So I hear, the native americans used cowpies to start their cooking fires and such. Kind of gross to have cow fesces so close to your food.

Cow flop as fuel goes back thousands of years. That's what rural people in India use for cooking-fires and to heat their homes. When I rode through Rajastan in western India, one of the most common sights was that of neatly stacked, sun-dried cowpies, or women and old men patting them together from wet dung and laying them out to dry.

The real problem with this is not what you'd think. Sustainable-farming officials were warning that by using cow manure for cook fires, farmers were in danger of depleting their fields of the minerals and organic material needed to keep the soil fertile, and crop plants growing. It's an ecological issue. Cows eat plants, removing nutrients from a field. But then they poop and return fertilizer to the field, keeping it rich in nutrients. If you remove the poop, you are taking those important nutrients from the soil. Eventually, the field will not be fertile enough for crops to grow.
PooperGal
"Searching for the Origin of the Feces"