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When mountain men and Indians roamed the west, grizzly bears were on the plains. It is only in our lifetime that they have inhabited the mountains. So if mountain men were in the mountains where the bears weren’t, no conflict. If the Indians were in the plains where the bears were, they could see them for miles, again no conflict...


Seems a bit simplistic.

What has changed about the mountains today that precluded grizzlies in early times? The friggin things are/were found from the Arctic tundra clear to Southern California. Surely every area of habitat that was habitable by grizzlies, was.

For that matter seems a real puzzle why they didn't occur clear to the Eastern Seaboard, for example early accounts speak of the waterways back east chock full of migrating salmon and shad in season to an extent unimaginable today..

Even Mountain Men had to cross the Plains, often, and ya can't see grizzlies for miles at night, when all the cooking fires of a large Indian camp would be sending food odors across the Plains.

Just wondering.

"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744