The park contains the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its
historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the
river Roche Jaune, which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name Mi tsi a-da-
zi ("Yellow Rock River").[19] Later, American trappers rendered the French na
me in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river
was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the
Native American name source is unclear.[20]
Detailed pictorial map from 1904
The human history of the park began at least 11,000 years ago when Native Americans
began to hunt and fish in the region. During the construction of the po
st office in Gardiner, Montana, in the 1950s, an obsidian point of Clovis origin
was found that dated from approximately 11,000 years ago.[21] These Paleo-
Indians, of the Clovis culture, used the significant amounts of obsidian found in
the park to make cutting tools and weapons. Arrowheads made of Yellowstone
obsidian have been found as far away as the Mississippi Valley, indicating that a
regular obsidian trade existed between local tribes and tribes farther east.[22] By
the time white explorers first entered the region during the Lewis and Clark
Expedition in 1805, they encountered the Nez Perce, Crow, and Shoshone tribes.
While passing through present-day Montana, the expedition members heard of the
Yellowstone region to the south, but they did not investigate it.[22]
In 1806, John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, left to join a
group of fur trappers. After splitting up with the other trappers in 1
807, Colter passed through a portion of what later became the park, during the
winter of 1807–1808. He observed at least one geothermal area in the nor
theastern section of the park, near Tower Fall.[23] After surviving wounds he
suffered in a battle with members of the Crow and Blackfoot tribes in 1809
, Colter described a place of "fire and brimstone" that most people dismissed as
delirium; the supposedly mystical place was nicknamed "Colter's Hell". Over the
next 40 years, numerous reports from mountain men and trappers told of boiling mud,
steaming rivers, and petrified trees, yet most of these reports were believed at
the time to be myth.[24]
After an 1856 exploration, mountain man Jim Bridger (also believed to be the first
or second European American to have seen the Great Salt La
ke) re
ported observing boiling springs, spouting water, and a mountain of glass and
yellow rock. These reports were largely ignored because Bridger
was a known "spinner of yarns". In 1859, a U.S. Army Surveyor named Captain William
F. Raynolds embarked on a two-year survey of the northern Rockies. After wintering
in Wyoming, in May 1860, Raynolds and his party—which included naturalist Ferdinand
Vandeveer Hayden and guide Jim Bridger—attempted to cross the Continental Divide
over Two Ocean Plateau from the Wind River drainage in northwest Wyoming. Heavy
spring snows prevented their passage, but had they been able to traverse the
divide, the party would have been the first organized survey to enter the
Yellowstone region.[25] The American Civil War hampered further organized
explorations until the late 1860s
