People of the Fire
Read People of the Fire Online
Authors: W. Michael Gear
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal
People of the
Fire
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This series on our nation's prehistory
wouldn't be possible without the contributions of the following people: Michael
Seidman
cooked up the idea of doing a series of
novels on North American prehistory, written by archaeologists, during his days
as Executive Editor of
Tor
Books. Tappan King, who
edited this manuscript, did a bang-up job on the line-edit and flagged the
rough spots for revision. Ray
Leicht
, Wyoming State
Archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management, provided information and
encouragement.
Marv
and Patricia Hatcher, Principal
Investigators of Pronghorn Anthropological Associates, helped with the
photocopying of stacks of archaeological reports gathered from across the West.
Dr. George
Frison
, of the
University
of
Wyoming
, deserves our deepest gratitude for
publishing so many of his observations on hunting techniques and Paleo-Indian
weaponry, and for sharing his personal thoughts on the Mountain Archaic.
Phyllis Boardman and the
Torrey
Lake Ranch deserve
thanks for access to
petroglyphs
. Jo Hubbard eased
the way. Walter Williams's The Spirit and the Flesh proved invaluable for
information on
berdache
after Dale Walker turned us
on to the book. Jim Miller and John Albanese receive special mention for their
study and interpretation of Holocene geology. (See, we remembered all those
lectures in the test pits!) Katherine Cook and Katherine Perry read the
manuscript and provided helpful comments. Burt and Rose Crow of the
Ramshorn
Inn kept Guinness on hand for us when we needed a
place to brainstorm plot. Irene
Keinert
and Justin
Bridges of Wind River Knives photographed archaeological resources. Finally,
we'd like to acknowledge our dirt-archaeologist colleagues for all the years of
bull sessions over a beer or the crackling of a campfire. You know who you are.
If you see your pet idea here, you’ve made a difference.
From the time of the
first human incursions into the Western Hemisphere, a thriving big-game-hunting
tradition known as Paleo-Indian flourished through most of North
America.Highly
efficient, these human predators—in addition
to climatic change and possible epizootic diseases—accelerated the extinction
of animals such as the mammoth, giant sloth, horse, and camel. Through it all,
humans, and their prey, adapted to the gradually warming climate until roughly
eight thousand years ago. From the geological record, a dramatic climatic upheaval
occurred: the
Altithermal
. A series of droughts baked
North America
, lowering regional water tables as much as
twenty feet. Vegetation zones shifted, topsoil eroded, drainage channels ate
deeply into the earth. The tree line climbed ever higher on the mountains. The
huge lakes of the
Great
Basin
vanished to
leave salt flats and desert in
Utah
and
Nevada
. Giant dune fields spawned from
destabilized parent material and drifted to cover parts of
Montana
,
Wyoming
, and
Nebraska
, while wind-borne loess settled over the
American Midwest. Stricken with drought, the lush grasses on grazing land
deteriorated; the buffalo herds declined in number. In this period of hardship
people starved, bands of hunters
fissioning
, moving,
warring—ever in search of elusive herds of game animals. Yet, from the seeds of
these hard times came the birth of a new North American culture.