JACKSON, Wyo. — Long before European colonists set foot on what has become the United States, nomadic tribes inhabited the area now known as Wyoming.
Many tribes passed through and lived in what is now Teton Valley, Wyoming. Grand Teton National Park cites evidence of human inhabitants back to at least 11,000 years ago, just after the last ice age.
Prehistoric people began using roasting pits, large cooking pits lined with heated stones, around 5,900 years ago.
The Wyoming State website recognizes the tribes to include, “the Arapaho [Hinono’eino], Arikara [Sahnish, Arikaree, Ree, Hundi], Bannock [Nimi’], Blackfeet [Niitsitapi], Cheyenne [Tsis tsis’tas], Crow [Apsáalooke], Gros Ventre [Aaniiih], Kiowa [Koigu], Nez Perce [Nimiipuu], Sheep Eater [Tukudika], Sioux [Oceti Sakowin], Shoshone [Newe, Doyahinee’] and Ute [Weenuchiu] tribes. Of all these tribes, the Cheyenne [Tsis tsis’tas] and Sioux [Oceti Sakowin] were the last of the Indians to be controlled and placed on reservations.”
These groups had mixed hunting and gathering societies; many of the trails they created are the roads and highways used today.
In the greater Yellowstone area, the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum cites the “Mountain Shoshone [Doyahinee’], Crow [Apsáalooke], Kiowa [Koigu], Lakota [Teton Sioux, Oceti Sakowin] and Cheyenne [Tsis tsis’tas] tribes to hold significant ties to the area. The Bannock [Nimi’] and Nez Perce [Nimiipuu] tribes migrated seasonally through the area.”
These groups harvested the valley’s seasonal resources, including hunting bison, elk, deer etc. Archeologists believe that hunter-gatherers, 11,000 to 8,000 years ago, spent the late spring and summer in the valley following wildlife and ripening plants. They killed large animals such as bison and elk with projectile point spears.
Most of these points were flaked from obsidian, volcanic glass found in the area. Artifacts that date from the Archaic period, 8,000 to 1,500 years ago increased in number and variety. This shift suggests more people entered the valley and they needed new technologies due to a changing environment and different wildlife.
Much of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks were explored with the help of Native peoples. Natives served as guides, including the famous Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman, who was a guide during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. She is buried west of Fort Washakie.
Another Tukudeka guide, Togote, navigated the expedition of Capt. William Jones in 1873. Jones worries that the group wouldn’t be able to enter Yellowstone from the east due to impassable mountains. Togote, who knew the trails well from a lifetime of hunting, led the expedition through Blondie Pass, over the Owl Creeks, Sylvan Pass in the Absarokas, and east into Yellowstone. Togwotee Pass was later named for Togote.
Learn more about Indigenous Peoples Day and its contemporary context in Jackson Hole here.
According to the Teton County Land Acknowledgement, Teton County encompasses the ancestral homelands of the Nimi’ (Bannock), Niitsitapi (Blackfeet), Apsáalooke (Crow), Newe (Eastern Shoshone), Aaniiih (Gros Ventre), Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) and Hinono’eino (Northern Arapaho) Peoples, all Tribes that continue to exist and impact American landscape and society today.
