Excavations in Wyoming - page 11

All things must come to an end. In the small city of Powell, at Beryl and Winston Churchill’s, we enjoy the last hours of our adventure, a magnificent evening with Philip Gingerich’s complete team. Did you know that for more than forty years, the Churchills have been inviting the palaeontologists who visit the region?

While driving back to Cody, we admired a splendid sunset on the Shoshone river (which owes its name to the tribe of Shoshone Indians who lived in the region). Unfortunately, it was the smoke of a nearby forest fire which interfered with the clouds and provoked an exceptional effect.

I will end this Wyoming diary with a little piece of history. Now and then, we had observed circles of stones at the borders of the badlands and Philip had explained us that these stones were meant to make the Indians’ tepee’s stick to the ground. In fact, not far from where we had been undertaking our excavations, right at the opposite side of the “Big Horn Mountains”, a small place called “Little Big Horn” was the scene of the most famous battle between Indians and white men. On June 26th 1876, general George A. Custer, in the flush of his successive victories, with the 225 soldiers of the 7th cavalry regiment, attacked a camp of several Indian tribes where more than 3.000 warriors were quartered. General Custer was killed on the battlefield and his army was destroyed by the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. After this battle, Congress decided that the Indians were to be prosecuted and parked in reservations. The Indian wars were to come to an end with the defeat of Geronimo and his Apaches, in New Mexico, ten years later. In 1885, a circus master engaged the then old Sitting Bull for his show. This circus master was the former cowboy William Cody; he became famous all over the world under his stage name Buffalo Bill.