So like the deer getting pushed out of the Appalachians, you know at least the deer got pushed out, white tails got pushed out, elk just got annihilated out there. ah Grizzly bears become more of a mountain kind of bear as you know in the 18th and 19th centuries, they're getting either hunted to extinction in their areas are pushed into the mountains. And these animals right are our resources to indigenous people and even you know colonizers. and And that's why it needs to be noted. right like These will come up, like the different aspects of these animals in terms of, are they being used as a resource to sustain populations? Or are parts of their bodies being utilized in economy?
00:10:16
Speaker
Right. So like bear claws. We'll talk about those later. Eagle feathers. Um, even some hunting strategies, like when it comes to the utilization of like wolf, wolf parts for hunting, hunting purposes. So that's, you know, that's clearly not all of the animals.
00:10:33
Speaker
And this is very specific to the Holocene, right? The Holocene is this period after the end of the last ice age of 13,000 years ago, up until today. I know people have been arguing for something called the Anthropocene, but last I checked, ah people use it, but I think geologists decided it wasn't an actual thing, like the basis for it hasn't materialized. I'm not sure how geologists determine these these epics, epox epics. I'm not sure.
00:11:03
Speaker
not a geologist. So we'll have to ask, ask them, ask your geology friend, but throughout these five regions of the Great Plains, I know there, there's different ecosystems, but these are the primary animals that, that reside within, within the Great Plains. When we think of Great Plains, wolves, bears, coyotes, especially a deer, there's, you know, elk in the Northern Plains, along the Missouri river. And then there's one animal.
00:11:33
Speaker
in particular, that the Great Plains is absolutely famous for. And so we're going to dive into the importance of the North American Bison here on the second on the back half of this episode. So stay tuned after these messages.
00:11:48
Speaker
And welcome back to episode two of the Great Plains archaeology podcast. Still me, Professor Carlton Schill, Chief Gover. And we're going to talk about bison in the second half. Why bison are important to the Great Plains, both now and in in the past.
00:12:06
Speaker
so the The first half of this was a lot of rambling and just like, here's all the animals that we have bison and need a little bit more background to them. So the North American bison, they're commonly known as Buffalo. They're not actually Buffalo, like Buffalo, their own very specific thing. North American bison.
00:12:24
Speaker
These are very much a great plains animal. Now, there are woodland bison. There were woodland bison, but realistically, there are like meadow bison in the woods. They would like run between meadows. But the Great Plains bison, that is like the literal bread and butter of North American, great plains, indigenous societies.
00:12:47
Speaker
you know diets, like bison are king in terms of subsistence resources. you know there's There's another, we'll talk about a queen later, but definitely in terms of meat, it is bison. Now bison are important for a couple of things, right? So we've we discussed in the episode one about the seasonality of the Great Plains, that we have seasons in this region. We have a summer, winter, spring, fall, all that jazz. Now in the winter time, bison,
00:13:15
Speaker
are in small herds. They can be concentrated though, but there's two different kinds of herds. You have bachelor herds, which are just all male bison, and then you have nursery herds, which are cows and their calves. So they separate. You know have the bachelor herds, you have the cow calf herds. Now, during the winter time, there is poor forage, especially in the western plains, right? The western plains, which is which is a little bit more arid,
00:13:42
Speaker
but bit more drier bison by and large regardless if they're in the southern plains central plains or northern plains they migrate to the east, closer to the Missouri River, right? Because in the eastern part of the Great Plains, that's where our tall grass prairie is. You see how we're connecting the dots now? So there's much more accurate there's much more abundance of of flora. So as the winter die-off starts occurring, there's more forage in the eastern is the west. It's not great forage, but there's more of it. And during this time we do get
00:14:14
Speaker
um winter kill where there are bison that basically starve to death. As we get towards the spring, that's when we start getting calving season. That's when the pregnant cows start birthing baby bison. So this coincides with spring grasses beginning to grow, which is important because as grass is growing, they are more nutrient rich. So as grasses are coming back and reestablishing themselves after the wintertime when they are in their prime, that's when bison are having their calves and calves not only have the mother's milk, but they also have access to much more nutrient rich grasses to graze on to to help them grow. Right. It's not random. As we get to the summer,
00:14:59
Speaker
right So in the wintertime, we have our bachelor and cow herds. They're separate they're and small herds. The calves are trying to get born in the spring. Towards the summer, we get the bachelor and these nursery herds. They begin to coalesce and they're moving to the west. So they're migrating west towards the short grass prairie step.
