Would the Mountain Men have survived?

[Mtnboy]

If the game populations were what they are today, back when the first settlers came West, do you think as many would have made it? Specifically those who lived off the land, trappers/mountain men etc.

Random thought for a Monday night...

 

[Darren Best]

The Lewis and Clark expedition nearly starved to death when they crossed over into Idaho. If not for the local tribes generous help and salmon, they would of perished. There was very little game in this area. The locals primarily subsisted off of fish, Kettle Falls being the most famous of places they gathered and did this.

On the plains of Montana they were eating a daily ration of 9 lbs of elk meat a day. Think about that the next time you eat a 1 lb steak and feel full.

You have to remember that elk were a plains animal then as well as the bison.

The true live off the land people were the native Americans, who by necessity were nomadic, they had to follow the food with the seasons.

Food sources determined how many people lived far enough past breeding age for their children to survive long enough to produce offspring.

Some tribes were partially farmers, but they still used hunting to supplement their food and for some reason were weaker and constantly harassed by more aggressive and nomadic tribes, few if any survived into modern times. Possibly because of always being in a fixed location and easy to find whereas being on the move was more defensible as long as they had food available.

Anthropologists believe that a cooling trend just about the time Colombus landed in the new world contributed to an explosion in grass forage available for bison which in turned caused a population explosion for them and in turn a huge boon to food sources for the plains natives. Add into this mix the Spanish pony and guess what you get. It is believed that the elevated numbers of both bison and plains Indians was not normal historically.

So what were game numbers? What is your criteria, how far back do you want to go, what were current weather conditions. There were and are so many variables involved you can't really do anything except guess.

Go back to the year 500 AD? 1000? 1500? Where do you start. Also what area do you start, for the first time in what 150 years or more there are elk in Kentucky again. As you can see there are a myriad of variables to consider.

This is exactly why the whole idea of global warming is such a joke, it's all a guess and quite frequently wrong.

The last question is, what would a person do to survive. The Comanche were well known for their ability to live off the land and survive. Eating the contents of an animals gut sac for food and water when none was available, was just one of the things they could and would do.

 

[Darren Best]

If you have never heard of Hugh Glass, read up on him, a very interesting character.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass

 

[7mag.]

The Lewis and Clark expedition nearly starved to death when they crossed over into Idaho. If not for the local tribes generous help and salmon, they would of perished. There was very little game in this area. The locals primarily subsisted off of fish, Kettle Falls being the most famous of places they gathered and did this.

On the plains of Montana they were eating a daily ration of 9 lbs of elk meat a day. Think about that the next time you eat a 1 lb steak and feel full.

You have to remember that elk were a plains animal then as well as the bison.

The true live off the land people were the native Americans, who by necessity were nomadic, they had to follow the food with the seasons.

Food sources determined how many people lived far enough past breeding age for their children to survive long enough to produce offspring.

Some tribes were partially farmers, but they still used hunting to supplement their food and for some reason were weaker and constantly harassed by more aggressive and nomadic tribes, few if any survived into modern times. Possibly because of always being in a fixed location and easy to find whereas being on the move was more defensible as long as they had food available.

Anthropologists believe that a cooling trend just about the time Colombus landed in the new world contributed to an explosion in grass forage available for bison which in turned caused a population explosion for them and in turn a huge boon to food sources for the plains natives. Add into this mix the Spanish pony and guess what you get. It is believed that the elevated numbers of both bison and plains Indians was not normal historically.
I
So what were game numbers? What is your criteria, how far back do you want to go, what were current weather conditions. There were and are so many variables involved you can't really do anything except guess.

Go back to the year 500 AD? 1000? 1500? Where do you start. Also what area do you start, for the first time in what 150 years or more there are elk in Kentucky again. As you can see there are a myriad of variables to consider.

This is exactly why the whole idea of global warming is such a joke, it's all a guess and quite frequently wrong.

The last question is, what would a person do to survive. The Comanche were well known for their ability to live off the land and survive. Eating the contents of an animals gut sac for food and water when none was available, was just one of the things they could and would do.

Well said, and I agree. In many areas that were densely forested, there weren't as many animals as there are today. Ungulates have thrived due to logging and conservation. Plains game has suffered, but the mountains are far more populated with game than 150 years ago.

 

[justin davis]

They would've have survived with today's crazy social media. Lol.

