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This preface states the book's thesis that American Indians influenced American literature, and delineates the author's methodologies employed to support this claim. To illustrate Of Plimoth Plantation's Native influence, the author reads the history from a Native point of view; analyzes the impact of Indianization upon the colonists; and uses close reading and theories of narratology to shed light upon Bradford's text. She also compares Bradford's text to extant works in the American Indian oral tradition, such as Navajo healing chants and Black Elk's vision recitation. The author evaluates Native–colonial social contact, explains pan-tribal metaphysics and intellectual systems operating in the seventeenth-century New World, and utilizes Native interpretative techniques in reaching her conclusions. In addition to Of Plimoth Plantation, she also discusses Mourt's Relation and Edward Winslow's Good Newes from New England.

Early photographs and historical accounts show northern-range aquatic areas bordered by dense riparian-shrub stands. Browsing impacts were first reported in 1914, followed by heavy impacts, then slight recovery during the elk herd reductions, and then widespread elimination of willow by today, except in exclosures and where wolf populations have scattered elk. Although numerous other causes have been proposed by park investigators, the evidence overwhelmingly points to elk herbivory. Evidence from architectural analysis of cottonwood stands points to tree recruitment prior to 1894, then virtually none from 1894-1962 except for one brief burst in 1934-1951, then some recruitment during the herd reduction, and none since 1974. Riparian fauna such as beaver, white-tailed deer, moose, avifauna, and some insect species have declined as riparian vegetation has been browsed down.

Northern-range elk numbers have changed through four successive population phases over time: low numbers in prehistory up to ~1883; censuses of >6,000 up to 20,000-35,000 from 1884-1958; <6,000 from 1959-1970 during park reductions; and >6,000 from 1971 to the low 2,000s after reductions stopped. Varying sources of evidence indicate alternating responses to each of these phases by all measured components of the northern-range biota. The pre-1872 northern-range ecosystem can be characterized by a hierarchical model constrained at the top by human and large-carnivore predators that limited elk numbers, prevented heavy herbivory, and allowed development of a vegetation that provided ample food for other herbivores, habitat for other faunal components, and constraints on hydrology. Removing the predatory constraints allowed elk increase that altered the structure of the system and progressively reduced biodiversity. These changes have disproved the ecological-effect tenets of the natural-regulation hypothesis. Expansion of the northern range since 1988 and the reestablishment of wolves could return the system structure back to its 1872 state, although it is too early to ascertain whether this will occur. Meanwhile, climate warming could alter system structure to conditions not previously experienced.

To manage a large elk herd that winters on a low-elevation, a 152,663 ha area along the northern border of Yellowstone National Park has gone through four phases since before park establishment in 1872: (1) no management except aboriginal hunting before 1872; (2) protection from hunting, predator control, and winter feeding between 1872 and the 1920s; (3) population reduction through trapping and shooting by park rangers from the 1920s through 1968; (4) no population control from 1969 to the present (the natural-regulation policy). Park officials' reports and 1914-1968 scientific observations agreed that the northern herd occurred at low numbers and migrated out of the park area in winter before 1872; increased to 20,000-35,000 wintering animals by the early 1900s; and was heavily impacting the northern-range biota. New research posed the 1971 natural-regulation ecological hypothesis and reinterpreted evidence to infer that elk in prehistory were abundant and wintered outside the park area; had not increased to 20,000-35,000 in the early 1900s; without control, the herd would stabilize at moderate numbers, and would do so without significant impact on the northern-range ecosystem as it had not in the 1914-1982 period. The purpose of this book is to review the entire documentary and scientific record to evaluate the effects of management phases on the size of the northern herd and, in turn, its effects on the northern range, thereby testing the natural-regulation hypothesis. The park may be entering a fifth management phase, depending on what effect the reestablishment of wolves in 1995 has on the herd, an effect that was not yet evident when this book was written.

Aspen in western North America grows in clones, and reproduces from root shoots (ramets) that replace short-lived (100-130 year) trees. Elk browse leaves and low branches producing browse lines, peel the bark of medium-age and young trees, browse off young ramets preventing reestablishment, and convert understories to low-diversity stands of grasses and annuals. Clones outside the park in the absence of ungulates, inside park exclosures, and in early park photographs, have mixed-age ramets, no highlines, and diverse understories of shrubs and perennial forbs. Contrary to natural-regulation advocates, photographic and dencrochronological evidence shows that aspens were a significant component of the vegetation before 1872 and in early park years. There has been no tree recruitment in the northern range since the 1920s, one-third of clones in early photographs have disappeared, the area of surviving clones has declined 80%, and associated biota of browsed clones has declined, all attributed primarily to elk browsing rather than other factors proposed by natural-regulation advocates.

