SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy - Let the Adventures Begin!: August 2014

Figure One - Speed Demon! Pronghorn buck watching me across
his prairie kingdom. Photograph by John Bradford Branney.

Antilocapra americana or the American pronghorn is the fastest mammal in North America. It has a distribution from southern Canada to northern Mexico.

I was driving down a bumpy gravel road in Wyoming on an early morning jaunt to one of my favorite artifact-hunting ranches. A sea of sagebrush and beige prairie surrounded the road. Out of the corner of my right eye, I caught movement out on the prairie. I glanced over and spotted a pronghorn buck racing my vehicle. I peered down at my speedometer and noted that I was plugging along at a tad more than thirty miles per hour. I looked over at the pronghorn buck and he was not even laboring to keep up. I gandered at the stretch of road in front of me and saw that the road was pretty straight. I decided to put that pronghorn buck to the test. I stepped on the accelerator just to see how fast Mr. Pronghorn could go. You have to watch out for pronghorns paralleling your vehicle. They have a nasty habit of accelerating and crossing the road in front of you. I do not understand why they do that. Maybe they are showing off or maybe it is just a deadly game they like to play or maybe they are not that bright. I do know that sometimes that does not end well for them.

Figure Two - The first book in my Paleoindian adventure series is SHADOWS on the TRAIL.

My vehicle picked up speed at around thirty-five miles per hour and the pronghorn buck matched it. I again checked the road out in front of me for curves and ruts. I sped up to forty miles per hour. The vehicle chattered and yawed down the washboard road. Forty miles per hour was my limit, otherwise, I might be the one that ends up out on the prairie. I thought that might be the limit of the pronghorn buck, as well. I looked over at my pronghorn friend and saw that at forty miles per hour, the buck was not done with me yet. He lowered his head and found another gear. His legs chewed up the prairie sand as he accelerated across the road right in front of my vehicle. I pumped the brakes and slowed down. That was enough for me. I let the adrenalin subside in my body. The last time I saw that pronghorn buck his white rump was waving goodbye to me. The pronghorn buck was adios, amigos, disappearing in a sea of tall Wyoming sagebrush. The pronghorn buck just demonstrated to me who the fastest dude on the prairie was, and it sure was not me.

Pronghorn are the second fastest land animal in the world, right behind cheetahs. At thirty miles per hour, pronghorns are loping along. At forty-five miles per hour, they are cruising along. Beyond that, they are simply hauling!

High Plains archaeological sites are well represented with the remains of pronghorn antelope. The archaeological record of the Folsom People, my main characters in Shadows on the Trail, demonstrates that pronghorn antelope were an important component of their Pleistocene diet. Investigators have found the remains of pronghorn antelope in Folsom-aged strata at two major archaeological sites: the Lindenmeier Site in northern Colorado and the Agate Basin Site in eastern Wyoming. Figure three shows fluted projectile points from my collection that are diagnostic of the Folsom Paleoindian Complex.

Figure Three - Folsom projectile points from the author's collection.

It is now time to climb into our time machine and set it for the late Pleistocene, sometime around 10,600 B.C. We join three young hunters from my prehistoric odyssey called Shadows on the Trail on a difficult trek across the Arid Plains of North Texas and southern Colorado. The three young hunters named Chayton, Wiyaka, and Keya are almost out of food and water. From that book passage, it appears things have gone from bad to worse.

The hunters were in the direct path of the dirt and dust blowing in the wind. Whatever was creating the dust, was heading towards the hunters. Chayton was nervous and peered around for something to hide behind. His eyes teared up from the dust and dirt in the air. The empty prairie offered nothing but sage and greasewood. The rumbling sound grew louder, and the dust cloud was practically on top of the hunters. They could barely see each other. Wiyaka suddenly stood up. His face lit up into a broad smile and then instantly became a worried frown. He waved his spear over his head and screamed his lungs out. Still hunkered down, Chayton and Keya peered at Wiyaka as if they were sure he had gone crazy.

The lead animals spotted Wiyaka and his waving spear. The herd veered off to the right of the three hunters. Chayton stood up and Keya followed suit. The three hunters watched as hundreds, if not thousands of pronghorn antelope galloped past them. The herd was so large that the dust cloud it created brought temporary darkness to the prairie. By the time the thundering hooves died out, the dust cloud had drifted off to the southeast and the blazing sun reappeared.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Keya laughed and pointed a finger at Chayton.

