Existing comment:
Native People:
Paleo-Indian Cultures:
The earliest visitors to this area were Paleo-Indians who arrived around 12,000 years ago. These people led a nomadic lifestyle collecting plants and hunting the now-extinct mammoths and mastodons, that lived here at the end of the last Ice Age. Their distinctive Clovis and Folsom points have been found in areas near the park.
The Paleo-Indians saw some of the same arches that we see today but the climate was cooler and wetter and the vegetation was quite different. It was easy for these small bands of people to find everything they needed as the followed herds of animals. Then, the climate changed, and the area became warmer and more arid. The large animals and the forests began to disappear.
Archaic Cultures:
Facing large-scale environmental change, cultural practices changed about 8,000 years ago. Known to archeologists as the Archaic cultures, these later people adapted to a landscape filled with plants and animals similar to today's life. As they exploited the new resources, their technologies became more complex and they made a wider variety of tools. Bone awls, useful for making baskets and nets, grinding stones to process seeds, and other tools appear in the archeologic record.
Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan Cultures:
About 2,500 years ago, there was another shift in lifestyle as different groups of archaic hunter-gatherers began cultivating plants. Two distinct traditions developed. In the Four Corners area, the ancestral Puebloans were able to take advantage of a dependable summer rainfall to grow corn and other domesticated crops. Eventually, they developed the advanced societies that built the large communal pueblos seen today at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde.
To the north, the Fremont led a lifestyle characterized by variety and diversity. Some were settled farmers that lived in small villages of semi-subterranean pithouses and grew corn, beans, and squash, Others were nomads that lived in small, highly-mobile family-sized groups, and relied more on collecting wild plants and animals to support themselves. Still others shifted between these lifestyles.
After successfully adapting to their environment for over 1,500 years, both groups were affected by change. Climactic changes, including decreased precipitation, made farming more difficult, and pressure from other cultural groups may have increased competition for limited resources. By about AD 1300, they were migrating to other areas. The Hopi and Rio Grande pueblo people, who live in New Mexico and Arizona, are direct descendants of the people who once utilized the resources of what is now Arches National Park.
Historic Groups:
In more recent times, southeast Utah was occupied by Utes, Paiutes and Navajos, all of whom still live in the area today.
Ute Indians were nomadic and subsisted by hunting game and gathering wild plant foods in the mountainous areas of Colorado and Utah. The Utes of eastern Utah adopted the horse into their culture soon after the Spaniards re-introduced that animal to the Americas. On horseback, the Utes became even more mobile and traveled to the plains to hunt bison. |