00:15:21
Speaker
these, these small herds been coalescing into massive herds for the summer rut. So this is when mating mating between bison is occurring, right? So in these larger herds, and this is when, when the rut is taking place, this is when mating is taking place. And the thing with, with bison bison rut is male bison go they go hard, hard in the paint, as the ah famous poet Waka Faka flame would say, they're they're very aggressive in trying to determine it. And there's this really cool, like evolutionary aspect of bison, right? Like if you look at Ice Age bison, you look at bison through time, like even just looking at bison latifrons, those horns and their horns, not antlers, which means that their horns are made of the same materials or fingernails, they look like
00:16:10
Speaker
longhorn cattle horns, where they're basically just jutting straight out. And if you look at the way that bison, like male bison duke it out over mates, right there's a lot of head action in which they're bashing into each other. And you know evolutionary speaking, you can see those giant jutting out horns goring other bison and killing bison. And over time, as you look at skeletons of and the heads of bison, you can see the horns not only getting smaller, but more curved up.
00:16:40
Speaker
And you know like evolution isn't a cognizant process. It is the process of how a organism changes over time, but it's not intentional. like Bison didn't just think, hey, I'm tired of watching my friends and family die every time it's like time to get at it. We should you know evolve to have curved and shorter horns. you know Now with modern bison, their horns are curved. They point straight up. It is much more difficult to kill other male bison during the rut. So there's probably there's this evolutionary aspect to bison mating that their horns have changed over time to reduce the risk of serious injury during the rut. right So I think that's just absolutely fascinating. And with that, as the rut is complete and as autumn starts to to to come on, and bison begin to migrate back out east. Now, there is a little bit of, like, circularity to this migration. They don't just follow the same path. Like, there is a circuit that bison take in the migratory paths. ah Dr. Casey Carlson from Augustana has done really good research on that, and I will find that site, that paper, and put it down below in terms of bison seasonality. So bison are generally going to the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains.
00:17:51
Speaker
Look, that's kind of their path, right? So, which coincides with the seasons of the Great Plains. They get up to the summer for rot, they coalesce in these massive herds, and then as it starts getting colder, they move back out east where there's just more vegetation, so they don't starve to death in in the wintertime, right?
00:18:08
Speaker
So, there is very much a correlation between bison behavior, foraging and grazing patterns with climate and and grassland you know seasonality, right? As precipitation decreases, so does forage production, right? So, there's less food for bison to eat. If you go north to south in the Great Plains, temperature goes up and so does the proportion of warm season grasses. So, as you get higher temperatures, you get more so you know seasonality grasses. so like which is fantastic. And then more food of course means more animals and more immense herds. More cool season grasses means better autumn nutrition and less winter kill, right? So you can see how the environment of the Great Plains from this east to west axis and north to south axis, how the vegetation habitat are affecting bison behavior. And bison behavior in particular,
00:19:03
Speaker
has a huge role to play with human behavior and how humans hunt these animals. So there is like there is very much an intricate web and how these things matter and how they all coalesce into understanding the archaeological record and better trying to understand human behavior, because if you don't understand the environment, you don't have a good grassman-wide bison are moving across the landscape. And if you don't have that understanding grass, you might completely miss why humans are acting in certain ways that they do. And and there's differences in seasonal nutrition between bison, right? So not only just where are they at time and what they're doing, like the breeding of bison and how bri bison mate is also like incredibly important. So in the summer,
00:19:42
Speaker
the bison cows are getting knocked up, which means like pregnant bison in the autumn and winter is supporting the growth of ah calf that's going to be birthed into spring. So a lot of their excess fat during that time is going to be spent on ah their energies and be spent on the production of gestating a baby bison calf. And so as they're moving east in the autumn, they are just absolutely fattening up on as much late season grasses as possible to survive the winter months and then give a calf and in the and the spring. and And as such, males in the wintertime are fatter, right? Because males don't give birth to baby bison calves. So all that dense, late you know autumn forage is just spent on themselves. Now, in the springtime, all of the bison calves, adults, males, females, they're all fattening up on fresh, nutrient dense and rich grass.
