Sunday, July 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

FREMONT INDIANS: Ancient culture on display in Utah

Archaeologists document artifacts undisturbed for 1,000 years

A black-on-white, decorated Anasazi pot fragment that was found on the Wilcox Ranch indicates some overlap between the Anasazi and Fremont cultures about 1,000 years ago. Projectile points, beads and pieces of pottery found on the old Wilcox Ranch in Utah are displayed. Archaeologists gave a public tour of the site last week. Waldo Wilcox, 74, tells how he found prehistoric sites on his family's ranch, during a tour of the sites Wednesday. A granary made of dried mud, stones and sticks sits on a ledge high above Range Creek on the old Wilcox Ranch, 50 miles south of Price, Utah. Granaries were used by the Fremont people to store corn, beans and squash more than 1,000 years ago. Photos by Craig L. Moran. Click image for enlargement.

PRICE, Utah

While protecting his cattle from a cougar about 15 years ago, Waldo Wilcox hiked to a cliff overlooking Range Creek and stumbled on a place where a Fremont Indian family had lived 1,000 years ago.

"I was chasing a lion," the 74-year-old rancher said last week during a daylong trip to this pristine canyon, some 50 miles southwest of here.

"I know I was the first gringo up there because there were still arrowheads," he said.

Like many other prehistoric sites Wilcox had discovered on the ranch since his family bought it in 1951, the site was undisturbed with artifacts lying exposed on the ground.

In all, thanks to Wilcox and his persistence in keeping people out, archaeologists are now documenting 225 Fremont cultural sites that stretch for roughly 15 miles along Range Creek on the old Wilcox Ranch in Carbon and Emery counties.

"It's one of the most significant archaeological areas that remain in North America today," said State Archaeologist Kevin Jones. "It's truly a national treasure."

The condition of the many pit-house sites, hundreds of adobe granaries and countless panels of rock art etched in stone and painted on walls give archaeologists a unique opportunity to study how these ancient people managed to survive in the harsh environment of the Colorado Plateau.

Granaries -- storehouses made of dried mud and sticks where corn, beans and squash were kept -- were obviously key to their survival. Wilcox estimates hundreds of granaries were built in the surrounding cliffs during the Fremont era that began more than 1,000 years ago.

The pit houses were where the Fremont lived, a shallow hole surrounded by piled rocks roofed with tree limbs and bark.

Archaeologists believe as many as 500 Fremont people lived in this area until they vanished about 750 years ago. In one stretch, six ancient village sites exist.

There is evidence, too that the Fremont culture meshed with that of another group that similarly disappeared, the Anasazi.

Archaeologists are amazed at how well the sites are preserved, but they wonder how to protect them from looters and vandals and still let the public see them.

Already, several sites have been compromised by intruders in the three years since Wilcox sold the 6 1/2-square-mile ranch for $2.5 million to the Trust for Public Land. It was quietly transferred to public ownership with state and federal funding.

While management plans are being drawn up and surveys conducted, authorities say they are not ready for visitors yet.

Said Wilcox: "There's no way you can keep it protected. The only reason it's here is because people couldn't get to it."

Archaeologists are reluctant to talk about mummified human remains that Wilcox said were found in the early 1940s.

"I've seen several of them dug out," he said, describing how they were wrapped in beaver skins and cedar bark.

"They were so perfect, you could see hands and fingers," he said.

He said the mummies were extracted by some Arizona ranchers and taken to Phoenix. He believes there may be as many as 20 others left on the ranch.

The official position on human remains, according to the Bureau of Land Management, is that they are sacred and should be left alone. "These are living peoples' ancestors," a BLM statement says.

Fremont presence in the area has been known for decades. However, aside from a visit by a Harvard University team in the early 1930s and the find in 1950 of the Pilling Figurines, little of this expanse of prehistoric sites had been observed by experts until recently.

The collection of 11 small, clay dolls depicting Fremont women and men were found in March 1950 by Clarence Pilling at the back of a rock overhang. Some are on display at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum.

At an elevation of 6,500 feet, the footholds for some of the granaries and pit houses would have been difficult to reach.

Archaeologists are uncertain if ropes, ladders or a combination of them were used to climb to some of the higher locations. The Fremont, they say, were relatively small people with the men 5-foot-4 to 5-foot-6-inches and the women standing 4-foot-8 to 5-foot-2-inches, according to Jerry Spangler, archaeologist for the College of Eastern Utah.

"These people were well adapted to a desert climate. They used water very effectively," he said.

Wilcox figures the Fremont lived in the higher country in winter because they could melt snow to make water.

By evidence of corn cobs that have endured centuries inside granaries, the Fremont were farmers as well as hunters.

The immaculate condition of most of the 225 sites that archaeologists have mapped in the past several months gives them hope they can unravel the mysteries about why they vanished.

Were they driven out by other tribes that had targeted their food supplies despite how strategically placed they were in defensive locations?

Or, did an extended drought send them in search of water supplies that maybe they never found?

Rimmed by craggy peaks and dotted with cottonwood trees, box elders and stands of juniper, this tract that flanks Range Creek is managed by the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

For most of his life, from the time his father, Ray "Budge" Wilcox, bought the ranch in 1951, until his family sold it, Waldo Wilcox and his late brother, Don, made sure the cultural sites would stay intact just like they were left 1,000 years ago.

During this time, he said they kept the gates locked across the dirt road that snakes through the ranch and connects it to the switchbacks and hairpin curves that lead to the site, now crawling with archaeologists, graduate students and teaching assistants.

While the steep, rugged terrain alone helped keep vandals out, Wilcox said he kicked out many intruders over the years, "a hell of a lot more" than the horde of some 50 reporters and television crews who toured the ranch with archaeologists last week. The tour was limited to about a half-dozen selected locations.

Despite his effort to keep people out, Wilcox said he was not saddened to turn the ranch and its prehistoric treasures over to public ownership.

"I think it should be seen," he said.

Jones and Duncan Metcalfe, curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History, said they are consumed with surveying the sites and have no immediate plans to dig for artifacts, although some candidate sites might later be selected for that purpose.

Already their surveys have turned up arrowheads, basket fragments and pieces of so-called grayware and painted pottery, some that indicate interaction between the Fremont and the Anasazi.

About two weeks ago, a survey team found a cache of arrow shafts, some of them painted, that had been stashed in the crack of a fallen wall.

Ornamental beads -- holed, Olivella shells from a Pacific Coast snail -- have been found on the landscape, evidence there must have been trading involving people living as far away as present-day Southern California.