Archaeologists fight nature, industry to protect area aboriginal structures

Archaeologists fight nature, industry to protect area aboriginal structures

September 22, 2008


Take a quick look at a map of Colorado created by Richard Ott and his colleagues, and you could mistake it for a depiction of recent oil and gas development concentrated in the northwest part of the state.

But this map doesn't show where man has erected drilling rigs in search of energy. Rather, it shows where American Indians put up primitive shelters and other structures in places where they once lived and roamed.

Ott is administrative director of the nonprofit, Grand Junction-based Dominquez Archaeological Research Group. The group is conducting what it calls the Colorado Wickiup Project, a project to document little-researched primitive shelters known as wickiups and other wooden aboriginal structures in the state.

The group already is in a race against time, thanks to the natural rate of decay of wood. But its efforts are becoming more urgent, thanks to Colorado's energy development boom. Much of that boom consists of oil and gas drilling in northwest Colorado, which overlaps the locations of many of the state's known wickiup sites. Many of those sites are believed to have been used by the Ute Indians.

"The reason we're focusing on those is they're so fragile, and also they're so important in coming to an understanding of that time period of Ute history, and Colorado history for that matter," Ott said.

In 2003, the nonprofit group Colorado Preservation Inc., named wickiup and teepee sites to its annual list of Colorado's Most Endangered Places. That same year, Ott's organization formed to conduct research and promote cultural resource preservation and education. Also in 2003, it launched its wickiup project with funding support from the Colorado Historical Society, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and private donors.

The project has involved trying to systematically study and record the state's 322 known aboriginal wooden structure sites, which contain 786 features. To date, the group has documented 281 features at 46 sites.

Looting of the sites has been one problem over the decades, and researchers are careful to keep the exact location of wickiup sites confidential. Meanwhile, federal law requires energy developers to do archaeological surveys on public lands and take steps to avoid harming anything that is found.

"But obviously, as the development becomes more dense it will make it more of a challenge to protect the sites," said Dan Haas, the BLM state archaeologist.

Ott said he would like to see protective measures taken in some cases on more of a landscape level. Haas also likes that idea. Haas said the BLM has a process to identify landscapes with natural values, not cultural ones, but there may be ways in which the agency can find congruence between those two values. The BLM might be able to look at requiring setbacks, use of new energy development technology and other measures to protect wickiup sites at a landscape level, he said.

One place of particular interest to Ott's group and the BLM is the Yellow Creek area, west of Meeker, where close to 50 aboriginal wooden structure sites have been found.

The same area is surrounded by hundreds of oil and gas leases and contains abundant reserves of oil shale that energy companies hope to figure out how to profitably convert to fuel. Ott fears oil shale development in particular could do heavy damage to the landscape.

"The energy stakes are pretty obvious, but the archaeological stakes are invisible up there, so that's the story we're trying to tell," Ott said.

Ott would like to see the entire Yellow Creek area designated as an archaeological district, which Ott said would provide no extra protections but would boost awareness about the area's archaeological importance.

Haas believes the wickiup sites at Yellow Creek have been documented well enough to proceed with nominating it for district designation. Some of the state's other sites also might qualify for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, which could lead to extra funding to protect them, he said.

Such actions would be taken only with consultation with Ute Indian tribes. Ute elder Clifford Duncan said he's worried about how oil and gas development, uranium prospecting and other activities could damage wickiup sites. He said many of these activities are driven solely by people's desire to make money.

"They really don't care what they destroy," he said.

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