The journals of Lewis and Clark reveal a major difference in the taxa, numbers, and behavior of megafauna on either side of the Rocky Mountains in western North America. Two prior events set the stage for what Lewis and Clark would find. The first was the extinction around 13,000 years ago of two-thirds of the native megafauna of the American West. The second was the effects on Indians of deadly new diseases and new technologies brought by Europeans in the post-Columbian era. Populations of large animals, which were preferred prey for native people, were not immune to European influence. Along the Columbia River corridor west of the Rockies, tens of thousands of people lived in a game sink. Here Lewis and Clark's party found too few animals to live off the land by hunting. They adapted poorly to the local diet of fish and roots offered by the Nez Perce and bought dogs and horses to sustain themselves. To the east, uninhabited lands along the Upper Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers supported an abundance of wild game, especially bison, elk, deer, pronghorn, and wolves. This game source occupied part of a buffer zone of 120,000 km 2 probed by various Indian war parties, some of them armed with muskets. William Clark recognized the relationship and near the end of their journey he wrote that they found large numbers of large animals in the land between nations that were at war. Both the abundance of game in buffer or war zones and scarcity of big game in sinks have been misinterpreted as a natural or typical condition. Although efforts to restore ecosystems to what is described in early journals may have merit, they are aimed at a flickering target. Long before these journals were written, the land had been stripped of most of its native megafauna through human influence. In the absence of humans, we predict that much larger populations of bison, elk, deer, and wolves would have ranged the West than were reported in historic documents. Zonas de Guerra y Depresiones de Animales de Caza en el Oeste Americano en Tiempos de Lewis y ClarkResumen: Los documentos de Lewis y Clark revelan una gran diferencia en los números de taxa y la conducta de la megafauna en ambos lados de las montañas Rocallosas del Oeste de Norte América. Dos eventos anteriores establecieron la situación de lo que Lewis y Clark encontrarían. El primero fue la extinción de dos tercios de la megafauna nativa del Oeste Americano, hace alrededor de 13,000 años. El segundo fueron los efectos de las nuevas enfermedades mortales y nuevas tecnologías traídas por los europeos sobre los indios en la era posterior a Colón. Los animales grandes de los cuales la gente nativa dependía no fueron inmunes a la influencia europea. A lo largo del corredor del Rio Columbia al Oeste de las rocallosas, decenas de miles de gentes vivían en una depresión de animales de caza. Aquí el grupo de Lewis y Clark encontró muy pocos animales como para sobrevivir de la caza. Ellos se adaptaron pobremente a la dieta local de peces y raíces ofrecidas por los Nez Perce y compraron per...

Faunal remains are commonly found in coprolites and provide direct evidence of animal consumption. An evaluation of hunter‐gatherer coprolites from the Southwest US shows that animal bone in coprolites can be used to assess patterns of hunting, food preparation, and general importance of small animals in diet. This is demonstrated by a comparison of faunal assemblages between two hunter‐gatherer sites with respect to small animal hunting strategies. The sites are Dust Devil Cave on the Colorado Plateau, an Archaic winter habitation, and Hinds Cave, a warm season Archaic habitation in the lower Pecos of Texas. The results indicate that small animal hunting varied regionally and seasonally. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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