July 4, 1776 in Yellowstone

What Yellowstone Was Like in 1776

July 4th, 1776. All of us know that was the date when representatives of the thirteen original British colonies in North America absolved themselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, declaring that “these united colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.” Thomas Jefferson’s celebrated words included what many historians consider to be the most profound sentence ever written in America, the one that begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident….” Academician Clay Jenkinson, an expert on and a reenactor of Thomas Jefferson, goes so far as to assert that phrase was an expression of the best idea that America ever had. In that he is in disagreement with his friend, the renowned documentarian Ken Burns, who believes that national parks were the best idea that America ever had.

So, ideally, and at least in the view of this author, it would make sense for Americans to visit a national park or some other unit in the national park system on or around the Fourth of July in 2026, the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. That way visitors hopefully could take advantage of their inspiring surroundings to reflect on how fortunate we all are that our history has provided both the Declaration’s proclamation of individual rights, as well as our wonderful system of national parks. Notably, the legislation that created Yellowstone, the first park in our national system (as well as the first national park anywhere in the world), pointed out that it was intended “for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Added in 1916 legislation was another stipulation that Yellowstone and other parks were to be conserved “in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” Maybe not quite as foundational to America as Thomas Jefferson’s language in the Declaration, but powerful words nonetheless.

Early Clues and First Report

As a historian myself, as well as a lifelong aficionado of Yellowstone, I can’t help but ponder what the area in and around what is now the park was like in 1776. It is almost certain that no European American had ever heard of the Yellowstone country or its wonders by that year, and it is even more certain that no such person had ever visited the region. Indeed, it was not until nineteen years later that there is any record of a white American making it even as far west as the lower reaches of the Yellowstone River, several hundred miles downriver from today’s national park in what is now western North Dakota and eastern Montana. He was a Frenchman whose name comes down to us as “Old Menard.” He lived for around 20 years with the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians in their villages on the Missouri River just east of the mouth of the Yellowstone, but there is no hint that Old Menard knew anything about the special wonders to be found way up near the sources of the latter river.

Twenty-two years after the United States’ Declaration of Independence the great Canadian cartographer David Thompson drew a map of western Canada that extended as far south as the Yellowstone River basin, and which remarkably placed the source of the Yellowstone within seven miles of its actual location. Closer to home in the realm of American history were the experiences of Lewis and Clark, who arrived at the mouth of the Yellowstone while ascending the Missouri River on their way west 29 years after the signing of the Declaration. The famous captains and their Corps of Discovery came no closer to what is now Yellowstone Park than today’s Livingston, Montana, when William Clark and a portion of the Corps passed through that area on their eastbound return trip on July 15, 1806. But Lewis and Clark did leave some tantalizing clues that they may have learned something about the marvels that existed a little over 50 miles to the south of their closest passage. In an 1809 document Captain Clark titled “Notes of Information I Believe Correct” he summarized some of what he had learned during his 1804-06 expedition into the West with Meriwether Lewis and their corps. In that summary Clark wrote that Indians had told them of mysterious “booming sounds” that were frequently heard in the country around the head of the Yellowstone River. An even more alluring notation was made by Meriwether Lewis in their journals in August of 1806 while their voyage was still underway, in which he described “a considerable fall” on the Yellowstone River somewhere within the mountains. Was Clark’s notation a reference to the explosive sounds of geothermal features at play, and was Lewis’s journal entry referring to the Upper and Lower falls of the Yellowstone River in the heart of what is now Yellowstone National Park? Quite possibly, I would think, but who can say for sure?

Native Knowledge of the Yellowstone Region

Most students of Yellowstone history have heard of John Colter, a veteran of the Lewis and Clark Expedition who reputedly trekked through the Yellowstone country in 1807 and 1808, and so in all probability became the first white person ever to lay eyes on some of its particular wonders. An 1810 map drawn by William Clark, which included a lot of information gleaned by Colter on his trip and later related to Clark, includes key notations indicating that Colter forded the Yellowstone River at a point near today’s Tower Fall within the park. Another notation near those falls reads “Hot Springs Brimstone,” generally considered to be a thermal area known today as Calcite Springs. Still another diagnostic feature near the plotted course of Colter’s route on Clark’s 1810 map is a large body of water near the head of the Yellowstone River labeled “Eustis Lake,” which is almost universally considered to be today’s Yellowstone Lake.

Be all of that as it may, two things are abundantly clear about the above speculations:  The first is that all of this early day European American activity in the greater Yellowstone region did not even begin until well after 1776. The second is that any tidbits of information about the country around the Upper Yellowstone River that these early day white people began to vaguely understand came to them from Native Americans. Cartographer David Thompson, for example, never traveled anywhere near the source of the Yellowstone, but apparently from Indian information was able to plot the head of the river with astonishing accuracy on his 1798 map. The only way Lewis and Clark could have heard anything about mysterious “booming sounds” or a “considerable fall” on the upper Yellowstone River was from Indians, and in the opinion of this author John Colter, as rugged and as capable as he must have been, probably was directly guided by Natives through the vastness of the Yellowstone country, Indians who in further likelihood also provided him with horses for his long peregrination. That the Indians, even those living as far away as what is today central North Dakota, were intimately familiar with the greater Yellowstone region is made obvious by information recorded in the Lewis and Clark journals, as well as in many of the other maps drawn by the expedition’s cartographer, Captain William Clark himself.

