For Newbies To The Bakken - April 17, 2015

I'm really posting this for newbies. I post so much, it's easy to miss the really good stuff. This is an example of some of the really, really good stuff in the Bakken. These wells come off the confidential list today:

• 28019, 2,509, QEP, Moberg 4-20-21BH, Grail, t11/14; cum 97K 2/15;
• 28020, 2,325, QEP, Moberg 3-20-21TH, Grail, t11/14; cum 107K 2/15;
• 28021, 2,529, QEP, Moberg 3-20-21BH, Grail, t11/14; cum 94K 2/15;
• 28022, 2,566, QEP, Moberg 2-20-21TH, Grail, t11/14; cum 96K 2/15;

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A Note To The Granddaughters

I've probably read as much about the Plains Indians as anyone in the DFW area, maybe, maybe not. It's hard to believe but the best "reader's digest" resource for culture, language, and tepees of the Great Plains Indians may be in Jonnie Hughes' 2011 On The Origin of Tepees.

Another snippet.

In the early 1800s, up to thirty (30) Native American tribes were using tepees. The majority were semi-nomadic and used tepees only during the buffalo-hunting season. After the buffalo-hunting season, they returned to their permanent homes in the woodlands, river valleys, and mountains.

Only twelve (12) Plains Indians tribes were fully nomadic, living permanently on the plains, hunting buffalo 24/7.

From Hughes, the twelve tribes, from north to south: Sarsi (present-day Alberta); Plains Cree (present-day Saskatchewan); Blackfoot (present-day Alberta, along the Montana-Canadian border); Assiniboine (northern North Dakota along the Canadian border); Gros Ventre (northwestern Montana); Crow (southwestern Montana); Teton Sioux (South Dakota); Northern Cheyenne (Wyoming); Arapaho (southeastern Wyoming, extending into panhandle of Nebraska); Southern Cheyenne (Colorado, extending east into Kansas); Kiowa (northeastern New Mexico extending into the panhandle of Texas; and finally, the Comanche (southeastern New Mexico extending into Odessa/Midland area of west Texas.

Allied upon contact with the Europeans:

• Sarsi - Blackfoot - Gros Ventre
• Plains Cree - Assiniboine - Three Affiliated Tribes of the Knife River - Crow
• Teton Sioux -- by themselves; universally "hated"
• Northern Cheyenne -- Arapaho -- Southern Cheyenne
• Kiowa - Comanche

The Three Affiliated Tribes of the Knife River: Hidatsa, Mandan, and Arikara.

At Little Big Horn, the Sioux allied with the Cheyenne and the Arapaho.

Language families:

• Plains Algic language family: Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventre

• Arapaho and Gros Ventre closely related; only "recently" separated by language

• Plains Cree language family: a wonderful language phenomenon known as a dialect continuum; across Canada, east-west


• Central Algic language family: southeastern Canada -- most likely the whole Algic family (including Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventre) evolved from Central Algic
• Isolates: Comanche, Kiowa, and the Sarsi languages are all isolates




Comanche closely related to the Shoshone language (Great Basin/Utah)

Kiowa: not related to any large language family

Sarsi: part of the huge language family, the Na-Dene group, which extended all the way up to Alaska

• Sioux and Assiniboine probably developed from same common language
• The Sioux called "Crow" the "old tongue"; Crow is a Siouan language but is not directly related to the Sioux language that Sitting Bull spoke; it is more closely related to the language spoken by the Hidatsans (a modern language; earth lodges; semi-nomadic)

Hughes hypothesis: Hidatsa, the ur-language, grew larger; expanded; the area of expansion more difficult to survive; forced to hunt buffalo year-round, fully nomadic; the tribe that left the Hidatsa behind became the Crow.

And now, on to chapter twelve, the evolution of the tepee. Why the three-pole tepee and the four-pole tepee and which came first?