Nutritional research on northern-range elk and park-wide bison shows catabolic decline and mortality increase through winters, and as functions of population size and winter severity, collectively indicating usurpation of the range resource and intraspecific competition. Bighorn sheep numbers declined from the 1920s until about the 1960s, increased during and immediately after the elk population low, and then declined again in the 1980s and 1990s when they occurred at low population viability. Contrary to one hypothesis, the bison population increased steadily from the 1960s, except for slight population reductions in the 1980s and 1990s, until it reached ~3,000 when animals began leaving the park. Mule deer declined from the early 1900s to 1958-1970, and increased substantially by the 1980s and 1990s when they began wintering outside the park. Pronghorns, numbering in the thousands in early park years, now exist at low population viability. With speculative estimates, elk numbers and biomass increased 3.2x between park establishment and the 1990s; the other four species together declined 67% in numbers and 40% in biomass.

Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Darwinism had a varied impact on American sensibilities. John Muir, for example, studied science and accepted the transmutative premise of evolutionary theory--but retained a biblically colored piety that saw God’s presence inscribed “in magnificent capitals” at places like Yosemite. During this extended period, writings by Mary Austin and Black Elk reflect their encounters with versions of naturalistic piety lying outside Euro-American ethnic traditions. Still, the written form in which Black Elk expressed his ecological vision of holiness, as imaged in the great hoop of the Lakota nation, was decidedly influenced by his contact with non-Indian culture. Although Rachel Carson was a committed scientist whose work presupposed belief in organic evolution, her writing also reflects a robust spirituality founded upon reverence for life and for the mystery of things unseen.

By mid-March, daytime temperatures above freezing have left muddy puddles all over the unpaved road that runs above and beside the beaver meadow. This road extends to the national park trailhead farther upstream but is now closed for winter. I enter the beaver meadow on a lightly overcast day that is windy, as I expect March to be. Lack of recent snowfall and warm temperatures have caused the snowpack to shrink down, and I no longer break through into hidden pockets of air around the base of the bushy willows. I do break through the ice on my snowshoes, sinking in a slow motion that allows me to scramble and keep my feet dry . . . mostly. I sink in above the ankle at one point and the resulting icy ache makes me appreciate the ability of beavers to stay warm. The snow covering the higher peaks and the adjacent lateral moraines appears about the same, but numerous spots of bare ground have appeared along the creek banks. The remaining snow resembles a blanket draped over the undulating, grassy ground rather than an integral part of the landscape. I stand on the snowbank at the downstream end of one of the larger beaver ponds. The dam merges into a vegetated berm and appears to be intact, but I can hear water flowing swiftly somewhere beneath the snow. Most puzzling is that I can’t see where the water is going: the nearest downstream standing water has no apparent inflow or current. Mysterious, intricate plumbing surrounds me. The beaver meadow is on the move, flowing and changing, preparing for the season of birth and growth. Standing water is noticeably more abundant than a month ago. Interspersed among the ice and snow are big puddles and little ponds, some connected and draining, others isolated and still. The still pond waters have a shallow covering of meltwater underlain by ice with large, irregularly shaped air pockets trapped in the upper layer. These I can easily break with the tip of my ski pole. Thousands of tiny bubbles deeper in the ice look milky.

The beaver meadow is quiet in January. For many plants and animals, winter is a season of subdued activity, or of waiting. North St. Vrain Creek remains open along the main channel, the water flowing clear but tinted brown as pine bark between snowy banks. Densely growing thickets of willow closely line the banks. Each stem starts pale brown near the ground, then grades upward to shades of maroon or yellowish orange at the branch tips. In a bird’s-eye view, these startling colors make the meadow stand out distinctly from the dark green conifers that define the edges of the meadow. Spruce and fir trees grow sharply pointed as arrows; pines present a slightly more rounded outline. Snow falls silently in thick flakes from the low, gray sky. The upper edges of the valley walls fade into snow and clouds. The sun appears briefly as a small, pale spotlight behind the clouds to the south. Snow mounds on the patches of ice in the shallow channel. The water flowing beneath creates flickers through the translucent ice like a winter fire of subdued colors and no heat. Tussocks form humps of straw-colored grass above the dark, frozen soil. Rabbit tracks line the snowy bank, sets of four paw marks with a large gap between each set. Something small crossed the bank, leaping one to two feet at a bound, two paws with slight drag marks behind them. In places the powdery snow has drifted deeply, but mostly it is shallow over a frozen crust. Beaver-gnawed sticks and stumps poke up through the snow. A large flood came through four months ago, in mid-September, washing out dams that the beavers have not yet rebuilt. Chunks of wood deposited among the willow stems by the floodwaters stand far above the January flow of the creek. A dipper fishes the creek, wading rather than swimming, at home in the cold water. The slate-gray bird is the only visible animal, busily probing the bed with its short bill, then pausing to stand and bob up and down.