00:20:42
Speaker
And during this time, as they're fattening up, right, their hides are also thinner. So in the winter, as they're like, as, as they're going through the fat reserves, their hides are thicker. Whereas the spring after they've gotten through the winter, you know, their hides are thinner. They're just fattening up. Now in the summertime, female bison are absolutely fatter than male bison because the male bison are in ruts. So they're, they're all their energy is being spent on mating. The female bison are just kind of sitting in there and getting, you know, picking,
00:21:10
Speaker
who they're going to mate with. The male bison are spending all their spring energy that they've been ah saving up for, for the summer rut. In the fall, all of them are fattening up again. Um, and the winter hides are thick. So body fat absolutely matters for bison to get through the winter and therefore for people's nutrition. And so bison are incredibly important. Like as we'll talk about later in the show and we have time to discuss it, we have a couple minutes, we think of by people are hunting bison.
00:21:40
Speaker
Generally, traditionally bison are really only hunted in mass twice a year before you get horses. You have a summer hunt and a winter hunt. So in the summer hunt, right, the hides are thinner and in the winter hunt, bison hides are thicker. Bison in the winter are closer to the Missouri River. Bison in the summer are closer to the Rocky Mountain Front Range.
00:22:00
Speaker
Hunted bison in the winter time, what are those hides used for? Like if you have these thick bison hides, these winterized bison hides, it is very difficult to get a bone sewing needle through that hide. So those hides in particular are being used for blankets. and And the male herds, the small bachelor herds in the winter, they're gonna be more rich and fat.
00:22:27
Speaker
They're going to be huskier. So there's even from from an ecological standpoint, if you're an indigenous person or even a Euro-American settler, male bison in the wintertime are going to have more bang for your buck. When if you do a summer hunt, right?
00:22:44
Speaker
the hides are thinner. So when you're you're processing a bison, they've just beefed up from the spring. You know, male bison aren't gonna be as tasty because they're jacked up on adrenaline. They're trying to breed, but everyone's hides are thinner. And when you have thinner hides, it's much easier to make clothing. So those wind those summer hides from bison, if you're making clothes, those are best for your teepee covers, your shade covers, and clothing.
00:23:10
Speaker
So you can see this relationship between bison and behavior and human behavior and the kinds of material culture that exists because of bison behavior, which is then determined by the seasonality of the Great Plains. So now we can see how all these connect and why I'm having to talk about environment and animals and animal behavior, because all of these things intertwine, right? So bison behavior is very much reliant on the ecosystem, the seasonality of the Great Plains.
00:23:38
Speaker
environmental patterns and people's behavior, hunting behavior, subsistence practices reflect Bison's role on the Great Plains and how they how they interact on the Great Plains. So the big thing is like body fat matters for Bison to get through the winter and for people's nutrition. Bison and people, that's a whole thing. Bison are are a huge theme to archaeology of the Great Plains. We will talk about Bison ad nauseum because bison are just so critical through most of Great Plains history. Yeah. I mean, that's, I guess we can talk about some bison and forage availability, especially in like the late 1800s, you know, there, there's also different herds of bison. You have like the Southern herd, Central herd, Northern herd, these herds, you know, they go through very, various changes over time.
00:24:25
Speaker
and I was recently out doing fieldwork in Nebraska with the Pawnee Nation and the state archaeologist in Nebraska, and we were talking about bison. and There was a bison hunt that the Pawnee took part in in western Oklahoma, if not Texas, in the late 1800s. They talked about how like the Pawnee just killed every bison possible.
00:24:45
Speaker
which isn't necessarily reflective of like traditional hunting techniques, but like the Pawnee were starving at that point in time, and we're and their ability to hunt was completely predicated on permission from the US s government. But we'll talk about like hunting practices through time across the Great Plains, and not always was the intent to wipe off whole herds, but it did absolutely happen. So yeah.
00:25:07
Speaker
That's been episode two, guys. I mean, we're getting through there. We're marching along. Next episode, we're going to talk about some some actual archaeology. So thank you, everyone, for joining me to episode two of the Great Plains Archaeology Podcast. I can't wait to explore the mysteries of the Great Plains with you. Our next episode, we will dive into archaeological taxonomy of the Great Plains. So until then,
00:25:31
Speaker
Keep your curiosity alive and your mind open to the stories waiting to be discovered beneath the prairie. I'm your host, Professor Carlton Chilcheap-Gover, and I will see you next time on the Great Plains Archdiology Podcast.
00:25:44
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Great Plains archaeology podcast. You can follow me on Instagram at Pawnee underscore archaeologist, and you can also email me at Great Plains Ark Podcast at gmail dot.com. And remember, anybody can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie. American author Willa Cather.
00:26:10
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his ah RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at ww www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.