1800's Train and Bison Lecture

On Thursday we rode an old train on a line from Keystone to Hill City.  We boarded the train from our hotel (K Bar S), and rode it about an hour passing the turning leaves of the aspen, ash, birch, and cottonwood trees.  We also passed ponderosa pine and woodbine (aka Virginia Creeper). In Hill City we went to a fossil museum that had all kinds of fossils, gems, rocks, and dinosaur bones including a huge T-Rex found in South Dakota. We had lunch at the Alpine House then rode the train back.  The train has been used in several movies and one "Gunsmoke" episode.


That evening we had a lecture from a Mohawk tribes woman who is an expert in bison. She brought a Buffalo Box filled with useful things made by dead buffalo. Most interesting was a piece of buffalo dung that is pure organic matter.  It has been cleaned by dung beetles that ate the undigested materials. Indian girls would have to go out each morning and collect the dried dung.  It was used for burning and made no smoke like a wood fire.  They used the brain stem bone as a paint brush because it was hard yet absorbed paint; excellent for painting on buffalo hides. For needles and thread they used carved bones and a long ligament that went from the tail to the neck.  They softened it and it shredded in long threads.  They tanned the hide by rubbing the brain matter over it which made it soft. It was all very interesting.