February: when I first notice the days begin to stretch out after the tight curl of December and January. February: the month for creating new beavers. Somewhere sheltered from the cold light of sun reflecting off snow, in a bank den or a lodge, perhaps even in the water, the beavers are mating. The North St. Vrain beaver meadow is good habitat, and the adult pair will create another litter of two to four kits, allowing the current kits to become yearlings, and pushing the current yearlings out of the colony to find new homes and their own mates. I enter the meadow from the northern side on a mild day when a steady breeze seems to keep pace with the scattered clouds moving overhead. Just as I start to descend the slope into the meadow, I flush a moose resting beneath a big spruce. I am close enough to see the coarse, thick fur along the moose’s spine bristle with alarm and to note the scars where the animal dropped its antlers after the autumn rut. The alarm is only momentary. The moose ambles down the slope and into the meadow, steadily browsing willow stems as it moves. The stems have a hue of burnt yellow, and each bud is clearly visible, although not yet swollen. The past few days have been mild, and patches of bare ground show along the south-facing slopes and under the big conifers that border the beaver meadow. In the meadow itself the snow remains sufficiently deep to keep navigation easier by filling the pitfalls of the meadow—the winding canals, one beaver wide, and the steep-sided holes that the beavers dig to create air exchange near their dens. The snow bears abundant witness to the activity of the meadow. The widely spaced leaps of snowshoe hare tracks create diagonals between the creek and the conifer forests adjacent to the meadow. The single, precise line left by a fox has melted in the warmth of midday and refrozen into ice casts.

By late April, the snow is gone from the beaver meadow. The promises of March are starting to be fulfilled: insects are on the wing, some of the willows have furry catkins along their branches, and fish jump from the quiet waters of the beaver ponds. I can no longer easily get around the beaver meadows on foot unless I wear chest waders. The sound of the beaver meadow in March was primarily wind. By April, the sound is primarily moving water. The water gurgles, shushes, and whispers. In another month it will roar with the melting snows. Another three miles up the creek valley and 1,500 feet higher, one of my long-term study sites still lies under 6 feet of snow, but in the meadow I see only one patch of tenacious snow-ice in the deep shade beneath a spruce along the northern edge of the meadow. I know that snow will still fall here during late spring storms, but it will melt quickly. March felt on the cusp, as if it could as easily tip toward winter or spring. Late April is definitely spring headed toward summer. The beaver meadow remains a riverscape more brown and tan than green. The willows are still leafless, although some of the branch tips are turning pale yellow-green and others seem to be taking on a more vivid orange hue. I can see the leaf buds starting to swell. The grass has just begun to grow in dark green tips steadily forcing their way through the thick mat of last year’s dead stems. Clusters of new leaves on low-growing wintergreen are the only other sign of green outside of the channels. Some of the smaller side channels are thick with emerald green algae undulating slowly in the current. A stonefly lands on my hand. Its slender, dark gray body seems surprisingly delicate for a creature that has hatched into the vagaries of April air, with its potential for blasting winds and sudden snow squalls.

June, when the snows come hurrying from the hills and the bridges often go, in the words of Emily Dickinson. In the beaver meadow, the snows are indeed hurrying from the surrounding hills. Every one of the 32 square miles of terrain upslope from the beaver meadow received many inches of snow over the course of the winter. Some of the snow sublimated back into the atmosphere. Some melted and infiltrated into the soil and fractured bedrock, recharging the groundwater that moves slowly downslope and into the meadow. A lot of the snow sat on the slopes, compacted by the weight of overlying snow into a dense, water-rich mass that now melts rapidly and hurries down to the valley bottoms. North St. Vrain Creek overflows into the beaver meadow, the water spilling over the banks and into the willow thickets in a rush. I can hear the roar of water in the main channel well before I can see it through the partially emerged leaves of the willows. Overhead is the cloudless sky of a summer morning. A bit of snow lingers at the top of the moraines. Grass nearly to my knees hides the treacherous footing of this quivering world that is terra non-firma. I am surrounded by the new growth of early summer, yet the rich scents of decay rise every time I sink into the muck. I walk with care, staggering occasionally, in this patchy, complex world that the beavers have created. I abruptly sink to mid-thigh in a muck-bottomed hole, releasing the scent of rotten eggs, but less than a yard away a small pocket of upland plants is establishing a roothold in a drier patch. A seedling spruce rises above ground junipers shedding yellow pollen dust and the meticulously sorted, tiny pebbles of a harvester ant mound. I extract my leg with difficulty and continue walking. As I walk around the margin of another small pond, the water shakes. Sometimes the bottom is firm in these little ponds, sometimes it’s mucky—I can’t tell simply by looking through the water.

