Obsidian Cliff long attracted native cultures to the area known today as Yellowstone National Park/NPS

Editor's note: The following column was written by George Wuerthner and Lee Whittlesey in rebuttal to a recent Smithsonian Magazine article titled, "The Lost history of Yellowstone," which features the work and opinions of archaeologist Doug MacDonald. MacDonald is the author of Before Yellowstone: Native American Archaeology in the National Park.

MacDonald may be a capable archaeologist, but his scholarship on Yellowstone’s more recent, human history is seriously flawed.

The Smithsonian article perpetuates the myth that Indians were driven from Yellowstone to create a national park. This is a widespread myth promoted by some academics that view parks and preserves as socially unjust. These advocates include those espousing the “Anthropocene” claim that America’s landscape was “managed” by Indigenous people for "thousands” of years and that “unmanaged” parks and preserves are culturally and ecologically undesirable. The park was established in 1872, before there were more than a very few visitors and before Euro-American people were in place in good enough numbers to do any “forcing out” of Indians.

In the magazine's article, MacDonald repeats the tired myth that early park advocates thought Yellowstone was a "pristine" wilderness, and there was no human presence. In general, that was not true; the few (Montana) territorial residents who were visiting or settling in the general region knew that Indians lived in the area; in fact, areas in all directions from the north entrance to the park, to which the mass of the original visitation occurred. “Mass” is kind of misleading word, because estimates are that there were only 300 visitors in 1872 and 500 or less during each summer 1873-1876.

He further asserts that the history of human use of the Yellowstone landscape has been "erased," and he, MacDonald, purports to correct that notion.

His assessment is seriously flawed. No such erasing ever occurred. To understand why, one must know the backstory that underlines this article and other similar efforts. The article is emblematic of the attempts of many academics and social justice advocates to delegitimize parks, and other preserves that they feel have harmed indigenous communities.

There is good reason to feel empathy for the plight of tribal people. The advance of White settlers was disastrous to Native Americans in many ways. 

As the social justice movement has taken off in recent years due to causes like Black Lives Matter, there has also been a corollary effort to demonize conservation and preservation efforts as socially unjust to Indigenous communities worldwide, but particularly in the United States. This has included a concerted effort by many in the social sciences to promote the idea that conservation designations such as parks are a form of "colonialism," "imperialism," and social injustice.

The basic narrative is that the designation of parks, wilderness, national wildlife refuges, and other federal and state lands designed to protect Nature, comes at Indigenous peoples' expense. While it may resonate with the present-day social justice movement, this revisionist history is not historically accurate. If this were historically true, we would be among the first to support such a movement.

This piece of obsidian stone was found in the park/NPS files, Jacob W. Frank

Although it may have occurred in some instances in other parts of the world, with regards to national parks in the United States, none were created by the removal of Indigenous people. In every instance, tribal people were relegated to reservations to advance settlement, not to create parks. In this case of Yellowstone, this is particularly accurate. Yellowstone was initially too remote (no railroad within 400 miles of the place) and too little-visited to have been the seat of such a removal.

Reservations and Parks

In the case of Yellowstone, social justice advocates critical of the park take two unrelated events that occurred within a period of a couple of years — the creation of reservations and the establishment of the park —and suggest, based on little evidence, that the first was done to enable the second. Briefly, all tribes associated with the Yellowstone region, except for the in-park Sheepeaters (Mountain Shoshones), signed treaties and were relegated to reservations before the park was created. That tribe was very small in number. A few of them elected to leave to Shoshone or Lemhi; others remained in the park, some until the late 1880s.

There is plenty of room to criticize the treaties and reservations created during the 1800s. However, none of the tribes were physically placed on a reservation to make room for Yellowstone or other national parks.

Instead, most treaties were designed to reduce intertribal warfare, promote peace mostly among the tribes, and lead to the "civilization" of Native Americans. Later treaties were also intended to make the West safe for eventual White settlement and transportation corridors such as the railroads and the Oregon Trail. Although many tribes were leery of being left vulnerable to their enemies, some were willing, perhaps reluctantly, to accept the government annuities in exchange for restricting their movements.

For instance, the Eastern Shoshone attended the Fort Laramie treaty meeting in 1851, hoping to obtain a treaty-defined territory. While the Sioux and other tribes signed treaties, the Shoshone were excluded from the 1851 treaty for bureaucratic reasons—they resided in a different government district. The Shoshone signed their first treaty in 1863 and the second one in 1868. Similarly, other tribes like the Crow signed their first treaty in 1825 and later 1869 (with a ceding of their northern strip in 1880) and the Blackfeet in 1855, Nez Perce in 1855 and so on.