 

[littlebuf]

Elk hunter beat me to it. Theres more deer today than then. The lumber jacks axe despite what the greenies would like to admit has increased habitat and feed for ungalets

 

[Shrek]

And the untouched wilderness wasn't so wild either. Indians were draining swamps around here for thousands of years and any forest that didn't naturally burn they set fire to when the undergrowth matured. There are no Native Americans , only successive waves of colonizers and since humans arrived there has been no wilderness. It's all urbanites fantasies and revisionist history that greenies and native rights people are chasing.

 

[bigeasygator]

yeah, basically what everyone else said. Those old timers would have been THRILLED to walk into a wilderness like we have today. Higher game levels, no Native Americans, no grizzly bears in most of the range.

 

[jmez]

They weren't afraid of grizzly bears and considered it good sport when one was found. They would actually lament the grizzly population.

 

[bigeasygator]

They weren't afraid of grizzly bears and considered it good sport when one was found. They would actually lament the grizzly population.

I think there are plenty of folks that would be more than thrilled had they not had to deal with grizzlies. Saying they weren't afraid of grizzly bears is painting the group of them with a broad brush. If you've read the Lewis and Clark journals it's pretty clear they had a healthy respect for those bears and the concept of them being "good sport" wore off pretty quickly. Not saying some folks would miss the bears, I think it's safe to say that there'd be another subset that would be happy to see them gone as it pertained to survival. Keep in mind it's pretty much these people that wiped them out in the first place.

 

[Shrek]

They weren't afraid of grizzly bears and considered it good sport when one was found. They would actually lament the grizzly population.

Thats why by the beginning of the 20th century grizzly bears were eliminated from almost all of their native range and just hanging on in the most rugged parts of this country where people didn't want to live. Just more revisionist history , pioneers wanted grizzlies around .

 

[jmez]

I don't consider Lewis and Clark mountain men. I've read extensively about both Lewis and Clark and the mountain men.

It wasn't the mountain man or fur trappers that wiped out the grizzly bears.

So seems we have three threads going in one. Lewis and Clark, the mountain men and the pioneers. All distinctly different.

 

[2rocky]

Mtn boy, Visit the Museum of the Mountain man in Pinedale, WY sometime.

They had pretty good supply behind them. The 1830 supply caravan consisted of: eighty-one men on mules, ten wagons drawn by five mules each, two Deerborn carriages, twelve head of cattle, and a milk cow.

THis is the best online detail of the mountain men http://www.thefurtrapper.com/fur_trade.htm

 

[Shrek]

Specifically the mountain men I would bet the house that if all the grizzly bears died that would have been fine with them. They were in the fur business and any bears were a danger to their furs and themselves.

 

[Darren Best]

Historically elk were not a mountain animal, but they adapted to it very well and this was done by humans. I've no idea how big the elk herds were along the Missouri river prior to the white man coming west, but Lewis and Clark said the elk were numerous, practically tame and very easy to kill and the herds reached all the way to Iowa. Keep in mind that elk had already been nearly wiped out in the east by 1800. Also figure out how many elk you have to kill to feed 40+ men 9 lbs of elk meat a day.

If you ever get a chance, stop in at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation museum in Missoula MT, they have a lot of really neat information on elk and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery.

My earliest known white ancestor, Samuel Marksberry arrived in Virginia in the 1680's and the family spread into Kentucky before 1700 and began to spread further beyond that later on. He was a surveyor, probably saw elk in that area and likely shot and ate them when the chance presented itself. Sadly with no hunting regulations and the ever increasing pressure of expansion, the elk died out. He married a Cherokee woman, as did his son, also named Samuel. They would have of spent a considerable amount of time on the edge of the wilderness and frontier exploring and plotting out homesteads for the expansion west.

In the Northeast and Midwest especially, deer numbers today are way above normal historically. The local soccer mom and her little mini van are more of a threat to deer than anything else.

Way back in the late 70's and early 80's when I started elk hunting I knew an old timer that started hunting the North Fork of the St Joe above Avery. The government had started a game preserve for elk, which was meant to be a source of meat for the WWII effort. The second largest naval training base in the US was here in the Northern Idaho (figure that one out).

I don't recall exactly what year he started hunting it, his mind wasn't all there when I met him and it was difficult to talk to him, but I believe it was the late 40's or early 50's.

