Bob Mierendorf, the archeologist for the North Cascades National Park, was the instructor for our second class in our Conservation Course, “The Ecological History of the Methow Valley.”
Bob was the very first archeologist for the Pacific Northwest region of the National Park Service and has worked at the North Cascades National Park for 25 years, researching and managing (primarily for conservation and protection) archeological sites in the rugged interior of the North Cascades.
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| 3,800 year old ash from a Mt. St. Helens eruption. |
Bob started us off with an overview of what the Methow and the North Cascades looked like upon retreat of the Ice Age glaciers and when colonization by humans began. Scientists know this from studying pollen and plant macrofossils in the layers of mud at the bottom of lakes. They are able to create timelines based on significant events such as the eruption of Mount St. Helens 3,800 years ago which deposited large layers of ash for thousands of miles.
The last major ice age this area saw existed from about 2 million years ago (mya) to about 11,500 years ago (y.a.). That was the Cordilleran Ice Sheet and it began to retreat from our region 13,000 years ago. Around this time, the very first people begin to appear in what is now the western United States from other places on the globe.
- 13,000 to 10,000 years ago: there were few trees; the land was more like the Serengeti with grasses, sage and some 5-needle pines. The climate was still relatively cold and dry, and ungulates or grass eaters such as giant sloth, giraffe, mastodon, ancient bison were dominant.
- 10,000 to 5,000 years ago: the climate is warming and getting drier. Forests formed at higher elevations, with more of an emphasis of 2 and 3-needle pines such as ponderosa pine.
- 5,000 to 2,500 years ago: the climate began to cool and get moist again. Douglas fir were more abundant now, grasses and sage were less abundant and western hemlock and western red cedar were migrating west to east.
- 2,500 years ago to the present: A “little ice age” with colder temps than what we are used to today, more moisture and an expansion of mountain glaciers began 3,000 to 2,500 years ago and ended about 200 years ago. Large tracts of forests formed, and the land would have looked familiar to us.
The earliest peoples, say from 11,500 to 5,000 years ago did not see what we see today - they lived in a very different landscape even though it is the same land.
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| Clovis-period (~13,000 y.a.) stone and bone tools from East Wenatchee |
So, who were the first people of the Methow region? Bob, says, honestly, we don’t really know. No “early” sites have been found in the Methow yet. Here, “early” means Clovis (around 13,000 y.a.) or even Pre-Clovis (15 - 13,000 y.a.). While, the Ice Age glaciers could have lingered in the Cascades, and Methow and Okanogan valleys longer than places further south and west, it’s also true that lots of archeological artifacts and sites have been lost in the Methow due to flooding and river erosion, ditching, digging, etc., so we just may never know exactly when humans arrived in our neck of the woods. Still, the Skagit, Columbia and Frasier Rivers created a major convergence zone with high biodiversity important to foraging communities, and it’s clear that people were living in the region (Wenatchee and south and east of Wenatchee) 11,500 y.a. and very likely earlier than that. Stone and bone tools estimated to be 13,000 years old were found in East Wenatchee in 1987, and there are two sites in the Puget Sound area that are estimated to be 13,800 years old.
In the past, typical archeologists didn’t think Native Americans had lived in the mountains, in the Cascades. They assumed it was too rugged and that there was no reason to go there.
Bob said that a friend of his, Ms. Adeline Fredin (of Methow and Wenatchee descent) who served as her tribe’s historian said to him once, “You archeologists, you want to know where Indian People were?...Throw a stick…where it lands is where we were.” She was trying to tell him that they traveled widely and lived in the valleys and the mountains.
With more recent research, including that of Bob Mierendorf’s, we’ve learned that the Methow is literally surrounded by archeological sites dating from 6,500 y.a. to as early as 9,500 y.a., and it’s not uncommon to find them at mountain passes. Bob says people must have started coming to the Methow in this time-frame. It was the time when the climate was warming and getting drier, trees were growing and animals were changing though there were still lots of large grass-eating mammals.
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| <!--[if !ppt]--><!--[endif]--> The Methow is literally surrounded by early Holocene archeological sites |
Bob has been doing research in the Cascade Pass area (just outside of Marblemount, and one of the known travel and trade routes from east to west for at least more recent native americans) for several years. What he found is astonishing.
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| A quartz chisel from Cascade Pass |
There are cooking hearth pits at Cascade Pass that are 9,500 to 9,600 years old! This is the earliest dated/known use of a subalpine zone in the Pacific Northwest. Mierendorf and his team have found charcoal made from pine, fir and hemlock; quartz artifacts and microblades, and more. Bob predicts that mountain passes have great archeological significance and that scientists will start looking at them more.
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| Rock Art in the Methow |
Bob then moved on to cover Methow archeology
- Harold J. Cundy, a young researcher in the 1930s documented sites with rock art throughout the Methow Valley.
- Earl Swanson, working for the WA State Division of Mines & Geology, did an archeological survey of the Methow in the late 1950s. He found house pits, rock shelters, talus pits, fishing sites, lithic scatters, burial grounds, cooking pits, and sweat lodges.
- In 1986, the DOT did one large-scale excavation at the mouth of Wolf Creek for the expansion of the Highway. To date, the oldest artifacts found in the Methow Valley were found there and they were 3,000 years old. Of note, obsidian from Three Sisters, Oregon was found.
- More researchers found bits and pieces of things through the 1980s.
- Now, there are over 50 known archeological sites in the Methow Valley, and many of them are rock art sites. One site up the Chewuch is dated to 1600 years ago and is the earliest rock art date known in Washington State.
- It’s clear that pre-contact (before settlers) Indians paid attention to the slope and aspect of the land when siting pit houses and other shelters. Areas slightly distant from the river and with some slope angle provided air movement and tended to be warmer.
- It’s also clear that the area we call Wolf Creek was important. The use of the area from Wolf Creek to the Chewuch reach for fishing is ancient, and native people continued to fish there in early 1900s. The more recent archeological past shows an influence from the Plains Indians with the use of tipis and travois, and of course horses. It is believed that the Methows were great horse people.
- In general, it appears that Indians in the Methow trapped and speared fish mostly, hunted secondly, and collected berries and other plant parts third.
- The presence of nearby high elevation archeological sites suggests the mountains were used by natives but almost no archeological research has been done in the Methow high country.
Bob left us with some meanings of our place. He said, “language preserves connection to place and gives it meaning.”
- The xantci’n people called the entrance to the Methow “little rocky gate” village.
- The Interior Salish, spa’tlmulux, people, called the Methow Valley the “bitterroot grounds” valley.
- Verne Ray, and ethnographer and anthropologist who studied Salish people throughout Washington, says Methow means “land of sunflower seeds.”
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| Bitterroot (Lewisia rediviva) has an edible root that was a staple for native americans |
Bob concluded with, “The Methow pre-contact history is virtually unknown, but there’s a lot here!”
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