When you think of People Living shivering in caves that they might have been in structures. I think their early time period is interesting. The vegetation was totally different then. About 2000 feet higher in terms of the ecosystem. This is juniper here but it might have been the aspen and conifer. So by the river might have been juniper and such. The paleoindia time is pretty scary. They had megafauna then the favor to katzen cave bears that were 14 feet tall and they had a span of 14 feet. And they were competing for shelter with the people and the people loved overhangs using warm sheltered overhangs so there was competition there. You would have to be prepared to fight with giant slots that were 15 feet tall. And woolly mammoths were huge. They ask we hunted them its a Good Community to hunt this one woolly mammoth getting away from the rest of the herd would have been quite a feat in itself and traveling for days trying to make it tiring coming in for the kill and pulling out the meat rack to camp. I called them the mammoth hunters but i think they would probably kill four or five a year. It was just an arduous thing to do. And they probably lived a lot on deer and elk Bighorn Sheep and rabbits and squirrels. Then there is the archaic culture which comes after that. That was the culture that was 8000 years. Around here we find a lot of our cave sites. The pleistocene megafauna had disappeared and there were bison around here. We found some bison skulls nearby. Not like that on the great plains but the deer and elk, lots and lots of Bighorn Sheep. When you look at the panels near here you can see hundreds of Bighorn Sheep depicted so i think that is formed a pretty major diet and they used it for tools. They could use the Bighorn Sheep horns to hold things in. Sometimes they would put holes in them and use them as trenches and this would use all parts of all animals as im sure everyone has heard. Anyway it was a lifestyle that really works. Otherwise it would not have lasted a thousand years. In the book i try to cover the culture which was the fremont around here. The fremont culture was contemporaneous with the pueblo culture in the four corners area up here the growing season wasnt as long. They had penthouses as did the ancestral pueblos but never developed. Communities like mesa verde, some farming, little bit of farming. They are really wellknown for their incredible rock art motifs which are huge triangular figures almost as tall as you. They have shields and they are carrying spears. Sometimes it looks like they are carrying human heads. Some say there are masks. They were very either offensive or defensive people. I dont know against whom that their culture is evident in this area from 582 maybe 1100 a. D. And then evidence of it is around but that doesnt mean they disappeared. There was a drought up until 75 a. D. That might have affected their way of life. Certainly did the four corners people and was part of the reason the pueblo move dollop out of colorado. They use people who came after them in terms of a culture thats identifiable might have been the tremont. They might have been descendents of the tremont. A lot of the ute elders believe that. Otherwise people think the used people who speak a language which is spoken a lot in the tribes in california and in mexico and the hopi in arizona so they were everywhere and they could have been everywhere for a long long time. Around here evidence of the ute begins about the time the ancestral pueblo left and the tremont people disappeared although thats not really the right word so they could have been descendents from the tremont. These people initially were hunters and gatherers. They didnt really farm much. They had small family groups of people. They had to keep small in order to use those resources around them well. But around 1680 they acquired spanish forces, actually a little before that and once they became a horse culture they came together and not larger groups. They could go a lot further and they rode over the Rocky Mountains to the east side where there were more bison and hunted there and acquired a lot of traits from the cheyenne arapahoe, kiowa apache, the comanche. So they now were able to have tepees like the plains indians. Before that they would have dogs that would carry their tent interior of and other supplies around but with a horse you can put in a frame structure. You can put it on the horse and a big heavy teepee. Atp could have up to 12 to 20 bison hides so they weighed a lot. Now with the horse you could have more people together and they became a horse culture. They kept the tribes essentially out of western colorado. They were so adept to mountain living. Their ponies were small and really adapted to the winding trails of the Rocky Mountains and they knew their mountains. The other people on the planes would come in and try to hunt and the utes would keep most of them out most of the time. There are exceptions but then, in colorado in the 18 50s, 60s gold was discovered and the fate of all the colorado tribes wasot good. First, even before gold was discovered the immigrants going to california with pass through Northern Colorado and they would follow the rivers, the south platte and the north platte and their horses and oxen would use up all the grazing grasses along the rivers. They cut down trees for firewood they would bring diseases, smallpox cholera, measles and it was the beginning of the end of the native cultures. The northern utes were rounded up in were simply moved into utah in 1881 to join the in god on the reservation there. But the ute culture and all the native cultures in the americas are disappearing in terms of their language. In terms of their ceremonial knowledge, knowledge of their legends and stories and mike ration. And its all within the last 100 years or so and we are responsible. We could say well i wasnt there it would have been my great great grandfather but still i do think to hold a responsibility of these cultures literally disappearing after thousands of years and again its a moral issue and i just think people should he know the more they learn about it i think the more they will understand. While in Grand Junction we visited the history room at the Mesa County Library to learn about the founding and development of the city. We are at the Central Library in mesa county. The regional history room which is a collection of books and some maps dealing with most of its colorado history in Grand Junction. We are growing to be looking primarily at books dealing with the development and growth of Grand Junction and mesa county. We are also going to be talking about some of the interesting characters and some of the books that talk about interesting characters that are pertinent to the town. The first book im going to talk about is called mesa county colorado, a 100 year history. Its almost a catalog of the history of mesa county from 1883 , 21993 talking about adjusting characters and interesting people in the town and urrounding areas and is going to talk about different places. And mama career would have done a lot of research and i believe she was not a local resident but the amount of research she did would have been very extensive. She like i said there are a lot of great pictures and theyre talking about different events and happenings that were important to the town in mesa county. So it was actually discovered by settlers in 1881 but prior to that