CSC research may help answer big question at Hudson-Meng site

The first investigator of the site in the early 1970s, Dr. Larry Agenbroad, then an earth science professor at CSC, believed it was Paleo-Indians who ran the bison off a cliff and butchered them, making a whole lot of jerky. His supposition was supported by the discovery of about 30 spearpoints and knives that were found amongst the mass of bone that he and his helpers uncovered.

While Agenbroad was heading the investigation, the site was known as the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site. The late Tom Allan, roving reporter for the Omaha World-Herald, once called it Nebraska’s first butcher shop. The site is estimated to be nearly 10,000 years old.

About 20 years after Agenbroad’s research at Hudson-Meng had ended, two archaeologists, Dr. Larry Todd of Colorado State University and Dr. Dave Rapson of the University of Wyoming, reopened the bone bed and came up with a different hypothesis. After considerable excavation with a dragline near where the bones were discovered, they noted the absence of a cliff high enough for to cause the animals’ deaths and speculated that a natural catastrophe was the culprit.

Among the assumptions are lightning, a prairie fire, a blizzard, a hail storm and even poisonous water spawned by bad algae. As for the spearpoints that Agenbroad found, Todd and Rapson theorized they are from a later era and probably had nothing to do with the deaths of the estimated 600 bison believed scattered over an area about the size of a football field at the site.

Since the debate continues to spark interest and not much has been done recently to find a conclusion, Chadron State’s current earth science professor, Dr. Mike Leite, suggested to one of his geology students, Jennifer Balmat, that she take a look at the situation.

“We are trying to determine where the dirt and sediment that covered the bones came from,” said Balmat. “We believe it could be a key to finding out what actually happened.”

Leite said the approach he and Balmat are using is relatively simple. We probably won’t solve everything by ourselves, but maybe we can provide some information that will be useful in the final analysis. If the sediment that we find on top of the bones is coarse and gravel-like, that probably means it was washed there by water. If it’s fine and silty, it probably means the wind blew it in.”

Balmat added that if a prairie fire led to the deaths, some charcoal should be found. They also have discovered some baseball- and softball-sized limestone chunks buried beneath the surface. “They’re too big to have either been washed or blown here. It’s like they fell off of something,” said Leite, who added that he is trying to keep an open mind on all the hypotheses about how the bison died.

Balmat, who is being assisted by her husband, Joshua, with the research, doesn’t need large quantities of dirt and debris. A few plastic bagfuls at a time will do. She’s careful not to disturb the bone bed any more than necessary because “archaeologists don’t like that,” and makes sure she obtains her samples from area where no fill dirt has been used to recover the bones.

Balmat’s study includes taking samples at several locations and lots of lab work. She says it’s too soon to make any conclusions, but hopes to wrap up her project early this fall.

Balmat’s work is being supported by a $5,000 grant provided by Ray Graham, a Rapid City resident who owns land in Sioux County where the Hudson-Meng site is located. Leite said Graham has a special interest in the site and doesn’t want to see it shut down as the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the Oglala National Grassland where the bones were found, has threatened to do.

The Forest Service also was responsible for constructing the visitor center after it received a $3 million federal appropriation. The center opened in 1999.

Leite shares Graham’s interest in Hudson-Meng and believes it would be a mistake to close the site. “They have about 1,000 visitors a month from Memorial Day to Labor Day,” the CSC professor said. “I don’t think that’s too bad when you consider one has to travel 15 or so miles of gravel road to get there and we’re already in a sparsely-populated area.”

This is the second year that the Balmats, who moved to Chadron from Florida and have five children, have used the site as a springboard for research. Last summer, Josh was supported by Forest Service funding as he went prospecting in the broad expanse of Oglala Grassland for fossils. He pinpointed and mapped about a dozen potential sites with about half of them in nearby Toadstool Park.

The CSC project is the smallest of three that Graham funded this summer. Earlier, Doug Bamforth, an archaeologist from the University of Colorado, and his assistant, Mark Mitchell, directed about 20 students who dug at various locations near the visitor center in an attempt to determine what has transpired outside the bonebed during the past 10,000 years. A second phase of the study saw the sediment samples that were collected turned over to the Paleo-Cultural Group based at Flagstaff, Ariz.

Leite said it’s his hope that some day all the research results can be assembled and laid out on the table to help a group of experts, including the principal investigators of the bonebed, come up with an answer to that big question about how the bison died.

“I’d hope everybody would look at the evidence and we could decide what happened. I think it’s important that at some point in time we agree on that.”