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numerous in "country between the nations which are at war
with each other." Theatres of intertribal conflict shifted geo-
graphically over time, but the Upper Missouri, particularly the
plains of eastern Montana, remained the grand prize for these
equestrian nomads.
Given its longevity, the Little Ice Age ended abruptly. Pre-
cipitation and forage were above average throughout much of
the first four decades of the 19th century. Conditions began to
deteriorate in the late 1840s, when a series of short-lived but se-
rious droughts erupted. These events were precursors to a more
severe and widespread megadrought, which raged from Texas
to the Canadian Rockies.
Historical accounts and tree ring-based reconstructions consis-
tently indicate that this event, which lasted from approximately
1858 to 1866, was the worst drought that afflicted the Great Plains
in the last 300 years. Pederson specifically notes that "the most
extreme single-year drought" since 1540 in present-day Glacier
National Park occurred in 1868. He also emphasizes that the
1860s drought was "the most intense decadal-scale drought for
numerous sites throughout the Canadian Cordillera."
Such extraordinary climatic stress may have reduced bison
carrying capacity by "as much as 60 percent," according to Reid
Bryson (1981). Comparative data from the dust bowl era sup-
ports his conclusion. Coupland (1958) reports that forage yield
per acre in Montana dropped from 1,586 pounds in 1927 to 222
pounds in 1934.
Unfortunately, access to areas that bison normally would have
sought as refuge in times of drought was severely restricted by
the proliferation of permanent settlements east and west of the
Great Plains. The rapid convergence of environmental and his-
toric forces fatally undermined the sustainability of bison-based,
equestrian nomadism as a subsistence strategy. In less than 30
years, the buffalo, which had sustained a succession of indige-
nous peoples for millennia, were on the brink of extinction.
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