Thursday, April 22, 2010

This morning the mountains are above the clouds. It is really unusual looking. We are supposed to get some rain; and I guess this is it coming in. The wind isn't strong yet, but you can hear it howling in the distance. We ate lunch at the Pine Creek Cafe. It is the old General Store and has been added to many, many times. They have an unusual menu Today we went to the Museum of the Rockies at the Montana State University in Bozeman. They have a large dinosaur exhibit. Many dinosaur bones have been found in Montana and the Montana State University specializes in this field. Many of their exhibits are replicas of the real thing. The real bones are in more well-known museums, such as the one in Chicago.
They have hypothesized that dinosaurs are descendants of birds because they have the same bone structure. They also breathed like our birds do with air sacs inside their vertebrate. That's why they do not have very large lungs. Also, the dinosaurs did not drag their tails as we previously thought because they have extra muscles in their tails to hold them up. In addition, they have also found that some dinosaurs were partially warm blooded. This showed up when they discovered that they have a fast metabolism. All of these were eye-openers for us.
This Museum of the Rockies had an exhibit on the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia. It has an interactive exhibit for children to experience what it was like to live in the Jamestown Settlement, including questions requiring them to make decisions in the lives of these settlers. It was really interesting. First, the settlement had no women, so the men had to do everything. You have to decide where you would live: in the wetlands, mountains, on the river or further inland. There are consequences for all of your choices and some of them are very surprising.
The next exhibit was about the Indians. The Crow Indians lived close to the mountains in the winter. When spring came they would send out Scouts to find a suitable campsite. The Scouts would take a chickadee with them. This bird would warn them of danger or of an enemy nearby. At night an owl would warn them of dangers, including weather changes.
The Black Feet Indians were expert horsemen and fierce warriors. They controlled the land from Northern Saskachewan to now Three Forks, Montana. Their name came from the discoloration of their moccasins from ashes. The Crows were considered the Bird People. They were divided into 2 groups: River Crow and Mountain Crow. The Shoshone Indians were considered to be the Snakes. The Sioux Indians were the first Indians in Montana in the 16th century.
In the summer and fall the buffalo herds were driven over the cliffs because it was too hard to hunt them with clubs. They would kill the maimed buffalos with arrows, lances and darts. The first knives were made of stone in the mid 1700s. Then they were replaced by metal knives from trading with the fur trappers.
They used all of the buffalo for their survival. The women wore leather dresses with long leather leggings and moccasins from the hides. They added fringe to hasten the drying time of the leather garment. They traded minerals and beaded items for wool blankets from fur traders in the late 1800s. Then cotton and wool replaced their leather dresses. Baby diapers were made of moss, cattail down, cottonwood fluff, rabbit fur and soft leather. The children had toys that were replicas of the adult things they would need to learn. They had dolls, tepees, arrows, tiny pots and toy dogs. A papoose stays inside cradleboards until they were 2 years old. The babies wore high-topped beaded leather moccasins and beaded leather caps.
The Indians dyed their paints to add color to their clothing and tepees. They made green paint from dried duck dung. The reds and yellows came from baked ochre. The blacks came from the minerals chert and obsidian. Blue and bright green were available once they traded with the fur trappers. They used an awl made from buffalo bones and horns to punch holes in the leather to sew together with sinew or leather threads. The womens' dresses were slit up the sides to facilitate better movement. They had to scrape the meat, fat and hair off the hides then they tanned the hides by rubbing animal brains and internal organs on them. They were left to dry for several days. Once dry they pounded the hide to break the fibers and soften it.
In the 1500s the Spanish brought horses to Mexico. By the 1600s many horses had escaped to the north. In the 1700s the Northern Plains Indians had horses. Horses made life easier for them. They used them to help catch buffalo and to carry their tepees, food and clothing when they moved from 1 campsite to another. Before they had horses in 1720, they used dogs to pull a travois with 50# of items in it. It was made of 2 sticks tied together at 1 end and leather straps woven at the other end to form a base on which to place food and other things. But a horse could carry much more.
The Cheyenne have a story about the creation of the Earth. The Maheo- All Spirit- created the salty lake and made a ball of mud from it. This became Mother Earth and she rested on the back of the turtle. Maheo created the Indians by breathing on his own ribs. This was the first man and woman Indians. Maheo gave the Cheyenne the deer for clothing and food. Maheo gave them the porcupines for ornaments. Then Maheo decided to give them 1 animal to provide them with everything -the buffalo was created. Surprising it is close to God's creation.