The Green River, Living on the land:
 Fremont farmers and Chinese Railroad workers

A. Dudley Gardner

Western Wyoming College

Lecture Exchange: From the Source to the Delta

Presentation at St. Paul's Cultural Center in Yuma, Arizona, January 5, 2002

Abstract

This presentation focuses on two groups of people who lived in the upper reaches of the Colorado River drainage system. The area is marked by an average elevation of 6000 feet above sea level and is an area where some say summer never comes. The place has been called the land where the old west stayed young, but it is much more than this - it is a place where Fremont farmers and Chinese railroad workers succeeded where others failed. This presentation will focus on the nature of the land and how some people survived in a cold and arid region.

The Colorado River, as most of us know it, originates along the western slopes of Rocky Mountain National Park.  The headwaters accumulate in Granby Lake and flow west then south in what is now called the Colorado River.    Historically the stream was called the Grand River but was changed to reflect the name of the lower river and the state where this stem of the river begins.  In Utah the Colorado and its largest tributary the Green, merge to form the waters that cut the Grand Canyon and feed the oasis of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.  The lesser-known Green is actually the longer of the two rivers.   When the two met in Utah the Green carries the waters of an area that is little known and poorly understood by most Americans.  It is the upper reaches of the Green River that gains little attention.  It is the Green River that is the focus of this essay.

The Green River contains the water of two major tributaries, the Yampa and the White.  What all these Rivers have in common is they drain the Wyoming Basin.  The basin is part of the Rock Mountains, but the fact that it is covered with sage and grasses leads casual observers to think the area is simply a desert or prairie, when in reality the region is on the average, above the sea 6000 feet. Since most of the paved roads through the region are in the open spaces between mountains and uplifts, people passing through the region mistakenly think they are only in an arid steppe.  In reality it is a diverse region that due to the chronic cold nature of high elevations has very short growing seasons.  The lack of warmth stunts plant growth, nonetheless, the bio-diversity in the area is remarkable.

The miles and miles of grasses and sage struck most of the first European and American observers that wrote about the region. Nineteenth century travelers said the sage and grass ran on for days and even though they could see mountains in the distance they seemed unreachable.   Indeed the borders of the basin are marked by mountains that rise to 13,000 feet.  For over three hundred miles on its long axis, only rivers, ridges, mesas, and canyons dissect the Wyoming basin, thus visible for over a hundred miles are the mountain ranges that sustain the rivers.  Mountains and basins hold the winter snows that fall from September to May.   The melting snow feeds the rivers.   

Not all the water that falls in the area reaches the Green River or its tributaries because much of it evaporates in the winds.  In terms of the environment, another thing that strikes most visitors is the wind.  There are few windless days.  In the summer the wind drives away the mosquitoes in the winter it drives away the tourists.   In reality the wind evaporates much of the waters that fall in the form of snow or rain.  It also clears the air and contributes to the ability to see mountain from horizon to horizon.

The areas first inhabitants understood the land.  Large herds of deer and antelope provided clothing and food.  Add to that buffalo and bears and large mammals drew hunters to the area over 10,000 years ago.   Native Americans lived not only on meat but also harvested plants that contained the full spectrum of vitamins.  More some of the plants had medicinal values we are just beginning to understand.  So intimate was the Native American's understanding of the plant resources in the area that they built their societies around harvesting plants.   So clearly did they know how to utilize plants that when they begin to cultivate corn they did not give up gathering wild grasses, seeds, and nuts.  In fact goose foot, acorns, and pinon nuts had more calories per gram than corn.  Seeds from the plants would remain an important part of their diet.  The First Nation group that grew the corn and dominated much of the Green River drainage basin form the time of Christ to AD 1500 have loosely been called the Fremont.  But more than a tribal group the Fremont developed a life way that allowed them to successfully cultivate and store corn in a region where water and warm weather could rarely be counted on in coming in regular cycles.   The fickle nature of the seasons and the fact winter lingers long drove many homesteaders to leave an area where Fremont farmers had succeeded.

The Fremont bears consideration for more than one reason.  In part because they made a living in a land that has challenged women and men since humans first began raising families here.  In part because they developed a system that did not depend on any one thing to be successful.  And because they cultivated in rock an art the ability to draw on stone their views of the world. 

There is some contention that corn was first cultivated along the upper Green River sometime around 300 BC. Traditional wisdom puts the date for the first cultivation of corn some where around AD 500. Interestingly corn was grown in the area right up to the arrival of Spaniards in Mexico.   In the 1500's Fremont farmers planted corn.  These horticulturalists persevered in growing corn through the environmental changes that marked the centuries from the late Roman Empire to the Spanish Conquest of the New World.  How did they do this?  They succeeded because they did not just grow corn.

