Early man wandered Weld's grasslands

Eleven thousand years ago, in an area that would someday become a small highway in northern Colorado, a tribe whose name we'll never know walked through neck-high grass, carrying stone-tipped spears and hunting the mammoths.

We don't know what these people called themselves, but they would later be given the modern name Clovis because it was in that area of New Mexico where we first found evidence of their existence.

They were direct ancestors of the people who migrated to North America from Asia across the frozen Bering Strait in Alaska during the Ice Age, then down through the new continent. When they reached this area, they found pine forests, tall grasses, and plentiful game, including mammoths, giant bison, camels and lions, which look much like the lions of today.

This tribe of prehistoric men, women and children probably numbered about 50. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of the bands crossing North America, following the herds of mammoths and prehistoric, giant bison.

But this tribe was in what would become northern Weld County. They had campsites, where they would chip away at hard stones to make their distinctive 5-inch spearpoints that would be found thousands of years later, in weathered gullies and stream beds and hillsides.

They would hunt with spears, because the bow-and-arrow would not come for thousands of years. But these were thinking people; they learned the large animals would be attracted to ponds and wetlands, that the tall grass would hide them well, and they devised the throwing stick, or "atlatl," which could heave the spear with tremendous force. To kill the mammoths and bison, they would need power. In most cases, they could only wound the huge beasts, then follow them until they died.These were small people, probably averaging 5-foot-6, with a thin and muscular build. In the summer, they wore only loincloths; in the winter, robes made from the skins of the bison. When they reached their 25th birthdays, they were considered old.

At their time, this area was probably about 10 degrees cooler on average, and received double the precipitation we get today. It was a land rich in food: seeds, grains, root plants and game. In the warmer months, they would roam these plains, and in the summers, some would wander toward the mountains. But they would not make a permanent camp anywhere.

These Paleo-Indians would inhabit the Americas for 5,000 years, leaving the spear points, arrowheads, campsites and what later would be called tepee rings.

The tepee rings can be found today in northern Weld County, usually on hillsides, and usually only visible in the winter when the vegetation doesn't hide them. They are rings of stones, set in place by prehistoric and more recent American Indians, to hold the bottoms of their tepees in place. When the people moved on, as nomadic tribes did, they would leave the old stones behind, in place, producing the tepee rings we find today.

"We've found about 300 rings in the area of the Pawnee National Grassland," said University of Northern Colorado archeology professor Bob Brunswig. "At least one dating back to the Clovis culture, about 10,500 years ago."

But over the thousands of years, the Clovis people would give way to the Folsom culture, then the area would suffer tremendous drought, and the nomadic tribes would travel in areas to the north, where the rainfall and climate would attract more game, produce more vegetation.Then, about the time Christ was born, these Indians would discover the bow and arrow. It would dramatically change their lifestyle, enabling them to kill at a longer distance, using smaller stone points, and killing the small animals after the great bison and mammoths became extinct.

Those people returned to this area, living here in the Archaic Period. They developed not only the bow and arrows but also pottery, and some shards are still found here.

More modern tribes, with modern language and named Apaches, hunted here in the 1500s, dominating the area for 200 years. They were driven south by the Comanches, who eventually gave way to the Arapaho, Cheyennes, Kiowas, Crow, Sioux and Pawnee.

Some of these tribes were at war, fighting battles to maintain territory, or wars sparked with tribal hatred that dated back several generations. Some alliances were formed: the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, the Ute and Comanche. But the Pawnees were enemies of every tribe.

Then, in the early 1800s, a new threat to the Indians came west, pursuing the beaver along the rivers and into the mountains. These were white men, the early trappers. While most of them got along with the Indians, the trappers laid the trail for the gold-seekers of the 1850s, and the huge migration of more whites a few years later. There would be massacres on both sides, Indians killing the white settlers, the soldiers plundering Indian campsites. There would be governmental orders to drive the Indians from the territory of Colorado. Treaties would be signed and broken.

It wouldn't be long before the Indians were forced from the plains, driven to the north or south, or transported thousands of miles away onto reservations.

By 1870, when the town of Greeley was founded to the south of here, most of the Indians were gone.

<li> Colo. 14, which divides the upper third of Weld County, is the main artery across the grasslands. This is the fourth in an occasional series of stories about the highway, its history, wildlife and people.

<li> Information for this story was provided by the Greeley Municipal Museums, historians Peggy Ford and Carol Shwayder, and the books "Native Americans of the West" and "Indians of the Plains."