Olsen-Chubbuck Bison Kill Site

The Olsen-Chubbuck Bison kill site is located 10.5 miles to the southeast of the town of Firstview in Cheyenne County, Colorado. The Paleo-Indian site dates back to an estimated 8000-6500 B.C. and provides evidence for bison hunting long before the use of the bow and arrow or horses.^[1] The site was named Olsen-Chubbuck after two archaeologists who discovered the bone bed, Siguard Olsen and Gerald Chubbuck. The Olsen-Chubbuck site was excavated by Joe Ben Wheat, an anthropologist employed through the University of Colorado Museum.^[2] The site contains a bone-bed of almost two-hundred bison that were killed and processed by Paleo-Indian hunters.

The Olsen-Chubbuck was first discovered by Gerald Chubbuck, a young archaeologist, in 1957 when he came across five separate piles of bones in this small river valley that is located below the northern edge of the valley of the Arkansas River.^[1] When Chubbuck identified these piles he also found several projectile points in their association. He notified the University of Colorado Museum of his findings. Chubbuck and his colleague Siguard Olsen excavated one-third of the site.^[1] By spring of 1958 the University of Colorado Museum was granted permission to excavate by the Chubbuck and Olsen as well as the owner of the land, Paul Forward. The excavations were carried out on through 1958 and 1960 by Joe Ben Wheat.^[2]

Bison

Bison was the most important large game animal for the peoples living in the plains of North American for millennia before its almost near extinction due to over hunting in the 19th century. The Indians took advantage of nearly every part of the massive mammal. The meat, fat, and bone marrow provided North American Indians with food, while its hide provided them with clothing and shelter. The hides were commonly sewn together and used as teepee covers. The brain was used to tan the hide. The horns of the bison were even made to use as containers. Bison antiquus, with large straight-horns, replaced elephants as a prey species for humans in the late Pleistocene.. The Indians who hunted the Bison antiquus used projectile points of the Folsom culture. By 7000 B.C. the smaller variation, Bison occidentalis had replaced antiquus on the Plains.^[1] Bison are a gregarious animal species that move in herds of fifty to three-hundred animals in search of food. Bison rely on their keen sense of smell for obtaining food since they have poor vision. The lack of sight among bison is an advantage to the hunter who can get close to the herd without being recognized as a predator. Once in close range, the hunter can scare the bison which will entice them to close ranks and stampede, making them vulnerable to jumps or arroyo traps.^[1] Animals in the front of the stampede cannot come to an abrupt stop because they are pushed by those in the back of the stampede. Some kill sites rely on the fall or the landing of some animals on top of others to kill or immobilize the prey.

Excavation

The Olsen-Chubbuck site consists of a bone bed that lies in a small arroyo, or a dry gulch. The excavation took place from 1957 to 1960 on a section of the arroyo that was about two-hundred feet long.^[1] The western end of the arroyo was narrow, only about a foot and a half in depth but grew deeper and wider in the east. Where the excavation stopped the arroyo was about twelve feet wide and seven feet deep. It is certain that the arroyo was not formed by stream action because it runs east to west while the drainage pattern flows from north to south. Of the section of the arroyo excavated, one-hundred seventy feet contained the deposit of bison bone.

The bone bed at Olsen-Chubbuck consisted of the skeletal remains of almost two-hundred Bison occidentalis.^[1] Olsen and Chubbuck excavated fifty of these large mammal remains, and the University of Colorado Museum uncovered one-hundred forty-three more in their further excavation. The excavation uncovered the skeletal remains of forty-six adult bulls, twenty-seven immature bulls, sixty-three adult cows, thirty-eight immature cows, and sixteen calves.^[1]

The site contained 3 distinct layers of bison remains. The bottom layer contained thirteen bison skeletons that were not touched by the hunters. The middle layer contained skeletal remains of bison that were nearly complete; evidence from this layer implies that these bison were only partially butchered. The top layer of the bone bed contained single bones and articulated bison skeletal segments. It is the way that the bones and segments in the top layer were distributed that provides us with evidence of how the hunter’s were processing the large mammals. The top layer of the bone deposit was the result of a standard Paleo-Indian butchering technique. As the hunters removed the meat from the bones they placed them in separate piles or units. Each pile contained the skeletal remains from a number of animals. The excavations documented nine of these piles. A skull was found at the top of nearly every pile. Also, bones of the same part from a number of animals were found in clusters.^[1]

Implications

It is clear from the way the skeletal remains of the some two-hundred Bison occidentalis were found that they were stampeded by the hunters into the arroyo.^[2] The animals that plunged first were killed from the fall itself as the skeletal remains were contorted and had injuries such as a twisted spines. These first bison that fell into the arroyo had no chance to escape from the hunters as more bison piled on top of them.

