[From James G. Scrugham, Nevada: The Narrative of the Conquest of a Frontier Land (1935), vol. I, pp. 1-6]

ANCIENT NEVADA

By M. R. Harrington,

Curator Southwest Museum, Los Angeles

The pre-history of Nevada, that is to say, the history of the state before the days of written records, is as yet imperfectly known for the reason that archeologists have worked only in a few localities. Still enough has been discovered to furnish some kind of an outline of what took place before the coming of the white man.

First of all I think it will be best to outline the story of ancient Nevada as we now see it and then to describe briefly the discoveries upon which this story is based.

Most geologists believe that twenty or thirty thousand years ago Nevada was passing through the last phases of the great Ice Age or Glacial Period known to science as the Pleistocene.

Ice still covered the higher mountains; many of the high valleys were filled with glaciers and the lower basins occupied by great lakes which were frozen in winter.

Every summer, however, the lakes were free from ice and as the centuries went by the snow and ice on the high mountains retreated farther and farther. The waters from this melting ice kept the lakes full and made the country about them, which is now a desert, well watered and undoubtedly covered with vegetation.

In the earlier days animals accustomed to cold, such as the hairy mammoth of the north, the caribou and the muskox, wandered through the valleys. As the ice retreated and the summers grew warmer and the winters less severe, other creatures, many of them strange to modern eyes, worked their way up from the south. Among these were such animals as southern mammoths, mastodons, native American horses, large and small, several kinds of camels of various sizes and, strangest of all, the huge lumbering ground sloths, hairy and stupid. These last were vegetarians and harmless enough unless attacked, but they must have been formidable enemies when defending their lives, for their claws were terrific and their strength enormous.

Probably also the ferocious flesh-eaters, characteristic of the period, worked their way into Nevada, and preyed upon the others : the giant lion, the dire wolf, the ugly short faced bear and the terrible saber-toothed tiger.

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It was into a country and a climate of this kind that the first human beings seem to have come into Nevada, and against this array of animals (in addition to most of the wild species still living) man pitted his puny weapons.

We know little about this first Nevadan, for his bones have not been found; only the work of his hands associated with the remains of the vanished animals of the past are left to tell the tale.

That he was ignorant of agriculture in any form we can be reasonably sure; and we know that he was unfamiliar with the bow and arrow. Spears and darts or javelins hurled with a simple contrivance known as the throwing-stick or atlatl, and probably clubs, were his only weapons. That he was familiar with fire we know, and that he was far enough advanced in the arts to paint the shafts of his darts with rude designs in color we can establish beyond question. We can guess that he supplemented, in his diet, the flesh of wild animals with seeds, roots and berries and other natural products of his home land. We know that he hunted the animals that lived in caves, and that he himself camped in them occasionally; otherwise we know nothing about him.

When did this man live? Most geologists and archeologists who have studied the question think that it was from ten to twenty thousand years ago, say 8000 to 18000 B. C.

            From this time on to about fifteen hundred B. C. we have very little record of what happened in Nevada. Through all that time man probably made very few advances in civilization, although, while witnessing the disappearance of mammoth and mastodon, ground sloth, horse and camel he was obliged to adapt himself to a gradual drying up of the country and the destruction of a large part of its vegetation.

Our next archeological record from Nevada differs somewhat in the northern part of the state from what we find in the southern part.

In the north the appearance of basketry of fine quality and the employment of certain kinds of weapons and implements inform

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archeologists that the people we call "Basket-Makers" were in possession, who in this particular district had no agriculture. They had no pottery, were still ignorant of the bow and arrow, and still hunted with weapons similar to those used by the remote first comers into the region. This was, let us say again, about fifteen hundred years before Christ. In the south the picture is similar but here we find traces of the typical Basket-Makers who seem to have been the first to raise Indian corn or maize in the Southwest, but had no pottery or bows and arrows.