Life in Yellowstone in 1776

Indigenous knowledge of the Yellowstone area, as well as vast areas for great distances in all directions, had been gained from experiences and observations made by themselves and their ancestors during at least 13,000 years of occupation. In 1776, a number of tribes lived in the area, including groups known to us as the Blackfeet, the Shoshone, the Crows, and others. Most of these people probably lived in or passed through what is now the park during summers, migrating in autumn to lower elevations to escape Yellowstone’s notoriously ferocious winters. An exception appears to be a group of Shoshone Indians who because of their diet were known as the Sheepeaters. While at least some bands of Sheepeaters apparently did spend winters in the Yellowstone country, even they probably did not winter on Yellowstone’s higher plateaus but instead spent the cold season in relatively lower elevations like Lamar Valley and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone River. The Sheepeaters interestingly had not adopted the horse culture, which almost all other tribes in the region appear to have done some 40 or 50 years before 1776. In spite of the physical absence of white people in the Yellowstone area before 1776, European influences had already percolated into the area by that time. While some of these influences could be seen as beneficial to the Natives, such as the arrival of the horse and of metal implements, other impacts, like the arrival of deadly diseases, were decidedly harmful.

Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Indians in the Yellowstone area in 1776 were living much the same as their ancestors had done for all those thousands of years. By that year they probably had some metal tools and weapons that had come to them through long distance trading routes (the same avenues that brought foreign pestilences), but they probably were also still quarrying black volcanic glass from what we call Obsidian Cliff, and using the material to create high quality tools and projectile points through their own craftsmanship. They were undoubtedly feeding and clothing themselves by hunting animals that must have existed in numbers beyond the comprehension of anyone living today, and also were utilizing populations of natively occurring fish that also existed in an abundance inconceivable in today’s radically altered world.

They further would have been cutting slender lodgepole pines from Yellowstone’s forests to use as frameworks for their shelters, and they would have had complete knowledge of all the plants growing in the area, knowing which ones were palatable and which ones were poisonous, as well as which ones were useful for medicinal purposes. They would have lived in awe of Yellowstone’s geothermal features, as they likewise lived in awe of all the natural phenomena that surrounded them. They probably paid particular attention to the night sky, and would have kept track of the progression of the seasons by the movements of its celestial bodies. From the earliest age they would have had an extraordinary capability to learn and memorize the geography of their home range, and would have survived with a superb ability to navigate landscapes not only in their home area but also through much more distant locales. According to the ethnographic record, including several references specific to the Yellowstone area, they regarded fire with a special reverence that extended far beyond fire’s utilitarian functions.

Wildlife and Natural Rhythm

Yellowstone’s famous wildlife would have been present, of course, if anything more numerous in 1776 than it is now. The large ungulates that are so popular with park visitors today would have been like most of the resident Indians in that they would have utilized Yellowstone’s cool, well-watered ranges in summer and then migrated to lower, more snow-free valleys in winter. Yellowstone’s bears would have been present back then, too, behaving differently than the ungulates because they would have been more likely to stay in the higher country for the winter, where deep snows would have insulated them from frigid temperatures in their dens during the long winter months. Then, as now, other species of summering wildlife, especially migratory birds, would have been present in summer and then flown away for the winter, in some cases traveling as far as the southern hemisphere until summertime in Yellowstone came around again.

All the natural fundamentals were functioning just fine in 1776. The snows came in the winter, rains came in the summer, and so the streams and rivers flowed on and on. Trees grew, animals mated and gave birth and died, and migratory birds came and went with the unending flow of the seasons, while waterfalls great and small thundered continuously. Natural rhythms carried on in all their pulsating mystery, and to the human inhabitants, it must have seemed that the world they lived in would always be.

Geothermal Wonders Then and Now

Of course, Yellowstone’s hallmark geothermal phenomena were present in 1776, too, overall probably looking much the same as they do now. But given the changeable nature of hot springs, fumeroles and geysers, details of individual features would have been different then than now. Some of the features we know today probably existed in recognizable form in 1776, while others that would have been noteworthy at that time are now altogether gone. Undoubtedly, there were still others that we cherish today that were not even in existence at that time. In this vein, an intriguing tidbit concerning Old Faithful Geyser comes to mind.

Old Faithful is, of course, the most iconic feature in Yellowstone National Park, and perhaps the most iconic feature in any national park anywhere in the world, but interestingly it may not have even been playing as a geyser in 1776. George Marler, who worked in Yellowstone from 1931 until 1978 and who probably did more research on the park’s geothermal features than anyone else has ever done, was quite certain that Old Faithful was a flowing spring rather than an erupting geyser until as little as 250 years ago. He based that conclusion on the shape and size of Old Faithful’s geyserite cone, which strongly suggested to Marler that it had been laid down during its earlier presentation by pooling and flowing rather than erupting water. He estimated that the spring that preceded the erupting geyser began its discharge around the year 1225, plus or minus 200 years, with the spring’s transition to geyser play happening as recently as the mid to late 1700s. So how about that? The great Mr. Jefferson’s signature document may be older than Old Faithful Geyser.

No matter that, I reiterate my encouragement to get out during this commemoration of America’s watershed year and enjoy our national park system. Parks were created in part to offer a refuge of peace and quiet where a person could pause and reflect, to contemplate matters beyond the day to day worries of life. What better way to observe the 250th of our nation’s creation than to visit one of our national park sites?