The Fremont were gatherers in a land rich in plant diversity and that contained plants high in calories. Processed Chenopodium (goose foot), acorns (gambles oak), and pinon nuts provided calories in excess of 2000 per kilo. ^[1]   Some years the pinon nut crops provided enough food to supply the caloric needs of the entire group.  Most years'acorns could be found and more deer lived in the acorns groves at about the same time that the nuts became available.  But if the acorns, pinons, and even corn crops failed there was always Chenopodium.  Chenopodium, to most people, is a weed.  To the knowledgeable this weed, that thrives wherever humans live, served as a cornerstone to an economy based not only on farming but gathering.   These hunters and gathers that lived along the Green River and its tributaries knew how to farm in a semi arid environment and may have cultivated Chenopodium along with other better known prehistoric foods such as squash and beans.

These Fremont peoples were not so much a tribe of "Indians" as a variety of groups of people dedicated to making a living by farming, gathering, and hunting.  The order of importance of these three economic cornerstones was not as an important as harvesting what nature gave.  If it was too dry or too cold for growing corn then the Fremont simply gathered seeds.  Or maybe having a good knowledge of the environment they knew not to plant corn in certain years due to shortened growing seasons or lack of moisture at critical times during the year.   Thus storage facilities held seeds for the good years that the Fremont knew came in cycles.  But by not always counting on a corn crop to carry them through the year the Fremont gained the ability to sustain themselves where future Euro American homesteaders failed.

In their small granaries the Fremont stored seed corn.  Possibly waiting for the right environmental conditions, they planted corn only when conditions were right.  If you knew the area you knew certain plants only flower and produce seeds when moisture and temperature conditions are right.  Possibly wild flowers were used as farmer's almanacs, telling the prehistoric farmers when to plant.   If you plant corn when the water and the warmth are optimum, your chances of good crops are better.

It is in their art that we see vestiges of the Fremont world along the upper Green River and its major tributaries.  Fremont rock art, as it has been defined, is distinctive.  The human figures are trapezoidal.  The larger panels generally contain mountain sheep.  And the most of the detailed pieces have plants and snakes pecked or drawn in or on the stone.   The rock art depicts everything from hunting to dancing.  In some cases the dances are holding hands in other instances they are standing shoulder to shoulder.   Other panels seem to tell stories.  What they do indicate is that plants and animals are important parts of the Fremont=s lives.

Around AD 1500 the Fremont seemingly disappear.  This may be wrong minded.   Technically, what they seem to do is stop growing corn sometime between AD 1500 and AD 1600. The peoples in upper Green River Basin are actually about to undergo a major transition.  The source of this change comes from different directions but all of it from outside the control of the regions inhabitants.  The first source of change came about due to a change in the environment.  Called the little ice age, roughly the period between 1500 and the early 1800's the area was wetter but also colder.   At the same time this period marks when first the horse then the Europeans found their way into the area.  The later would forever alter the life of the Native Americans in the region.

When the Europeans first began to write about the Wyoming basin, four groups were mentioned. Ball were linguistically related.  Specifically they were Numic speakers, and part of the Uto-Aztecan language family.  One tribe dominated the basin, the Shoshones.  But to the west resided the closely related Bannocks and in the southeast the linguistically similar Comanche.  South of the Uinta Mountains lived the Utes.  The arrival of the horse    forever altered the traditional subsistence patterns of the region and led to an outward migration of some of the areas inhabitants.   The ability to harvest buffalo rapidly and in large numbers, put horse mounted hunters in a position to move out onto the plains in pursuit of the larger herds of bison.  The Comanche and large numbers of the Shoshone did just that.  By 1790 the Comanche had reached the southern plains and the Shoshone would soon come into contact with the Blackfeet as they spread northward in to present southern Alberta Canada.  The Numic speakers from the basin had spread over the entire length of the western plains.  The Shoshone would return to their mountain homeland, the various groups of Comanche would remain in the southern plains.  By the time the United States acquired the headwaters of the Green River in the early 1800's various bands of the Shoshone, Ute, and Bannock claimed sections of the Wyoming Basin as their own.

The Shoshone would prosper as horse herders and traders.   They benefited from being located in the Wyoming Basin.  The basin and the surrounding mountains contained beaver and American trappers traded for beavers as well as trapped for the fur.  But besides having streams filled with beaver, the basin is a natural corridor through the Rocky Mountains.  The American trappers explored this region thoroughly in the trapping era between 1824 and 1843, so when the westward migration to Oregon began in earnest, some of the trappers turned to guiding emigrants westward.  The Shoshone=s began trading with emigrants bound for the Pacific Northwest, the Salt Lake Valley, or California.   Their ability to provide food and horses to the travelers enriched the tribe but the seeds of change had been sown and soon the Americans would settle in an area that had been seen only fit for traveling through.

What ultimately led to Americans settling in the area was the fact that the Wyoming Basin was a natural corridor through the mountains.  Possessing no difficult mountain passes, building a railroad through the area proved relatively easy.  The area also contained rich coal deposits. Once the continental railroad was completed through the area in 1868 coal mines opened throughout southern Wyoming.  While ranching and Wyoming are often thought of as one, Bit was coal mining and railroads that led to the settlement of the area and also contributed to an unique diversity.  The people of southwestern Wyoming are truly diverse.