“What are you laughing at?” Chayton demanded.

Wiyaka turned around and looked at Chayton. He laughed. Keya and Wiyaka were having a good laugh at Chayton’s expense. Dirt covered Chayton from head to toes. When he opened his mouth, the only thing on his body not covered in dirt and dust were his teeth. Chayton reminded the hunters about the herd.

“Are we going to stand here and laugh at me or go after the herd?” Chayton demanded.

“I would like to stand here and laugh at you,” Wiyaka ribbed Chayton.

“I am leaving!” Chayton announced.

Wiyaka and Keya ran after Chayton. In their exuberance, the hunters had all but forgotten about the heat and the wind and their thirst and sore feet. The hunters reached a small knoll quite gassed from their run. They slogged up the hill, having to stop several times for a breather. When they reached the top, all three hunters collapsed on the ground, completely exhausted. Chayton peeked over the top of the knoll and his eyes could not believe the sight. He did a double take. In the near distance, a massive river meandered across the Arid Plains. On both sides of the river, large herds of tatoke or pronghorn antelope grazed on the short grass growing along the floodplain.

The three hunters had found paradise.

Figure Four - Pronghorn buck cruising along on the prairie.
Author photograph.

I imagine that back 12,600 years ago, pronghorn herds were plentiful. Pronghorn antelope are survivors, and their herds are prolific even today. While deer have short-crowned, browsing teeth, pronghorn have high-crowned teeth which enables them to browse on grit-covered shrubs and forbs. Pronghorn can survive on a diet of sagebrush, something a deer cannot do.

In a wide-open environment like the Arid Plains in the story above, pronghorn antelope are nearly unapproachable. Pronghorns have phenomenal eyesight and they don't miss much, even at very long distances. George Frison reported in his book Survival of Hunting that pronghorns' bulging eyes allow the beasts a nearly 360-degree field of vision and that study showed that a pronghorn's eyesight is akin to a human peering through eight power binoculars. Pronghorn, bison, and caribou are hypersensitive to movement. If you are a spear-toting hunter in the Folsom tribe without a mode of transportation other than your two legs, you can imagine how difficult it was to get close enough to hunt pronghorn antelope on the open plains.

However, for prehistoric hunters, there was a bit of hope. Pronghorn antelope have a couple of weaknesses. Even though pronghorns are mostly unapproachable for a spear-tossing hunter on a wide-open prairie, the animals become confused when dealing with physical barriers or when surrounded by humans. Trap them in some kind of dead-end arroyo or with a manmade or natural barricade, and pronghorn antelope tend to run around in circles until they literally fall over from exhaustion, instead of attempting to escape the enclosure. Prehistoric hunters took advantage of that behavior by building brush, stone, or wooden fences that funneled the pronghorn herds into more confined areas. There, the prehistoric hunters dispatched the pronghorns with spears and stone mauls.

In the book Architecture of Hunting by Ashley Lemke, the author reported there are over one hundred large-scale hunting structures dated from Early Archaic to historical Indian times in the Great Basin of the United States. Early hunters trapped pronghorn, mule deer, big-horn sheep, and elk in those structures. Communal pronghorn hunters used lines of brush, rocks, and wooden poles to trap the beasts. Corrals were eighteen inches to seven feet tall and made up of juniper trees, pine, sagebrush, and stone. Fences did not need to be high for pronghorns because they are just like caribou; both beasts prefer to go under, not over obstacles. I have found a few pronghorn carcasses hung up on barb wire fences. Attempting to leap over the fence did not end well for them.

Figure Five - A buck and three does that I "lured" closer by waving my walking stick in the air
while artifact hunting in Wyoming in September 2014. My game began when the
foursome was at least a quarter of a mile away. John Bradford Branney Photograph.

Pronghorn antelope possess another weakness; their curiosity compromises them. When pronghorn antelope spot something of interest on the prairie, they oftentimes move in for a closer look. They need to see what it is, even though it might be a dangerous predator. Since they can outrun all breathing predators, they can use a burst of speed to rocket away. I have tested their curiosity many times while hunting for prehistoric artifacts on the wide-open prairie (figure five). When I see a pronghorn in the distance, I wave my walking stick in the air to get its attention. Once it locks onto me, I can usually hold its attention for a while. Occasionally, I can draw them in closer, or at least hold them in place standing there and staring at me. The game usually ends when either the pronghorn or I become bored and lose interest.