Returning again to the north we can follow the life of the people up to the coming of the whites with very little improvement in their condition, except that the dart and the throwing stick gave place to the bow and arrow and styles of basketry changed slightly as the centuries rolled on. We can imagine that the tribes found it harder and harder to make a living as the country grew dryer and the big game and most of the vegetation disappeared; on the other hand they must have learned more and more how to adapt themselves to their surroundings and to exist in the desert where an outsider would die of starvation in a few days. The quest of food day by day kept them so busy that there was little time for self-improvement.

In the south we now have a different story. The Basket-Makers of Southern Nevada, as I said, had learned how to cultivate corn maize. In time they also learned how to make bows and arrows which gave them an advantage in hunting; then came the discovery or introduction of pottery and with these added conveniences the people began to rise towards civilization. In those days they lived in "pit-dwellings"—circular huts or dugouts partly sunken in the ground.

Some time during the first five hundred years of the Christian era a band of early Pueblo Indians from what is now known as Northern Arizona came into the Moapa Valley bringing with them the cultivation of cotton, beans and squashes and improved methods of house building.

They found in the Valley the villages of Basket-Makers living in pit-dwellings, and mingled with them. We do not know whether the Pueblos conquered these older inhabitants by force of arms or whether the contact was entirely friendly and peaceful; but what-ever happened, a mingling of peoples resulted and the long, scattering town now called "Pueblo Grande de Nevada" or the "Lost City of Nevada" was built.

At this time the Moapa Valley reached the heights of its prosperity and population; there were probably more people and more land under cultivation in the valley at that time than there had ever been before or have been since. At the peak of its glory the Lost City was four or five miles long and possibly a mile wide at its widest part, with farm lands and outlying small houses and villages scattered up the valley for miles.

But the era of prosperity was not destined to last. What the reasons were for this decline we do not know; possibly a succession of dry years drove many of the people away or a series of floods buried their fields with gravel. We suspect strongly that nomadic wild tribes had something to do with it, because the last Pueblo settlements in the Moapa Valley which will probably date around 800 A. D. were placed on mesa tops and in other situations easy of defense.

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Finally, the semi-nomadic people whom we believe to be the ancestors of the present Paiute Indians of the Valley took possession and have not yet been entirely displaced by the whites.

These Paiutes made crude pottery and had learned the rudiments of agriculture, and these they still possessed when encountered by the Mormon pioneers in the middle of the nineteenth century. What became of the Pueblos who had absorbed the Basket-Makers, nobody knows. It is thought that they worked their way eastward and joining with other related tribes became the ancestors of the present Hopi or other Pueblo Indians.

At the height of their power the Pueblos had colonies covering the eastern third of the State of Nevada. Judging by the distribution of their favorite painted and indented pottery, which can still be found in fragments, their line ran over into California along the southwest border of Nevada, crossing back in the vicinity of Beatty, extending northward to Tonopah and then following the general trend of the mountain ranges northeastward to Cobre in the northeastern corner of the state. East and south of this line relics of the early Pueblos may be expected anywhere; north-west of it such traces have not yet been reported.

Considering the Indian tribes found in Nevada by the whites it is interesting to notice that while the Pueblos had entirely disappeared from the territory once held by them, the Paiutes and Shoshone bands who took their place in this same district practiced both agriculture and pottery-making as had their predecessors, whereas in parts of Nevada never touch by Pueblos they remained ignorant of both. Although this late agriculture was not so extensive and this recent pottery was cruder by far, it seems at least possible that the Paiutes and Shoshones learned these things from the Pueblos they had displaced.

Turning now to the discoveries on which the above outline is based we have first of all Lovelock Cave, in the northern part of the state, explored by the University of California and the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation.

It was an exceedingly dry cave, so dry that basketry made by people who lived at least three thousand years ago was still pre-served. In the cave were found not only basketry but matting, sandals made of fibre, wooden implements, primitive clothing and thousands of other specimens illustrating the life of the ancient people in northern Nevada. The cave even yielded mummies, the dried bodies of the people themselves. Working carefully, archeologists were able to discover the changes that had taken place in the lives of these primitive peoples over a long period.

