Tag: Native Peoples

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Our Barking Dogs, Coyotes

Our Barking Dogs, Coyotes | Coyote, Canis latrans, Courtesy US FWS, Steve Thompson, Photographer
Coyote, Canis latrans, Courtesy US FWS, Steve Thompson, Photographer
With the big game hunting season beginning, I reflect back on my first deer hunt in Utah. Arriving from Michigan in 1971, Utah friends took me into White Pine Lake above Logan. Alone on my stand, a large animal approached. Finely in my sights, a large, gorgeous male coyote in its prime. I fired and the coyote was dead before it slumped to the ground. Like Aldo Leopold after watching the “green fire” fade from the eyes of the she-wolf he shot, I resolved never to kill another coyote.

Since that long ago time, my admiration for this amazing animal has only heightened. It’s fascinating behavior, intelligence, and cultural significance are all worthy of mention.

Coyotes now occur throughout most of North America, as well as in parts of Latin America. It has been described as “the most vocal of all North American mammals”. Its penetrating range of vocalizations gave it the name Canis latrans, meaning “barking dog”. Its wild song awakens something deep within my primal being.

Coyote, Canis latrans, Courtesy US FWS, Tom Koerner, Photographer
Coyote, Canis latrans, Courtesy US FWS, Tom Koerner, Photographer
The coyote features prominently as a trickster figure in the folktales of America’s indigenous peoples. It was given the trickster role in light of its intelligence and adaptability. Some tribes, such as the Paiute, and Ute portray the coyote as the companion of the creator. In the Paiute creation myth, the coyote was created by the wolf as a companion, and the two created land by piling soil on the water-covered world. In Navajo mythology, the coyote was present in the First World with First Man and First Woman.

19th-century writers wrote of coyotes being kept in native villages in the Great Plains. Although shy, pups have been raised for hunting both as retrievers and pointers. In 1945 a tame coyote named “Butch”, had a short-lived career in cinema, appearing in Smoky and Ramrod before being shot while raiding a henhouse.

Coyotes were occasionally eaten by mountain men. It was sometimes featured in feasts of the Plains Indians, and coyote pups were eaten by the indigenous people of California. The taste of coyote meat has been likened to that of the wolf, and is more tender than pork when boiled.

At one location in Southern California, coyotes began relying on a colony of feral cats as a food source. Over time, the coyotes killed most of the cats, and then continued to eat the cat food placed by people who were maintaining the cat colony.

Fortunately, in my view, it is nearly impossible to eradicate coyotes from an area. Despite large-scale and expensive efforts to kill coyotes over the past 150 years, coyotes continue to thrive, as I was reminded on my run up SLC’s City Creek Canyon where two families on either side of the canyon serenaded on me.

Research suggests that when aggressively controlled, coyotes can increase their reproductive rate by breeding at an earlier age and having larger litters, with a higher survival rate among the young. This allows coyote populations to quickly bounce back, even when as much as 75 percent of their numbers are removed. For coexisting peacefully with this remarkable being, check out Projectcoyote.org.
Long live America’s song dog!

This is Jack Greene reading and writing for Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy US FWS, Tom Koerner and Steve Thompson, Photographers
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

Coyote-Canis latrans, Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyote

Coyote, Animals, Photo Ark, The National Geographic Society, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/c/coyote/

Coyote-Canis latrans, DesertUSA.com and Digital West Media, Inc., https://www.desertusa.com/animals/coyote.html

Coyote, Learn, Yellowstone National Park, US National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/nature/coyote.htm

Coyote – Canis latrans, Utah Species, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Department of Natural Resources, State of Utah, https://fieldguide.wildlife.utah.gov/?species=canis%20latrans

 

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Utah’s Petroglyph Garden

Click to view Petroglyph Panel at the Fremont Indian State Park & Museum, Photo Courtesy Sevier County, Kreig Rasmussen, Photographer
Petroglyph Panel at Fremont Indian State Park & Museum
Photo Courtesy Sevier County
Kreig Rasmussen, Photographer

Hi, I’m Ru Mahoney with Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon.