The old timers daughter had married a friend of mine and he started hunting the same area in the early 70's. The old timer had killed an elk every year he hunted it and had never traveled more than a half mile from the road, ever. When my friend started hunting it, he was describing areas that his father in law had never seen in 20 years of hunting the area.

The elk had started to escape higher up into the mountains to get away from the ever increasing hunting pressure. But the herds were growing at an exponential rate because of predator suppression and excellent forage created by logging. With the introduction of the logging truck and chainsaw, logging was a booming business in North Idaho.

One thing the old timers did and this was a rule handed down by them and I remember it will, shoot every bear and cougar you see, period and leave it lay.

These days the logging industry has been all but decimated, apex predators are back in force and humans are crowding out winter range. It doesn't take much thinking to figure out where this is heading.

The reintroduction of the grizzly bear and the wolf and their impact was intentional, to end hunting, period. I remember when my ex step father used to tell me his crazy theories about the tree huggers and the government. I thought he was loony, but here it is now, all playing out just the way he said it would.

Those of us that hunted in the 80's and 90's saw the best it's ever going to be. The wolves will continue to spread virtually unchecked until they start snatching Fido and Mittens off of porches in the big cities, then people will ask how this happened.

The earliest mountain men had it good, but once the farmers, gold diggers, trains and other civilization arrived, the good life was gone and this was by design.

The army was no match at all for the plains Indians, not even close. The natives were lighter, faster, better fighters and much more adapted to living life on the move. Quannah Parker outsmarted and out maneuvered the US cavalry for years while dragging around women, children, the old and thousands of pounds of supplies and food. The Comanche halted westward expansion for forty years and even began to roll it back. The Sioux and Blackfeet had a similar effect in Montana and the Dakotas.

The governments answer to expanding into Indian territory was to wipe out their food supplies, the elk and bison. Control a populations food supply and you control the population.

It's all a matter of when and where you are talking about. It has changed a lot in 400 years here.

 

[Nick Muche]

Read the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella.

 

[boom]

Read the book American Buffalo by Steven Rinella.

great read. i learned a lot of history,.

back on topic..have you ever been on some mountain side and gnarly bush..and realized, back in the day, folks pushed a team of horses and a wagon thru that stuff!! personally, i oooo and ouch if have to walk any distance on open ground without shoes. what did the folks back in the day wear on their feet?

 

[bigeasygator]

I don't consider Lewis and Clark mountain men. I've read extensively about both Lewis and Clark and the mountain men.

It wasn't the mountain man or fur trappers that wiped out the grizzly bears.

So seems we have three threads going in one. Lewis and Clark, the mountain men and the pioneers. All distinctly different.

Personally, I view them all as pioneers. They were the first people to explore and settle the West. They were different in many ways, but in many ways they were the same. My research tells me that, generally speaking, the preferred a West where the grizzly wasn't around. My take is that they viewed the bear as anywhere from a nuisance to a downright terror and all of these people had a hand in wiping them out. Read about folks like Ben Lilly -- the hunter/trapper that is rumored to have killed the last grizzly in the Gila and the man who probably did more to wipe the grizzly out of the southwest than anyone else. Don't mean to take the OP off-topic...I'm absolutely fascinated with the time period of the mountain man and the settlement of the West and have read many books about the exploits of folks back in this era. It's an amazing time to think about and contemplate. They did it all without merino wool or Kuiu or Kifaru or scoped rifles or Lowa boots or you name it. And, as many have pointed out, they did it with a much harsher set of circumstances (less game, more Indians, more predators) than we encounter now. Pretty amazing stuff.

 

[tttoadman]

Just along the the lines of "successive waves of colonizers" as Shrek called it. I had a funny experience at my folks place in Fossil OR. I was deer hunting the first year that they had their place over there. I came across what I thought was a fantastic little hidout/ambush spot with rocks that had relatively easy shooting lanes that weren't more than 30 yds. I was thinking to myself that this would be a great spot to bring a bow. As i shuffled my feet around, i noticed 3 arrowheads in the rocks at my feet. It made me laugh that some guy had the exact same thought as i did hundreds of years ago.

 

[Darren Best]

So seems we have three threads going in one. Lewis and Clark, the mountain men and the pioneers. All distinctly different.

All tied together for the same reason, food. No army marches without, no tribe lives without it, no family raises children without it, no man goes anywhere without it.

With no super markets and no farms nearby, food had to be hunted on a daily basis.