Many of these original treaties were revised in later years, typically reducing the reservation boundaries. However, these reservations were established long before there any significant White presence in the region and before there was any discussion about creating a national park.

Except for a few traders and itinerant fur trappers, there were few Whites in the region. Only after gold was discovered in the Northern Rockies in the 1860s was there a significant movement of miners and ranchers into the future states of Montana and Wyoming, and even those populations were very small. For example, Bozeman, Montana, the nearest town to Yellowstone, had only 579 residents present for the U.S. Census of 1870, and most other Montana Territory places even fewer. In 1880, Bozeman had only 915 residents. Moreover, Livingston, Montana, and Jackson, Wyoming, did not really exist until 1883; Cody, Wyoming, not until 1895-96; and West Yellowstone, Montana, not until 1907.

In general, towns around Yellowstone National Park did not exist in any significant numbers until the 1880s, and most came along after that.

And despite conventional wisdom, many of these treaties and reservations were created with the intention of “saving” the Indians. Intertribal warfare was common, and one purpose of reservations was to promote peace between tribes by creating recognized boundaries for each tribal group. Except for the 1880 cession by the Crows, the last major treaty revisions occurred in 1868. No additional treaties with Native Americans were made anywhere in the West after 1871.

In terms of the larger American population, Yellowstone was terra incognita. Though some fur trappers like Jim Bridger, John Colter, Johnson Gardner, and Osborn Russell, among others, did traverse the Yellowstone region, most American citizens did not have a clue there was anything like the Yellowstone geologic wonders. It wasn’t until the first expeditions penetrated the region, beginning with the Cook-Folsom Expedition in 1869, the Washburn Expedition in 1870, and the Hayden Expedition of 1872, that Americans became aware of Yellowstone’s attributes.

There is debate among historians about who should get credit for proposing a national park, but at least one of the claims is made by members of the Washburn Expedition, which traversed the future park in 1870. But no Native Americans had to be removed from the park because by 1870 they were already living on reservations.

In the post-Civil War era of Manifest Destiny, it’s remarkable that any lands were purposely withdrawn from resource exploitation.

26 tribes have ties to the area and resources now found within Yellowstone National Park. Tribes used hydrothermal sites ceremonially and medicinally. The Mud Volcano area is significant for the Kiowa. Their tradition says that a hot spring called Dragon’s Mouth is where their creator gave them the Yellowstone area for their home. The Crow also have stories about this feature/NPS

Pristine Wilderness

MacDonald and many other advocates of the Anthropocene movement assert that somehow conservationists are so naïve that they believe wilderness and parks were free of human presence or “pristine” as they like to suggest. Residents and even many of the few visitors to Yellowstone in the 1870s certainly knew that Indians had historically lived in the park and its Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

His suggestion in the Smithsonian article that there is a “lost history” of Indigenous people begs credibility. Numerous archaeological studies document human presence throughout North America since the close of the Ice Age. Someone would have to be extremely ignorant of history to be unaware that humans migrated into North America and spread to every corner and ecosystem.

Given the numerous archaeological studies around the region, the idea that humans somehow never ventured into what is now Yellowstone National Park is absurd and, of course, does not even align with past archaeological evidence.

The interesting thing is that the only people we know that suggest landscapes like Yellowstone were "pristine" and were devoid of humans are those trying to discredit conservation.

The idea that wilderness equates with the absence of human presence also demonstrates a lack of scholarship on the part of critics.  Conservationists do not assert that “wilderness” must be "untouched" or "pristine," but rather that it is "self-willed." Self-willed means they are influenced mainly by natural abiotic and biotic processes, not necessarily the absence of human presence.

Beyond this problem of setting up a strawman to knock down, there is an abundance of research and publications that detail the presence in the Yellowstone region of pre-historic and historic humans. These sources refute the assertion by MacDonald that the National Park Service and others have tried to “erase” the Indigenous history.

For instance, Larry Lahren, a Livingston archaeologist, published Homeland: An Archaeologist's View of Yellowstone Country, detailing the many archaeological sites in the area near Yellowstone. 

My (Wuerthner) book, Yellowstone, A Visitor's Companion, mentions the early archaeological record and the more recent historical record of Indigenous people in the Yellowstone region. Forefront books on the subject include Peter Nabokov and Larry Loendorf’s Restoring a Presence and their Indians and Yellowstone National Park. Many other books on Yellowstone also discuss the prehistoric human use of the area, including Janetski’s Indians in Yellowstone National Park, Haines’s The Yellowstone Story and both Yellowstone Place Names by Whittlesey and Aubrey Haines’s Yellowstone Place Names: Mirrors of History, along with Hiram Chittenden’s The Yellowstone National Park contain many other reviews that discuss the Indigenous presence.