That was probably the most important archeological find thus far made in Northern Nevada, in so far as number of specimens and information regarding the ancient life are concerned.

Even more important, however, in that it gives us a glimpse of the still more distant past, was the find made by the famous geologist Israel C. Russell in the vicinity of Walker Lake—a spearhead of human workmanship associated with the bones of an extinct elephant, mammoth or mastodon.

The specimen was taken out by Professor Russell's companion, Mr. W. J. McGee, who afterwards became well known not only as a geologist but as an anthropologist. This find, the first important archaeological discovery in Nevada, was published in 1885 by the United States Geological Survey.

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            For Southern Nevada our information is derived from a series of explorations carried on under the writer's direction from 1924 to 1926 by the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, and in 1929-30 and '31 by the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles.

            These researches covered the partial exploration of the Lost City lying near Saint Thomas in the Moapa Valley, of the Salt Caves near the junction of the Muddy and the Virgin rivers, a state-wide reconnaissance trip to determine the ancient Pueblo boundaries, the excavation of a Pueblo ruin known as Mesa House, near Overton, Nevada, and the exploration of Gypsum Cave.

            At the Lost City many ruined buildings constructed of adobe or of alternate layers of stone and adobe were uncovered and various skeletons of the ancient people unearthed. Thousands of specimens were secured including many perfect pottery vessels and a variety of stone implements, with a smaller proportion of bone implements, shell beads, bits of basketry and scraps of textiles of

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PREHISTORIC INDIAN WRITINGS, CLARK COUNTY

native cotton. The complete story of the earlier stages of the development of Pueblo building was illustrated there, starting with the isolated, circular, partially underground house, or pit-dwelling, and ending with houses composed of many rectangular rooms built entirely above the surface of the ground.

            The salt caves revealed the whole process of the mining of rock salt as practiced by Basket-Makers and perhaps even earlier people, and by the early Pueblos. It was found that the mining was carried on in some cases a hundred yards or more from daylight. The mining process consisted of pecking circles into the face of the rock salt with the aid of stone picks and hammers and then breaking off the lump remaining in the interior of the circle.

            With regard to the survey to determine the Pueblo boundaries, this was carried on by the writer at his own expense in 1927 for the benefit of the Museum of the American Indian. The results have already been outlined.

            The excavation of Mesa House was handled, as stated, under the writer's direction, by the Southwest Museum, the work being

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in the direct charge of Mr. Irwin Hayden. The Mesa House ruin is situated on the top of a high mesa and represents the final stage of the Pueblo occupation in the Moapa Valley—a period of poverty and hardship; the finds reveal also a considerable change in the arts of the people from the days of their glory at the Lost City.

In Gypsum Cave, the great dry cavern some twenty miles east of Las Vegas, Nevada, overlooking the site of Boulder Dam, exploration work was carried on during 1930 and the first part of 1931. The excavation was started by the Southwest Museum, and under the writer's direction. When it was discovered that extinct animals were involved in the finds, the California Institute of Technology joined forces. After this the paleontological end of the work was directed by Dr. Chester Stock, with Mr. J. E. Thurston constantly in the field. In the last phases Carnegie Institution at Washington assisted with a grant of money.

The cavern was chiefly remarkable for its great beds of ground-sloth dung preserved by the dryness of the cave in spite of its great age. In this layer were imbedded bones, horny claws and even hair of the sloth as well as bones of extinct species of horses and camels.

Most important of all was the finding of stone dart points, fragments of wooden dart shafts and the remains of torches and campfires associated with the remains of these extinct Pleistocene animals. Near the mouth of the cave which was frequently visited by later peoples traces of Basket-Makers, early Pueblos and Paiutes were discovered near the surface, whereas the ground sloth dung and traces of contemporary man were buried at a depth of about eight feet. To sum up, the discoveries in Gypsum Cave indicate that man lived in Nevada before the strange animals of a former age had become entirely extinct.