By mid-July, abundant water continues to move in all directions within the beaver meadow. Water flows noisily down the main channel, creating deep pools where it mixes with water entering from secondary channels. Deeper waters well up from beneath overhung banks and the willow stems along the banks remain partly submerged. Pieces of driftwood collect where the channel bends, floating in perpetual circles atop the shadowed water. The water is clear of suspended sediment but stained slightly brown. Flow is noticeably lower in the secondary channels, where algae and bacteria stain the cobbles reddish-brown. Shallow water runs down a beaver trail toward the main channel, and I can easily imagine the trail eroding into a small canal over a period of years. The fern-like stems of rust red that grew beneath the pond waters earlier in the season have now emerged and bloomed, revealing a row of pink flowers of elephant’s head. Diminutive white twinflowers bloom near the conifers at the edge of the meadow. Stalks of pink and white Pyrola flowers rise above their ground-hugging leaves, which have been green since April. Mountain bluebells form clusters of indigo among the green hues of the grasses and sedges. Broad white blossoms of cow parsnip create a canopy above the other herbaceous plants. Aptly named shooting stars resemble tiny bursts of yellow and white trailing spiraling pink petals as they lean over the ground. The songbirds are less vocal than in June now that they are busy tending to nestlings weak at flying, but I can still hear the notes of chickadees, sparrows, and warblers, underlain by the distant croaks of ravens. Hummingbirds continue their mating displays, diving toward the ground as though intent on suicide, only to pull up at the last moment. The red blazes on their throats flash like fragments of momentary flame amidst the thick greenery. Mosquitoes are more noticeable now, despite the damselflies and dragonflies busily hunting back and forth across the openings among the willows. Beds of matted grass lie dispersed across the meadow.

Emily Dickinson wrote a lovely poem using a brook as a metaphor for one’s interior life. The poem includes the lines: . . . And later, in August it may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware lest this little brook of life Some burning noon go dry! . . . No chance of the little brook going dry if it runs through a beaver meadow. The movement of water across and through the North St. Vrain beaver meadow has slowed perceptibly by August. Some of the secondary channels barely flow and the main channel is easily crossed on foot. The water remains high in the main beaver pond, but few of the small dams winding across the meadow have water spilling over them. My feet are less likely to sink into wet black muck as I wander through the meadow, and even the moose tracks leave less of an imprint in the drying soil. Plenty of water remains, however, and the meadow is a much brighter shade of green than the adjacent, drier hill slopes. Many flowers remain in bloom across the meadow. Stalks bristling with the elaborate, richly pink blossoms of elephant’s head rise above standing water. Dusky purple monkshood flowers in slightly drier soil, as do the showy blue and white columbines. The blue bell-shaped flowers of harebell mark the driest sites. The late-summer flowers are joined now by the spreading tan or scarlet caps of fungi, as well as green berries on the ground juniper and kinnikinnick growing on the drier terrace beside the beaver meadow. Songbirds born this summer are fully feathered and capable fliers, and some of the birds have already left the meadow for the year. Early morning temperatures carry a hint of the coming autumn. The beaver kits grow steadily more capable, too, and by now they are used to foraging on their own. Presumably, this frees the breeding adult female for more time spent in dam and lodge repair or starting the food cache for the coming winter.

