More of the tour
According to the NPS, these are the notable distinctive features that set the mountains of Glacier NP apart from the rest of the Rockies:
- There is the relatively flat lying Lewis Thrust sheet from which the mountains formed. The mountains of Waterton-Glacier are a result of one major fault and many minor ones, instead of many major and minor faults often found in mountain ranges, such as the front ranges of Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta. The fault extends from south of Marias Pass north 348 miles to Banff NP, thrust in a northeasterly direction and coming to rest after millions of years. Most of the horizontal displacement occurred in the Waterton-Glacier area.
- The ancient rocks of the Belt Sea that form Glacier’s mountains have much less limestone (limestone is mainly a byproduct of sea life) and fewer fossils than the younger rock exposed in most of the Rockies.
- The Lewis Thrust sheet was displaced about 50 miles, as opposed to thrust sheets in the rest of the Rockies that were displaced over much shorter distances.
- The varied colors of the rock in the mountains, including the reds, greens and maroons are the result of small amounts of various iron minerals.
- There is an abrupt transition of mountains and prairie. Although the disturbed subsurface rock structures typical of foothills are present here, they are covered by glacial debris.
- Glacier NP has the oldest exposed sedimentary rock in the entire Rocky Mountain chain – 1.6 billion years old.
Blackfoot or Blackfeet a brief history
Bracketed on the east side by St. Mary Lake
(This was our view of St. Mary Lake.)
and on the west by Lake McDonald, the Going to the Sun Road rises nearly 3,300 feet to its acme at Logan Pass where it crosses the Continental Divide. It is, perhaps, the most famous road in the entire U.S. National Park System. Named for the mountain just east of Logan Pass, construction on the nearly 50 mile long road began in 1921 and it is among the first National Park Service (NPS) projects specifically intended to accommodate auto bound tourists.
We made our first stop at the St. Mary Visitor Center where we could read a bit about the four First Peoples Tribes – the Ktunaxa-Ksanka (Kootenai), the Séliš and Qlipsé (Salish and Pend D’Orielle and the Pikuni (Blackfeet) – that have lived in and around Glacier NP for perhaps 13,000 years. I’m going to focus on the Blackfeet because Charles is paternally Blackfeet (maternally Pueblo as I recall) and because the Blackfeet Tribe has a special claim to and relationship with the park’s east side.
Today, as in the past, all Blackfeet are Blackfoot but not all Blackfoot are Blackfeet. The Blackfoot Confederacy consists of four tribes whose traditional territory ranged over what is today the plains of southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, most of Montana, and into parts of Idaho and Wyoming as shown on the map below.
Beginning in the south, the bands are the Amskapi Pikuni (meaning “Those with black moccasins), the Apa’tosee or Northern Pikuni, the Kanai, or Blood and the Siksika (also meaning Blackfeet).
The Blackfoot speak an Algonquian related language. Thus, linguistic evidence indicates that they migrated west from the eastern woodlands of North America. It’s possible they were recent migrants but archaeological evidence in campsites in the St. Mary River drainage dates back perhaps as far as 13,000 years indicating that they would have been among the first tribes to migrate west.
As it is with the time of their arrival, the precise source of the tribe’s name is also uncertain. The most common story maintains that they blackened their moccasins with ash from prairie fires. (The NPS travel restriction likely prevented us from becoming honorary Blackfeet in this manner.) Other scholars argue that the tribe’s black moccasins were made from the skin cut from the top of an old tepee which had seen so much smoke that it had turned black. They then used that material to distinguish themselves from other tribes. A third alternative stems from the people’s ancient association with the bison whose hooves are black. Thus, they are the people of the bison, Blackfoot people.
How closely are the Blackfoot tied to the bison? Their territory (as seen in the photo above), which once spanned an estimated 28,000,000 acres had more buffalo per square mile than anywhere else on the plains. A high protein fescue grass that evolved from the combination of glacial water from the Rockies and the cyclical arrival of warm Chinook winds supported this richest buffalo ecosystem in North America. The nomadic tribes followed the seasonal grazing and migration of the bison. Their traditional diet consisted of 80 percent fresh meat and adults reportedly consumed between five and seven pounds per day.
How devastating to the Blackfoot was the loss of bison? The buffalo population of the early 19th century was estimated to be as high as 60 million. Even the lowest estimates put the number at some 30 million. By the end of the 19th century, fewer than 400 remained in the wild. A series of events conspired to cause this unprecedented decimation and slaughter of the species. Elsewhere in this recounting I’ve touched upon the broken treaties and the Plains Wars about which a determined and ruthless General William Tecumseh Sherman wrote that he was “not going to let thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress west…”
But it wasn’t Sherman’s war that nearly sealed the fate of the American bison. That moment came on 10 May 1869 when this happened.
(For those who don’t recognize the scene, it’s the completion of the transcontinental railroad. I discussed that in this post about my my trip to Utah)
As European Americans began their migration west, trappers, who had depleted the beaver populations of the Midwest began trading in buffalo skins and tongues. In the middle of the nineteenth century an estimated 200,000 buffalo were being killed annually. This was a large but likely a sustainable number. With the completion of the Continental Railroad, however, the speed of travel increased, the risks decreased, and the rush west was on.
Sensing an opportunity, the railroads began advertising hunting by rail excursions. Their successful marketing campaign brought large hunting parties west with thousands of men packing .50 caliber rifles. Never leaving the train, hundreds of men would climb onto the roofs of the cars while others simply fired from their windows. Uninterested in the meat, hides, or in using the slaughtered animals in any way, they simply left the prairies and plains covered with rotting carcasses of bison.
Visualize the wanton purposeless slaughter of the animal that had supported your tribe for uncounted generations. Now imagine yourself as one of the people of the buffalo. As one of the Blackfoot people. I think it’s unlikely even our darkest imaginings can fully grasp what these people must have thought and felt.