blackfoot-valley

The first notable introduction of a new animal species to the northern plains and mountains by Europeans preceded cattle in this region by more than three centuries. Horses that were left by Spanish Conquistadores (es- pecially the Coronado expedition of 1540-42) and later Spanish settlers in the Southwest, particularly in New Mexico, were adopted by the Indians who followed the Spanish example by learning to raise and ride them. In a sense it was a re-introduction - the smaller native American wild horse that roamed the land some ten thousand years earlier had been long forgotten. In any case, possession of horses gave those tribes that learned to use them a sig- nificant advantage in hunting and warfare over those that did not. Horses spread rapidly north, where the Plains Indians became so adept at horseman- ship that their way of life was fundamentally changed. During the “golden age” before the arrival of European-Americans from the East, tribes like the Sioux and Blackfeet could take bison in greatly increased numbers, while enhancing their prosperity and power. Even tribes far down the Missouri who had already taken up agriculture in a major way returned enthusiastically to a nomadic hunting life. By 1600, there was little serious farming west of the Mississippi, although scarcely a half-century previously it had become the main means of living for Indian societies reaching up the Arkansas River into Colorado and up the Missouri watershed through the Dakotas almost to the present border of Montana. In recent times, the pace of both accidental and deliberate plant and animal introductions has accelerated, due to modern transportation and the arrival of greater numbers of people. Consequently, the ground cover, espe- cially grasses and weeds, is in many ways not the same as before the arrival of Europeans in America. The extensive planting of domesticated grass- wheat has greatly altered the appearance and use of the land on millions of acres in Montana east of the Rockies. Concentration on a single crop on a tract of land also brings problems, such as the need for repeated applications of fertilizers to replace nutrients disproportionately used by that crop for its particular needs. The use of irrigation, depending on the technique, alters the soil in other ways, such as leaching of soluble minerals if overdone. Even on land used for ranching, including the Ranch, there are concen- trated areas of introduced plants, such as alfalfa and other hay crops. An example of an accidentally introduced “pest” plant is a now-ubiquitous noxious shrub called spotted knapweed with its spiny blue-purple balls. Knap- weed is of no use to cattle but crowds out the useful grasses, very evident on many areas on the Ranch and elsewhere in Montana. 49