Union Pacific owned both the rails and the mines in nineteenth century Wyoming.  The "Company"  owned most of the coal mining towns and large chunks of towns where the tracks passed.    The problem lay in finding workers to labor underground or work on the rails in the winter winds.  The environment played a factor in what would happen.

Wyoming is blessed with long winters.  Combined with poorly developed soils little farming takes place in south western Wyoming.  Ranching, which depends on animals feeding on dry land grasses, works fine if the ranches are large.  What all this means is that the population in Wyoming, in 1869 when the territory came into existence, was small.  In fact, unlike most railroads built prior to the Civil War, the building of the transcontinental railroad through the interior west preceded settlement of the region.  This meant workers had to be recruited to build then repair the railroad.  It proved difficult to find willing workers ready to shovel snow off the tracks in the wind.  And for some people in the nineteenth century, working beneath the ground in a dirty dusty coal mine seemed unattractive. What's more, the Union Pacific needed these workers to work cheaply as they faced financial woes resulting form building too far too fast.     So the "Company", as Union Pacific was called, turned to hiring immigrants.  In Rock Springs, where coal was mined, and at the crossing of the Green, twelve miles to the west, people from Europe and Asia met.  In the cold wind they shared the difficulty of working to make a living in a land where winter is the longest season. ^[2]

In southwest Wyoming Union Pacific Company actively recruited Chinese workers to fill jobs in mines and along the railroad.  What is interesting is that like the Fremont before them the Chinese took what the environment gave them and actually successfully cultivated crops many thought could not grow at 6000 feet above the sea.  But unlike the Fremont the Chinese augmented their diet with food imported great distances in large quantities.   How these men from Asia lived in places with little water but lots of snow is just one of the contradictions they faced and resolved.  Their tenacity in villages that have long since vanished deserves a closer look.

In 1869 Union Pacific railroad faced the problem of how to keep the pass between the waters of the Green River and Bear River open.  Snow blocked the cut over the pass during the winter.  Erosion ate away at the grade along Muddy Creek during heavy spring run off.  And while the federal government had provided enough money to build the railroad, there was not enough money to operate and repair the line.  The Union Pacific hired Chinese workers to both remove snow and repair the line.  Their reasoning being that the Chinese worked as hard as other workers and complained less. ^[3]   Where these men had to work had not been previously inhabited by Europeans or Asians.  So at intervals of 6 miles the railroad company built section houses for the workers and repair facilities for maintenance services.  The towns were segregated, but along the banks of Muddy Creek and Aspen Creek, most of the residents were born in China.  Small communities, housing fewer than twenty people on a permanent basis, they were tied to one another by parallel ribbons of steel.  The Chinese residents tied the villages together through mutual support and by providing the food needed to continue traditional dietary patterns.  By planting vegetables and harvesting locally available wild plants to insure a diverse diet the Chinese succeeded where others failed.  It may be that they were even healthier than their American counter parts.  In analysis conducted at one site we found that the Chinese had no parasites or other maladies resulting from poor diets. ^[4]  

At Aspen, a section camp in southwestern Wyoming, how successful the Chinese were in living in Wyoming is clearly evident.   Their diet was diverse.  They consumed shark, sea bass, pork and chicken. They seemingly ate large quantities of pork and the cuts of meat show they selected prime cuts. Pigs, could survive on scrapes and plants that grew in the area.

The Chinese succeeded like the Fremont because they lived in an environment that seemingly offered little but in reality offered much.  In fact the long history of the area illustrates that the mountains and basins hold diverse food resources.  The myth was and is that this desolate region contained little of value.  This type of thinking led to exploitative practices such as clear blading that destroyed fragile plants and destroyed thin soils that took millenniums to form.   Not only has clear blading destroyed much vegetation but also led to snow melt and rain fall washing salts and sediments down stream fowling both water and soils.

The Fremont seem to provide the best illustration from the past of how a society might grow and expand based on utilizing diverse resources available nearby, but not destroying them.  The benefit of living off what is provided is that while the environment and climate change seemingly something else becomes available.   The best illustration of this is that when corn crops failed, Chenopodium was still there, and when larger mammals could not be harvested, sage chickens or rabbits where always near at hand.  Forcing corn to grow never worked, corn grew when the environmental conditions permitted.  But still, when corn could not grow wild plants could.   The upper basin of the Colorado River is still sparsely inhabited, but the waters that begin here fed many.  The waters continue to flow through canyons where the Fremont left their stories on stone.  The Green River passes and will continue to pass by cliffs containing Fremont granaries.  The quality of that water might change and might deteriorate because people want more form the land than it can give or because they don't accept what the land provides.  Meaning if the land grows wild grasses and sagebrush there is a reason and removing them means water runs over soils containing salts that ultimately find their way down river. The Fremont did little to alter the water or the land and maybe that is why they succeeded.