The presence of Indigenous people is not "lost history," nor has it been "erased," as suggested in the Smithsonian article.

Some of the most famous archaeological sites in the West are found near Yellowstone. The Anzick Site near Livingston was the burial site of a child dated to 13,000 years ago. A Clovis point was located near Gardiner at the north entrance to Yellowstone. The 5,000-year-old hearth found at Rigler Cliff site 5 miles north of Gardiner is well known. There is a big bison jump near Dailey Lake by Dome Mountain, 10 miles north of Gardiner. Archaeological remains within the park are located by Yellowstone Lake, in the Upper Yellowstone River, and in Lamar Cave near Tower Junction. Mummy Cave along the North Fork of the Shoshone River to the east records human presence dating back 9,000 years, including a 4,000-year-old mummy.

Plus, Obsidian Cliff in the park was a favorite mining site for obtaining volcanic glass or obsidian for arrowheads and knives. Indeed, as noted in the article, the Yellowstone obsidian was found as far away as Ohio. And Sheepeater Cliff in Yellowstone has long been known as an Indian vision-quest site or celebration site.

MacDonald proposes the far-fetched idea that the Hopewell people walked 4,000 miles to and from Yellowstone through the territories of numerous hostile tribes to get obsidian. The more logical explanation is that obsidian was traded widely from tribe to tribe. Additionally, tribes that lived in the immediate region---Shoshones, Crows, Blackfeet, and Bannock---had no problems riding their horses into Yellowstone in order to obtain obsidian.

We mention all those examples because it is well known that Indians were living in and around Yellowstone. Their history is not lost. But MacDonald acts like his "finds" of human use of the park are somehow remarkable and newsworthy.

Wickiups provided temporary shelter for some Native Americans while they were in Yellowstone. No authentic, standing wickiups are known to remain in the park. NPS / Harlan Kredit

Historical Records of Native American Presence

Beyond the archaeological record, we have many historical references to Native Americans in the Yellowstone region. The earliest explorers, trappers, and traders recognized that Native Americans traveled through Yellowstone and surrounding lands. Failure to acknowledge this fact could result in the loss of your scalp or your life.

From the early trappers to the first expeditions to explore the park, everyone made note of Indians or signs of Indian activity. William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, traveled across the Gallatin Valley and down the Yellowstone River and noted signs of Indians the entire way. Indeed, the expedition used Trail Creek, an "Indian Road," to cross from the Gallatin Valley to Paradise Valley along the Yellowstone River.

While Clark did not go south to Yellowstone, it would beg the credibility of anyone to think that Indians were absent from what is now Yellowstone Park given the heavy use of the Upper Yellowstone Valley by Native Americans.

John Colter, one of the expedition members, was released from the homeward journey to join a trapping venture. He traveled through the winter of 1807-08 and encountered Indians on his trek around the Yellowstone region, though none while he was crossing the high, snowy Yellowstone Plateau.

Other trappers followed, including Osborne Russell, who kept a detailed journal of his travels. Not only did he talk about trading with Indians in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley in 1834, but he was also attacked by Indians along Yellowstone Lake and had to walk to Fort Hall (Pocatello) with an arrow in his leg. Osborne Russell had no illusions that Yellowstone was a “pristine” wilderness without humans.

The first expeditions like the Cook-Folsom, Washburn, Hayden, etc., all reported signs of Indians within the future park. And in 1877, the Nez Perce shot a few tourists while attempting to evade the U.S. Army on their way through from Idaho to Canada. No one of that era would have suggested Yellowstone was a land absent from Native American presence.

Both F.V. Hayden and Supt. P.W. Norris asked the Sheepeaters and their kin, the Shoshones, to go to one or both of the reservations (Lemhi at West and Shoshone at South). Some went, but some did not, but what is important is that no one forced them to go.

Apparently, Mr. Norris was worried about Indians frightening off tourists, but we do not know as much about Hayden’s motives for asking them to leave (which happened in 1871, much earlier than Norris’s).

All through the 1870s, explorers encountered bands of Indians hunting in the park, in part, because wildlife was rapidly being eliminated outside of Yellowstone. During the late 1880s, the US Army, which was occupying Yellowstone, encountered bands of Indians hunting in the park. The last known encounter between Army and Native Americans occurred in 1889. 

