![]() (©Nevada Historical Society, Robert Fulton Collection) In one amazing report of sage-grouse from the late 1800s the observer compared sage-grouse to the “old-time flights of passenger pigeons.” ![]() The birds were so abundant that they might have controlled grasshopper and cricket outbreaks, a phenomenon that taxpayers now spend millions of dollars to manage with insecticides. Prior to the turn of the 20 th Century, sage-grouse were still so plentiful that westerners described flocks that “darkened” and “clouded” the sky in Montana, Wyoming and Nevada. Our names for places and landmarks throughout the Interior West today include countless “sage hen” and “sage grouse” creeks, basins, flats, hills, trails and roads in the West-further evidence of the species’ importance and historic ubiquity in the region. Later, westward settlers frequently reported sage-grouse in their diaries, and depended on the bird for food in places where often no other game was available. ![]() The names they gave to sage-grouse are many and diverse, including “Seedskadee,” “Sisk-a-dee” and similar variants used by Rocky Mountain tribes (the Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming is named after sage-grouse) tribes in the Great Basin called the bird “Ooˊ-jah” and “See-yook” and tribes in California “Kōpˊ-te” “Hooˊ-dze-hah,” and “Hood´-ze-ah´.” Many tribes utilized the sage-grouse for food and emulated the grouse in ceremonial dress and dance. ![]() The earliest indicator of the significance of the grouse on the landscape is evinced by the wide recognition afforded the bird in Native American languages. Sage-grouse made the cut for one of the most important books written about the environment in the United States. ![]()
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