Arkansas River Channel Capacity and Riparian Habitat Planning Study

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1791 references has provided some general trends and a few dates for specific accounts, encounters, or events relating to the migration and/or movements of historic Plains groups such as the early 1820s arrival of the Cheyenne to the Arkansas River area (Gunnerson and Gunnerson 1988:41- ' 44; see also Cassells 1983 and Gunnerson 1987 for an extensive reference list). The horse and the buffalo became primary factors in Native American survival on the ' Plains. The Native American population grew as did the number of horses they kept (West ' 1995:17), Reports indicate that some of the horse herds were estimated to be as large as 20,000 to 50,000 head (West 1995:32 -33). Before long the effects of these growing populations, human , and animal, began to show, not immediately upon the upland prairie but on the riparian ' vegetation of the floodplain. The Native Americans with their hunting lifestyle used the riverine habitats heavily during the winter months where they could find protection from winter weather, ' ample firewood, water, and grass (West 1995:25), The Native Americans and the early trappers in the west had also learned that if necessary their horses could be fed young cottonwood bark during the severe winter months (West 1998:87, 176). In late spring, after taking advantage of , the spring growth of the mid- to tall grass areas along the rivers, they would move their horses to the upland prairie to graze the high protein short grasses; to support their growing horse herds the Indians were "chasing grass" (West 1995:21 -22, 32 -33). , The opening of the Santa Fe trade in 1822 also brought more people, at first, primarily traveling through the valley (Ubbelohde et al. 1982:32). As trade intensified, the number of ' wagons in the wagon trains and the attendant livesto9k got larger and eventually the number of wagon trains multiplied significantly. Their livestock heavily grazed the grasses of the floodplain and adjacent areas along the trail for gain energy to continue their strenuous trek ' (West 1995:30 -32). West (1995:26 -27), also talking about the Oregon Trail, effectively describes the situation: ' "In other words, the double invasion of mid- century [the Native Americans and Americans from the East], that unprecedented force of ecological change, came to be focused on one of the country's vital microenvironments. This fact was missed ' by virtually all white observers —and it has bi en overlooked almost entirely by historians ever since — probably because of timing. Indians moved into.the river timberlands during the late fall, when whites iwere secure and warm back in St. , Louis or out in the Willamette valley; when white emigrants and teamsters began plodding up the river trails in mid- spring, Indians were heading for the high, open plains. Whites in the summer, Indians in the.winter; it was a kind of shuttle ' system• of land use along the river bottoms. Once we recognize this pattern, and then begin to look for the results, one point becomes clear: Indians, white travelers, and their horses and oxen and mulls were gobbling and burning the , bejabbers out of one of the most vital, vulnerable, and limited habitats of the Great Plains," Early on, there were only a few traders in the region and a few small irrigation diversions along the river and its tributaries were constructed to irrigate garden plots such as those at Bent's ' Old Fort in the 1830s -1840s (Thompson 1979:25; Steinel 1926:14 -16, 20 -26, 175; Lavender 1954:287). As the trade increased on the Santa Fe Trail and as the mining camps grew, more 16