The U.S. Army And The National Park

Another misleading statement in the Smithsonian article is the assertion that the Army was stationed in Yellowstone "to make tourists feel safer and discourage Native Americans from hunting and gathering in their old haunts." The reality is that the Army was stationed in Yellowstone to prevent tourists from destroying geological features and poachers from killing wildlife, thus degrading the very values that the park was established to protect. The Army was actually sent to Yellowstone in 1886 because Congress had cut off the funding to pay the civilian superintendents and assistants, not to make tourist feel safe from Indians or discourage Indians (many of whom were still present) from hunting and gathering.

Again, in a contextual omission, the article neglects to inform readers that by the late 1800s, due to market hunting and unrestricted hunting by miners, settlers and Indians alike, even once-abundant species like bison and elk were nearly driven to extinction. Yellowstone was one of the last refuges for these species, and no one — White or Indian -- was permitted to hunt the park's wildlife. And it was a good thing, because otherwise it is likely that we would not have any remaining elk or bison today. For more on this, see Lee Whittlesey’s article in Montana the Magazine of Western History (Spring, 2020) entitled “Abundance, Slaughter, and Resilience” and his two-volume book entitled The History of Mammals of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 1796-1881: A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis of Thousands of Historical Observations (Seattle: Kindle Direct Publishing, 2020).

This gets to an important point that is ignored by Anthropocene boosters. If you care about more than humans (who, after all, have many more options than most wildlife species), but believe we have an obligation to consider the welfare of all fellow travelers on the planet, then parks and wilderness areas are the Gold Standard for protecting biodiversity and functioning ecosystems.

Erasing Native Americans From The Park?

MacDonald asserts that the National Park Service has tried to erase Native Americans from Yellowstone’s history. Yet, place names throughout the park record the presence of Indians. There is are Shoshone Creek and Shoshone Lake, Sheepeater Cliff, Indian Creek, Nez Perce Ford, Bannock Trail, Wigwam Wickiup Creek, Indian Pond, Absaroka Range, Snake River (Snake, name of Shoshone people) Shoshone River, plus Shoshone National Forest and Washakie Wilderness border the park.  At many of these sites, there are informational signs explaining the origins of the names, and as early as 1880 Superintendent Norris erected signs in Yellowstone.

In the 1860s-1870s, the primary goal of the federal government in the West was to facilitate the settlement of the region. Indians were assigned to reservations not to create parks like Yellowstone but to make the West safe for miners, farmers, ranchers, settlers, emigrant trail travelers, and railroads.

Think of how the establishment of Yellowstone Park was the antithesis to this goal. Instead of promoting settlement and development, Yellowstone was set aside for Nature, not human exploitation. 

Ironically, some of today's progressives criticize the creation of Indian reservations and the attempt to “civilize” and transform Native Americans into “respectable citizens” as disrespectful, and some even use the term "genocidal." 

On the contrary, the explicit goals of the 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty with the Shoshone Indians say:

"To ensure the civilization of the tribes entering into this treaty, the necessity of education is admitted, especially of such of them as are or may be settled on said agricultural reservations, and they, therefore, pledge themselves to compel their children, male and female, between the ages of six and sixteen years, to attend school; and it is now made the duty of the agent for said Indians to see that this stipulation is strictly complied with; and the United States agrees that for every thirty children between said ages who can be induced or compelled to attend school, a house shall be provided and a teacher competent to teach the elementary branches of an English education shall be furnished, who will reside among said Indians and faithfully discharge his or her duties as a teacher. The provisions of this article to continue for twenty years.”

Indeed, it was arguably the progressives of the 1800s who felt that the best way to protect Indian people from extermination was to place them on reservations, teach them to read, write, and learn how to farm or master other trades.

They argued for reservations based on humanitarian goals. Father Pierre Jean De Smet labored among many tribes of the Northern Rockies between the 1840s-60s. He lamented that, "I have seen enough of Indians to convince me of this fact, that they can never exist in contact with the Whites, and their only salvation is to be removed far, far, from their presence."

Similarly, progressive groups like the Indian Rights Association, Women’s National Indian Association, and Indian Citizenship Committee were formed to “civilize” tribes by supporting Indian schools and reservations.

George Bird Grinnell, a staunch advocate of Indian tribes, felt that reservations were necessary to protect Native Americans from extinction and bring them up to civilized standards.

Today, many progressives generally consider efforts to educate school-age children as “genocide” and “disrespectful” of their culture. However, in contrast to the more common "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" opinion that dominated many Western settlers, these progressive folks, however misguided we might consider them today, were doing their best to preserve Indian people from extinction. After all, in America public education has always been considered the best way for integrating people into the American culture.

