Even in winter, like many of the sheep, they sought the windswept slopes at high altitudes where there was little snow and travel was easier, especially on the southern exposures. Their dwellings were in caves and wickiups in sheltered canyons high in the mountains. They used the mountain ridges as routes for travel rather than river valleys like the tribes frequenting lower levels. They were expert craftsmen, especially famous for their tremendously powerful compound bows made mainly from laminated bighorn sheep horns. These bows were highly sought after trade items with other tribes. They are said to have been capable of driving an arrow straight through a buffalo.

Tucked away in the mountains behind the ranch traces can still be found of the sheep traps the Indians used to catch the wild sheep. They built wooden fences as wings to drive them into narrow corrals where they could be killed. We have also found a wickiup in a remote, narrow canyon an hour’s walk from the main lodge. The sticks are still standing in this sheltered place after at least 140 years.

Tony Taylor has written a hauntingly beautiful little book about these people called Alpine Sentinels published by Brushhog Books. He describes how in the mid 1700s the Plains Indian Tribes acquired the horse and the gun. This caused a technological revolution which totally transformed their way of living by making the buffalo much easier to hunt and facilitating travel, transport and warfare.

In Taylor’s words the Plains Indian culture turned toward abundance, speed, power, and mobility, forsaking most of the old ways. The Sheep Eaters on the other hand clung to their ancient culture and still depended on reverence, cunning, simplicity and finesse.

Sadly, the advent of the white man and his diseases like small pox decimated the Sheep Eaters. At about the same time diseases brought in by domestic sheep nearly wiped out the bighorn sheep herds and the surviving Indians had to move to the Wind River Indian Reservation where they sought refuge with their Shoshone cousins. 

Compiled and edited by Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated August, 2010.