Figure Six - I took this photograph in September 2020 while prehistoric artifact
hunting in Wyoming. The pronghorns initially scampered away but stopped to
check me out one last time. "Curiosity kills the cat".

Read the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy for

more adventures about pronghorn antelope!

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The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel Beyond the Campfire, Branney catapults his readers back into Prehistoric America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the Shadows on the Trail Pentalogy.

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa. Beyond the Campfire is the eleventh published book by Branney.

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Click the Link - Ghosts of the Heart by John Bradford Branney

The Scene: 10, 700 years ago, in a place one day
would be called Colorado.

Wanbli Cikala and He Wonjetah stood on the bank of the creek, bracing themselves against the gale-force winds and onslaught of flying sand and gravel. The black dust blizzard was directly in front of them, carrying silt and sand high into the air. “It will miss us!” Wanbli Cikala screamed, more of a hope than a fact.

“Slol wa yea shnee! – I do not know!” He Wonjetah screamed into the wind.

The sand and gravel pelted their faces while their dust-filled eyes streamed tears into the wind. In a wasted effort, both men held their arms in front of their noses and mouths, attempting to protect their faces from sand and gravel. Tree limbs from the dead pine forest flew past the two men like

spears thrown by the gods. With one arm, He Wonjetah grabbed Wanbli Cikala by the arm and literally pulled him down into the creek bottom. The sky was as black as the darkest night when the front edge of the black dust blizzard exploded on the Arid Plains on top of the tribe. He Wonjetah and Wanbli Cikala stumbled around in the creek bottom, looking for a place that shielded them from the abrasive sand.

Finally, He Wonjetah just shoved Wanbli Cikala to the ground, falling on top of him. The winds roared over them as sand and silt poured into the deeper depression of the creek bottom. He Wonjetah could not breathe as he searched for air to fill his lungs while choking on the thick dust. He heard Wanbli Cikala underneath him, wheezing and coughing as silt and sand poured into the creek bottom, filling it up. The drifting sand and silt would soon bury the tribe unless they kept moving. He Wonjetah stood up and the cyclonic winds knocked him back down.

What would you think if this suddenly appeared
and you had never seen or heard of a tornado?

The passage above is from Ghosts of the Heart, the second book in my Shadows on the Trail Trilogy. In this passage, the Folsom People were traveling through a once-upon-a-time pine forest, a pine forest that no longer existed because of climate change near the end of the Pleistocene. On this once-forest, now-desert location, the Folsom People encountered a frightful sight, a black blizzard or dust storm of epic proportion. The Folsom People were stuck in the middle of this desert with no place to run or hide, except to the bottom of a dry creek bed. The passage showed how two of the tribal elders named Wanbli Cikala and He Wonjetah dealt with this hair-raising experience.

Now, I am going to ask you to close your eyes and imagine yourself witnessing either a gigantic tornado, a massive dust storm or a devastating hailstorm for the very first time. But, before you close your eyes, imagine you have a time machine and can go back in time to 10,700 years ago in the Pleistocene Epoch, before the science even existed that could adequately explain the causes of these forces of nature. Now, imagine that when you step into the time machine, you leave your knowledge and memories in the 21st Century. You are now living in the Pleistocene Epoch without any kind of knowledge or memories on what causes tornados or dust storms. Okay, now that I have set the stage, close your eyes and unharness your vivid imagination.

Photograph of a dust storm in central United States in the 1930s.

Are your eyes open yet? Good. Wipe your memory of everything you know about weather and storms. I know this is darn near impossible to do. Once we have learned something it is very difficult, if not impossible, to unlearn it. I want you to imagine you are a member of the Folsom People tribe and you are roaming the plains and prairies of Texas and Colorado in search of food. You would have no knowledge of what makes weather change or storms appear. How do you think you would explain storms? Remember, we have wiped out your modern-day memory. Perhaps, you and the other Folsom People would blame these phenomena on an all-powerful being, creating these mysteries of nature. This is not too far off. Our early ancestors did this as well.

The Pleistocene was no place for wimps. The Folsom People not only had to deal with the predatory animals that wanted to put them on their menu (yes, humans were part of the food chain, not the top of the food chain), but they also had to deal with the ravages of storms associated with climate change.

Now, as a Folsom person, how would you explain that dust storm? Without the knowledge to understand the science behind a dust storm, well, I don't have to explain the problem the Folsom People had.