Holy Ground, Healing Water: Cultural Landscapes at Waconda Lake, Kansas

2. Native Americans at Waconda Lake

The natural landscape around what is now Waconda Lake began to take form deep in geological time, long before humans came on the scene. All of the bedrock in the region is Cretaceous in age, dating to about one hundred million years ago, but within that time frame there is an eastto -west progression from older to younger deposits. The land to the east is marked by knobby hills that are capped by deposits of Dakota sandstone (Figure 2.1a). The sand was deposited by rivers that fed a great delta at the edge of an ancient continent. In the spots where the hills are today, the sandstone became tightly cemented with iron oxides, inhibiting erosion. At Waconda Lake, the Dakota Formation is overlain by shales and limestones, called the Greenhorn Formation, that are somewhat younger in age. These formed on the bed of a shallow sea that rose over the former delta and covered all the center of what is now North America. When these rocks were later exposed, the flat-lying limestone proved to be more resistant to erosion than the shale, and the flat-topped hills and ridges are underlain with limestone deposits, while the slopes are composed of shale (Figure 2.1b). The topmost layer in the Greenhorn Formation is an eight-to-twelve-inch-thick bed of hard limestone called “the Fencepost limestone” for reasons discussed in chapter 6. Given its geologic position, it outcrops at the ends of the ridges near the lake and is covered with only a fairly thin mantle of soil. Still farther west, more ocean-bed deposits, called the Niobrara Formation , overlie the Greenhorn Formation. These include the Smoky Hill Chalk Member, which erodes readily, forming the badlands of the Smoky Hill River valley, including Castle Rock (Figure 2.1c). The Smoky Hill chalk became important to the early human occupants of the region because in spots it contains a chippable kind of stone called Smoky Hill jasper. It was especially important because the limestone of the Greenhorn Forma2 .NativeAmericansatWacondaLake Native Americans at Waconda Lake 9 tion do not contain any chippable stone. To the east, the nearest sources of stone for making points and other chipped tools was the Flint Hills, some eighty miles away. Long after the seabeds had formed, the uplift that produced the Rocky Mountains began, and as soon as the mountains began to rise, they also began to erode. The uplift ensured that the streams that formed flowed from west to east, and over time they carried millions of tons of sand and gravel, completely covering up whatever earlier landscapes were present, filling and eventually overflowing the stream valleys, covering even the uplands with alluvial deposits called the Ogallala Formation. The vast tilted plain that resulted reached from the Rockies eastward to the Flint Hills. When the uplift came to an end, the forces of erosion continued to work on the sheet of alluvium. On the eastern side, where rainfall was relatively frequent, erosion began cutting into the Ogallala Formation, creating the valleys seen today, while leaving remnants of the Ogallala gravels on hilltops . This eroded region is known today as the Dissected High Plains, and it includes all of the land around Waconda Lake. Natural modifications to the landscape have continued to the present day. During the last twelve thousand years, changes in climate have Figure 2.1 Landforms near Waconda Lake: a. Smoky Hills developed on the Dakota sandstone; b. flat-topped ridges that developed on the Greenhorn Formation; c. badlands that developed on the Smoky Hill chalk (photographs by author). 10 chapter 2 driven modifications in the alluvial fill of the stream valleys. There have been cycles of erosion and deposition that have removed sediment and then deposited more, deepening and then refilling the valleys.1 At the same time, vegetation has changed as well. Pollen and other studies have shown that during the last ice age, the vegetation of the region was far different from what it is now. Cool summer temperatures reduced evaporation and allowed trees to grow on the uplands. There were stands of spruce with a grass and sage understory. Rapidly rising temperatures at the end of the ice age quickly killed off the spruce, but oak and elm may have grown along the stream banks. Reduction in the amount of shade from trees probably improved the food available to grazing animals. The animal communities that...