Posted on 11/20/2008 5:34:36 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Too often, Janet and LeRoy Peterson have heard the tell-tale sounds of screeching tires and, soon after, a rap on their door.
Another motorist has just discovered that the natural terrain around their river valley home makes a natural funnel for deer, the Petersons told members of the Indian History Hunters at a Nov. 4 meeting in Willmar.
Some 20 years ago, the Petersons discovered that Minnesota's first inhabitants had this all figured out at least 7,000 years before the first car-deer crash.
Except it wasn't 100- to 200-pound whitetail deer that brought Minnesota's first people to the Peterson's three-acre parcel south of Granite Falls. They were hunting a now extinct species of giant bison known as the bison occidentals.
These bison weighed 2,000 to 3,000 pounds apiece, and had dangerous, pointed horns more like those of a longhorn steer than the bison we know today. The hunters carried stone-tipped spears and throwing sticks known as atlatls that allowed them to fling the spears like darts at the SUV-sized animals.
It appears that they cornered the bison between two rock ledges and possibly mired them in a bed of clay in what is now the Petersons' pasture. From atop the rock ledges, they could toss rocks and spears and jab at the trapped beasts with sharpened sticks.
(Excerpt) Read more at wctrib.com ...
Displayed are some of the bones of the giant and now extinct species of bison the state's earliest inhabitants hunted and butchered 7,000 years ago at the site discovered south of Granite Falls. Marks on the bones indicated that the 2,000- to 3,000-pound animals were hunted with stone-tipped spears and sharpened sticks, and they were butchered with stone tools. (Tribune photo by Tom Cherveny)
Scientists: Bison in Illinois earlier (aren’t you relieved?)
South Carolina homepage (thestate.com) | Tue, Aug. 30, 2005 | Associated Press
Posted on 09/03/2005 7:17:31 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1476377/posts
This just in: they just found 600 more votes for Franken among the bones of these bison. The SOS of Minnesota ignores Coleman’s challenge that these votes would be over 7000 years old proclaiming, “Every vote must be counted.”
No doubt, Naked PETA protesters will show up at Prairies Edge Casino wanting the Native Americans to atone for the senseless killing of these peaceful animals by their ancestors. </sarcasm>
:’D
The truly impressive thing about the site is not the bison kill, but the enormous amount of work that went in to butchering the bison, and preparing the meat and leather, and fending off both predators and scavengers.
Other than stone, their only other tools would be made of some wood and leather. The children would gather up endless amounts of dried bison poop or flops, to use as fuel for their fires. Wood was too precious, being needed for tent poles and frames to dry the meat on.
The process to tan bison hides takes days. And all this work would be done during a bison meat feast, the remaining meat pounded into powder, sometimes with chokeberries, as pemmican, sealed in leather bags with a layer of molten fat poured over it, like paraffin used in canning. If properly made, it could last up to a year.
One heck of a lot of work.
Work or die up there. Winter kills the lazy.
Thank you so much for this post......I grew up in Granite Falls....among all the Petersons, Johnsons, Olsons, Swensons ....... uff da
these places were the precursors of the first McDonalds.
They have a Bison kill site by Lake Itasca in Minnesota also. Not much to. It is forest covered and near a swamp.
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