The Distant Past

The legacy of Native American use of Crooks Canyon extends back thousands of years, but this occupation was far from static or uniform. There were times when the climate was both warmer and dryer than it is today, and others when it was cooler and wetter. There were times when the hunting of large game seems to have been more important, and others where the capture of birds, fish, and small animals was crucial. There were times in which people lived in large villages, and others when they used mostly small camps. There were times when hunters preferred to make their weapons from Medicine Lake obsidian, and others when volcanic glass from the South Warner Mountains was more important. There may even have been times when different Native peoples and cultures occupied the South Fork Valley and surrounding area.

Archaeologists trace these changes in food preferences, hunting tools, house types, and even climate to develop a composite picture of Native lifeways for specific time periods. Four major periods, each with their respective lifeways, have been identified for this region:

Early Holocene (10,000-5000 B.C.)

This earliest phase of human occupation occurred immediately after the last gasp of the Ice Age. At least initially, the climate was considerably cooler and wetter than it is today, and many of the broad valleys and basins of northeastern California, including the Madeline Plains just south of Crooks Canyon, were filled with shallow lakes or extensive marshes. Human settlements, recognized now as surface scatters of stone tools and chipping debris, tended to be concentrated along the shores of these ancient lakes and marshes. The high frequencies of spear and dart points, and the low numbers of grinding stones used to process roots and seeds, have led archaeologists to believe these early peoples relied mostly on hunting. Stone tools found in local archaeological sites dating to this time are often fashioned from obsidian obtained from very distant source locations, suggesting these peoples were long-distance travelers not tied to any particular basin or river system.

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