It would be ironic if, because of their attempts to denigrate conservation efforts, future generations judged today's progressives to be as misguided as the progressives of the 1800s.

What If There Were No Yellowstone?

MacDonald is concerned about the general mistreatment of Indigenous peoples. Yet, most social justice advocates direct their criticism at public lands and protected landscapes. They seldom make the same criticisms of cities and other human development, which had a far greater impact in displacing Indigenous peoples from the most productive and valuable landscapes.

Indeed, the University of Montana where MacDonald works, and Missoula, where he lives, were once within the Flathead tribal homeland. Still, I do not hear him discussing the social injustice of the Flathead Indians' displacement to a reservation to make the Missoula valley was safe for white settlement.

And what if there had been no Yellowstone? Does anyone seriously think that tribes would have been treated any differently?

Without the park, much of what we know as Yellowstone would almost assuredly have been converted into private ranches, private tourist spas, and timber grants. MacDonald's ability to find undisturbed archaeological sites is partly due to the protection of the landscape that the park’s establishment created. Without the park, we can assure you that tribes would have been relegated to reservations regardless.

While we can lament the treatment of tribal people, we should celebrate that Yellowstone's establishment has led to the creation of the world's greatest national parks, which are now part of humanity's global heritage.

Yellowstone has served to protect many species, including bison, elk, and grizzly, that were nearly extirpated from the rest of the West. Yellowstone National Park is the foundation for the last functioning temperate ecosystem in the world. We have come to recognize the vital importance of the intact forests and wetlands of Yellowstone to absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere that would otherwise fuel climate change. And recent science shows what Native Americans no doubt knew intuitively — that access to natural, beautiful, unspoiled nature is good for human health and well-being. This is the timeless legacy of Yellowstone National Park.

George Wuerthner been studying Yellowstone for nearly 50 years. He has published 38 books on national parks and other environmental issues, including Yellowstone—A Visitor’s Companion, Yellowstone and the Fires of Change, Yellowstone in Photographs, and most recently Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of the Earth and Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness the Foundation for Conservation.  He recently worked as Ecological Projects director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology and Tompkins Conservation, promoting parks in Patagonia and elsewhere. Wuerthner taught as a visiting lecturer Alaskan Environmental Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, various field ecology classes for San Francisco State University, University of California Santa Barbara,  Prescott College, and environmental writing at the University of Vermont.

Wuerthner was a commercial guide in Yellowstone, a ranger at the Gates of the Arctic National Park and river ranger on the Fortymile Wild and Scenic River, both in Alaska, and a botanist for the BLM.

He has served on the boards and/or as advisor of numerous conservation organizations including RESTORE the North Woods, a group advocating a 3.2-million-acre national park, New National Park Campaign, The Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, the Ecological Citizen, Predator Defense, Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Alliance, Montana River Action Network, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Friends of Douglas Fir National Monument, Rewilding Institute, and others.

Lee Whittlesey’s 45 years of studying the history of the Yellowstone region have made him an expert on Yellowstone’s vast literature and have resulted in numerous publications. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 16 books and more than 50 journal articles. Coming in 2021 is his This Modern Saratoga of the Wilderness: A History of Mammoth Hot Springs (National Park Service). He and NPS Interpreter Sarah Bone have completed their two-volume, 30-year book The History of Mammals in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, 1796-1881: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Thousands of Historical Observations; it was published in late 2020 by Kindle Direct Publishing of Seattle. Forthcoming in 2022 is volume one of his book Stagecoaching Through Yellowstone. In 2015, Lee published a new edition of Truman Everts’s Lost in the Yellowstone, an updated edition of his well-known book Death in Yellowstone, and his book Gateway to Yellowstone: The Raucous Town of Cinnabar on the Montana Frontier (Rowman and Littlefield with Two Dot Books).

Whittlesey served as park historian for the National Park Service at Yellowstone National Park for 25 years, and previously served in that park as archivist, ranger naturalist/interpreter, law enforcement ranger, and in numerous other positions. He has a master’s degree in history from Montana State University, and a law degree (Juris Doctor) from the University of Oklahoma. On May 19, 2001, because of his extensive writings and long contributions to Yellowstone National Park, Idaho State University conferred upon him an Honorary Doctorate of Science and Humane Letters. On May 3, 2014, Montana State University awarded him an honorary Ph.D. in history. From 2006 through 2011, he served as an adjunct professor of history at Montana State University. Whittlesey retired as park historian for the National Park Service at Yellowstone National Park on April 30, 2018. He lives in the Livingston, Montana area, where he continues working on his latest book, the two-volume history of stage coaching in Montana, Idaho, and the Yellowstone region.