Utah’s culture is rich with vestiges of our pioneer history, and the landscape is accented by visible signs of the European settlers who forged our modern communities. But the tapestry of Utah’s cultural heritage is interwoven with much older threads, as indelible and enduring as the landscape itself.

In the 1980’s, in the southwestern quadrant of central Utah, the construction of interstate 70 unearthed a secret over one thousand years old. The valleys and canyons of what is now Sevier County, already known as a seasonal thoroughfare for the Paiute, had an even older history as home to the largest community of Fremont Indians ever discovered. Influenced by their Anasazi cousins to the southwest, the Fremont culture encompassed a diverse group of tribes that inhabited the western Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin area from roughly 400 to 1350 A.D. Archaeologists tell us they were a people of ingenuity in their engineering, aggression in their social interactions, and lasting creativity in their artistic expression. Divergent theories on their fate suggest they drove the Anasazi out of the Four Corners region and eventually migrated to further landscapes, or that northern groups of Fremont peoples joined with bands of Shoshone and became the Ute Indians of the Uinta. Whatever the truth of their ultimate fate may be, nowhere is their history more tangible than at Fremont Indian State Park just south of Sevier, UT along I-70. This year-round state park offers visitors a treasure trove of artifacts and curated exhibits in an excellent visitor’s center. But the most authentic interaction with these past peoples comes from exploring the surrounding landscape.

Driving the winding road into Clear Creek Canyon, ghostly figures begin to emerge; pictographs painted in shades of ocher and umber, and pale petroglyphs carved into the canyon walls, reveal an archaic and epic account of Utah’s ancestral past. A unique creation story, in which a shrike leads the Fremont people from a dark and cold underworld through the stem of reed into the warm world above, plays out across the canyon walls. A craggy outcrop of rock in the shape of an eagle is said to be watching over the reed to the underworld below to insure nothing wicked escapes into our world. A concentric lunar calendar and an abundance of zoomorphics speak of a cultural identity conceived in relation to the broader astrological world, and a reverence for anthropomorphized neighbors such as bighorn sheep and elk. Spider Woman Rock juxtaposes a powerful figure of Native American mythology with the pedestrian humility of a nursing mother. And Cave of 100 Hands is a visceral exhibition of a humanity simultaneously reminiscent and divergent from our own.

While the Fremont culture is believed to have died out or been absorbed by other modern groups, Clear Creek Canyon and the rock art sites of Fremont Indian State Park are significant among the modern Kanosh and Koosharem Bands of the Paiute who began using the area and leaving their own indelible marks on the canyon walls after the disappearance of the Fremont peoples around 1400 A.D. On the vernal and autumnal equinox (occurring in the third or fourth week of March and September each year) the eagle rock casts its shadow over the reed rock at dawn, breathing life into ancient tales of our ancestral history.

Fremont Indian State Park is a notable destination for those interested in rock art sites, many of which are suited to families of all ages and mobility, including visitors with strollers and wheelchairs. Stop in the visitor’s center to borrow or purchase a guide to the petroglyphs and pictographs for deeper insight into the Fremont culture and an unforgettable glimpse into Utah’s past.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Ru Mahoney.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy Sevier County, Kreig Rasmussen, Photographer
Text:     Ru Mahoney, Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon.


Additional Reading:

https://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/fremont-indian/

https://stateparks.utah.gov/stateparks/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2015/02/Fremont_IndianBrochure.pdf

https://www.nps.gov/grba/learn/historyculture/fremont-indians.htm

https://www.thefurtrapper.com/fremont_indians.htm

Take the Pledge to Protect the Past, Utah State Historical Preservation Office, Department of Cultural & Community Engagement, State of Utah, https://ushpo.utah.gov/shpo/upan/