Originally Posted by shrapnel
Originally Posted by Birdwatcher


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.
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Lewis and Clark nearly starved to death in the Rocky Mountains, nothing to eat. Grizzlies weren’t there for the same reason. You can’t judge frontier America by what today’s conditions are...


One often hears the Lewis and Clark argument. But Lewis and Clark were 30 guys trying to feed themselves through hunting while essentially sampling along a single transect, which arguments seek to represent the whole Rocky Mountains. Rather.than being free to move about and look for game they have to remain on course and follow valleys so steep-sided they lose horses tumbling off of cliffs, even so, one of their party in the middle of all that reports a bear track, griz or black we ain’t told.

Twenty and thirty years later did the Mountain Men themselves starve? Or was it intermittent periods of hardship and sometimes plenty, much as L&C had experienced?

"...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