The first week of September mostly feels like summer. The air on the dry terrace bordering the beaver meadow is richly scented with pine. Purple aster, blue harebells, and tall, yellow black-eyed Susan still bloom. Fungi are more abundant on the forest floor, and the tiny, purplish berries of kinnikinnick are sweet to the taste. The air is warm in the sunshine, but strong winds hurry rain showers through at intervals. Patches of last year’s snow linger on the surrounding peaks, even as the first light snows have already fallen in the high country. Down in the beaver meadow, the leaves of aspen, willow, birch, and alder are starting to assume their autumn colors. Here and there a small patch of yellow or orange appears among the green. Blades of grass have a pale orange tint and the strawberry leaves have gone scarlet, even as white asters, purple thistles, and a few other flowers continue to bloom. The creek is noticeably lower, its cobble bed slick with rust-brown algae. Exposed cobble and sandbars have grown wider as the water has shrunk back from the edge of the willows, and the main channel is easy to cross on foot. The clear water is chillingly cold in both the main channel and the side channels. The smaller side channels no longer flow, and a drape of mud mixed with bits of plants covers the cobbles. Wood deposited a year ago has weathered to pale gray. The older, marginal beaver ponds have shrunk noticeably, and the water is lower in the main ponds, where tall sedges now lie bent on the top of the declining water surface. The beavers remain active: following fresh moose tracks, I come on a newly built beaver dam on a small side channel. By the third week of September, autumn has clearly arrived in the mountains. The air remains quite warm during the day, but nights of frost are swiftly bringing out the autumn colors. Whole stands of willows and aspen now glow golden or pumpkin-orange.

At the nadir of the year, this is how morning comes to the beaver meadow. Just as the sun rises above the eastern horizon, a flush of pale rose lights the snow newly fallen on the highest peaks. The beaver meadow remains in shadow, silent but for the creek flowing quietly between its rims of ice. The air temperature is well below freezing and frost whitens the pine needles like a dark-haired person starting to go gray. Wisps and sheets of snow flag off the summits in the steady wind. Over the course of a few minutes, the summit snow warms from pale rose to faint orange and then a rich, warm gold that also lights the rock outcrops at lower elevations. The wind reaches the beaver meadow before the sunlight, coming in abrupt blasts that shake loose the little tufts of snow remaining on the pine boughs. The wind sends the snow crystals slaloming across the ice on the creek with a dry, skittering sound like that of blowing sand. Before long, the meadow is submerged in a continual rushing sound created by wind gusting through the pines up slope, along the valley walls. The lateral moraine to the south keeps the beaver meadow in shadow until 9:30 a.m. Nothing is so slow as waiting for the warmth of sunlight on a cold winter morning. When the sunlight does reach the meadow, it brings out the colors of water, ice, grasses, and willows. Flowing portions of the creek change from gray to orange brown. The snow reflects the light in a painfully intense glare broken by the deep, long shadows that everything casts. With the sunlight comes a steady wind that blasts the crystalline snow onto my face like grit. Not much snow has fallen yet, but North St. Vrain Creek is completely frozen in places and covered with snow. The ice records the movements of water, freezing the pulses and turbulence in ice ripples and ledges, motionless swirls and bands. It seems a miracle that any water still flows in this gray and white world of ice and snow.

Hidden by rocks near a waterhole in Australia’s desert interior an Aboriginal woman and her children catch their first sight of the shockingly large animal of which they have previously only heard: the newcomer’s kangaroo. Thousands of kilometres to the west and high in southern Africa’s mountains a shaman completes the painting of an animal that does not exist, horned at the front, bushy tail at the rear, a composite of two species, one long familiar, the other new. Across the Atlantic Ocean on the grasslands of Patagonia the burial of an Aónik’enk leader is in its final stages, four of his favourite possessions killed above the grave to ensure his swift passage to the afterlife. To the north in what Americans of European descent call New Mexico, Diné warriors chant the sacred songs that ensure their pursuers will not catch them and that they will return safely home. And on the wintry plains of what is not yet Alberta, Siksikáwa hunters charge into one of the last bison herds they will harvest before the snows bring this year’s hunting to an end. Two things unite these very different scenes. First, though we cannot be sure, the historical, ethnographic, and archaeological sources on which they are based allow for them all happening on precisely the same day, sometime in the 1860s. Second, all concern people’s relationship with one and the same animal—pindi nanto, karkan, kawoi, ∤íí’, ponokáómita·wa—the animal that English speakers know as ‘horse’. And that simple fact provides the basis for this book. For, before 1492, horses were confined to the Old World—Europe, Asia, and Africa north of the tropical rainforests and a line reaching east through South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia to the sea. They were wholly unknown in Australasia, the Americas, or southern Africa. As a result, the relationships implied by the vignettes I have just sketched, as well as those involving Indigenous populations in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and New Zealand, evolved quickly. And they were still evolving when these societies were finally overwhelmed by European colonization.

This chapter investigates the hunting of deer, elk, and other creatures in Rocky Mountains during the prehistoric period. It describes the remains of mule deer and Rocky Mountain elk in archaeological remains and discusses the behavioral patterns of other animals including small mammals, birds, and black and grizzly bears. It also explains the hunting strategies for these animals.