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We’ve been looking at Yellowstone through the lens of geoscience, and will continue to do so, but the area’s human history is rich and varied, too.

Let’s check that out today, only briefly but perhaps as a helpful springboard for your own explorations.

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While reading up on Yellowstone, I learned that they have found at least one arrowhead from around 11,000 years ago — right after the last ice age ended!

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This National Park Service page goes into detail.

The Nez Perce story is especially sad; it was shortly after leaving Yellowstone that Chief Joseph said that he would fight no more forever.

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😢🦅🏞️

It was traumatic for all of the tourists, and fatal to some of them.

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Today is a different era, although scars are deep and the healing continues.

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Yellowstone today still has religious and cultural significance to several tribes, but it also is a park that belongs to the nation.

Here is one of the many online videos that tell the story of how that happened:

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Finally, an excellent Wyoming PBS documentary of the role that art played in Yellowstone’s becoming a national park in 1872:

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Featured image: National Park Service/Jacob W. Frank, public domain.

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