The Big Horn Sheep, staple diet of the tribe.
Our valley was only settled by white men a little over a century ago, hardly a blip in history compared to at least 9,000 years of habitation by Native Americans. One cannot live long in this land of spectacular natural beauty without becoming aware of a previous culture which had carved out a unique life style. They lived very much in harmony with nature.
We often find stone tools like arrowheads, hatchets, scrapers, awls and chippings which give silent testimony to great activity over the millennia. There is a spot near the ranch just below some awe inspiring pillars of rock on a high point which reminds me of the Acropolis with a superb view of the Wind River Valley and the snowcapped mountains beyond. Heaps of chippings lie there in great profusion attesting to the fact that craftsmen worked here for years to make their stone tools.
A “wickiup” from the time of the sheep eaters a few miles from the Ranch.
The Sheep Eaters (named after their staple diet), or Tukudeka, lived high in mountain fastnesses favored also by the bighorn sheep they ate. They were a branch of the Shoshone. Both Indians and sheep found a precarious niche in rugged mountain country at higher altitudes. Even in winter, like many of the sheep, they sought the windswept slopes at high altitudes where there was little snow and travel was easier, especially on the southern exposures. Their dwellings were in caves and wickiups in sheltered canyons high in the mountains. They used the mountain ridges as routes for travel rather than river valleys like the tribes frequenting lower levels. They were expert craftsmen, especially famous for their tremendously powerful compound bows made mainly from laminated bighorn sheep horns. These bows were highly sought after trade items with other tribes. They are said to have been capable of driving an arrow straight through a buffalo.
Tucked away in the mountains behind the ranch traces can still be found of the sheep traps the Indians used to catch the wild sheep. They built wooden fences as wings to drive them into narrow corrals where they could be killed. We have also found a wickiup in a remote, narrow canyon an hour’s walk from the main lodge. The sticks are still standing in this sheltered place after at least 140 years.
Tony Taylor has written a hauntingly beautiful little book about these people called ALPINE SENTINELS published by Brushhog Books. He describes how in the mid 1700s the Plains Indian Tribes acquired the horse and the gun. This caused a technological revolution which totally transformed their way of living by making the buffalo much easier to hunt and facilitating travel, transport and warfare. In Taylor’s words the Plains Indian culture turned toward abundance, speed, power, and mobility, forsaking most of the old ways. The Sheep Eaters on the other hand clung to their ancient culture and still depended on reverence, cunning, simplicity and finesse.
Sadly the advent of the white man and his diseases like small pox decimated the Sheep Eaters. At about the same time diseases brought in by domestic sheep nearly wiped out the bighorn sheep herds and the surviving Indians had to move to the Wind River Indian Reservation where they sought refuge with their Shoshone cousins.