Evidence from the skeletal remains indicates the direction the herd of bison was running. Thirty-nine of the bison who were untouched by the hunters were assumed to be lying in the bed as they were when they had died. Not one of these bison faced a north, northwest, or northeast direction. It is thus probable that the bison were running in a north-south direction. This suggests the wind was coming from the south, with the pursuing hunters upwind. Since the site contained the skeletal remains of sixteen calves which were thought to have only been a few days old at the time, the kill was likely in late May or early July.^[2]

Butchering

In the way the bones of the top layer were associated we can make conclusions about the butchering process. The first thing that the Paleo-Indian hunters were concerned with was getting the bison carcasses into a position where they could easily be processed. To do this, the hunters would have rotated, lifted, or pulled the bison which would require a lot of human effort.

The butchering process was similar to that of recent Plains Indians groups. By cutting down the back and pulling down the sides of the skin on both sides of the carcass, the skin was used to place the meat in once it was pulled off of the carcass. This process may have been used because some of the tenderest meat is directly under the skin of an animal’s back. After removing this meat, the hunter could then cut free the bison’s shoulder blades and forelegs. Once these have been removed, the rib cage and body cavity is exposed, which contain the most prized meat.

Among more recent hunters at this stage hunter’s sometimes ingested raw organs during the butchering process. Unfortunately, there was no direct evidence for this in the bones. The Olsen-Chubbuck hunters were eating the tongues of the bison, however, given the isolated occurrence of tongue bone in the piles.^[1]

Once the ribs were exposed all of the underlying meat was taken out from the carcass. Due to this process of removal many of the rib bones near the spine were found broken. Once the spine was exposed from behind the rib cage the hunter would sever it and therefore obtain access to the bison’s hindquarters. Once the spine was stripped of meat it was discarded. It was at this point in the buttering process that meat was removed from the pelvis then the hind legs.

At some point in this butchering process the neck and spine were cut off together and set aside to be worked later. Once they got around to it, the hunters would cut away the neck meat. It is thought that the Paleo-Indians would preserve this neck meat into pemmican.^[1] Pemmican is made when meat is dried in strips and then pounded into powder. Evidence suggests they may have practiced in this technique because the later Plains Indians found the neck meat of bison too tough to eat.^[1]

Consumption

An adult male bison can produce up to five-hundred fifty pounds of edible meat, while cows produce about four-hundred pounds. An immature male produces about one-hundred sixty five pounds of meat while an immature female would only produce one-hundred forty pounds. It is estimated a bison calf could yield about fifty pounds of edible meat. Based on these estimations and evidence of butchering we have from the Olsen-Chubbuck site, these hunters obtained about fifty-six thousand six-hundred forty pounds of meat as well as a significant amount of edible mass in the form of fat and internal organs from the bison.

We cannot be sure how much of the meat these Paleo-Indian hunters ate fresh and how much they preserved. We do however know that fresh meat is only good for about a month; therefore with this much meat the band would need to be at least one-hundred people to consume this much of fresh meat in the time allocated before it would go bad.^[1] This estimate by the excavators based on the assumption that a person consumed twenty pounds of fresh meat per day, and seems high, especially since women and children in the band probably consumed far less. The volume of meat obtained from the site, however, suggests that a fairly large social group, greater than an individual band, may have been present,

Artifacts

Most of the artifacts found in association with the bison bone bed at the Olsen-Chubbuck site were projectile points. Twenty-seven projectile points were found at this site. Twenty-one of these points were complete or almost whole.^[3] Most of them were of the Scottsdale culture type, but there were also some Milnesand points and one was of Eden type. The twenty-seven projectile points can easily be divided into two categories; the first large lanceolate full-bodied points with stems and the second smaller, short and narrow points with no shoulders.^[3] This diversity in the projectile points indicates the range of variation that existed among a single group. Also, the diversity in materials used to make these points indicate great range mobility or trade among these Paleo-Indian peoples.

Twenty-six other artifacts were also found at the Olsen-Chubbuck kill site, including 3 end-scrapers, 1 side-scraper, 1 Alibate knife, 3 small stones, 2 utilized flakes, 3 resharpening flakes, 1 hammer/anvil stone, 1 limonite pebble, 4 cut, notched or polished bones, and 1 bifacially flaked knife.^[2]

See also

• Franktown Cave
• Jones-Miller Bison Kill Site
• Jurgens Site
• Lamb Spring
• Lindenmeier Site
• Magic Mountain Site
• Roxborough State Park Archaeological District
• Trinchera Cave Archeological District

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Wheat, J.B. (1967). "A Paleo-Indian bison kill". Scientific American 216 (1): 44–53. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e} Wheat, J.B. (1972). "The Olsen-Chubbuck site: a paleo-Indian bison kill". Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology 26. 
3. ^ ^{a b} "First View Points". http://www.lithiccastinglab.com/cast-page/2001julyfirstview.html. Retrieved 1 April 2011. 

External links

• Olsen-Chubbuck Site
• Wheat 1967 paper
• First View points
• Olsen-Chubbuck Site book
• nativedigs.com