Obsidian Cliff: Yellowstone Was a Trade Landscape Thousands of Years Before Tourism
Listen at the stop, then read the transcript and follow the sources behind the story.
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Transcript
Obsidian Cliff destroys the myth of an empty Yellowstone.
People were using this landscape for thousands of years before the national park existed.
Obsidian is volcanic glass.
When fractured carefully, it can produce extremely sharp edges useful for tools and projectile points.
The high-quality stone from this cliff was valuable enough to travel through Indigenous exchange networks far beyond Yellowstone.
Archaeologists have identified Yellowstone obsidian at sites hundreds and even thousands of miles away.
That distribution proves the plateau was connected to larger social and economic worlds.
People came here, knew where materials were located and carried them outward.
NPS recognizes twenty-seven tribes with historic and modern connections to Yellowstone.
Their relationships differ.
Some hunted.
Some gathered plants.
Some travelled through.
Thermal areas held religious and medicinal meaning.
There is no single generic “Native use” story.
Creation of the national park restricted traditional access and helped promote the fiction that wilderness required removing human use.
Modern tribal consultation is one response to that older history, but consultation does not erase dispossession.
For visitors driving past Obsidian Cliff, the rock can look like another roadside geology stop.
Its larger significance is human.
Long before railroads created tourist routes, Indigenous exchange networks already connected Yellowstone with distant regions.
The first national park was not created on an isolated landscape.
It was imposed over an ancient one.