Archaeology Magazine - November 1977 - 8

Glass knifeflaked from Fels liquor bottle
excavatedat Hanging Rock Shelter,Nevada.
rior to this time, northern Great Basin Indians
had traditionally foraged for a wide variety of wild
foods, including seed bearing grasses, starchy roots
and small rodents. Any surplus was stored for the
harsh lean winter months. These practices,
however, were only fleetingly recorded and Indians
are mentioned by Hudson's Bay Company fur
trappers of the 1820's and isolated travelers and
explorers during the 1830' s and 40's, but details of
their hunting and gathering methods are not
described. With the westward surge of prospectors
following the discovery of gold in California in
1848, the Indian population found it more and
more difficult to maintain their traditional way
of life. The destruction of daily subsistence was
rapid and extensive, resulting mainly from the
expropriation and depletion of the wild plant and
animal resources by the encroaching settlers and
gold hunters. Wagon routes were laid out through
the areas that were best watered and most favored
for food gathering. WTildseed crops were
consumed by domestic livestock, and Indians
were soon forced onto less productive land.
Following the destruction of their food base,
Indians of the Great Basin resorted to a number of
survival tactics. Some attached themselves to
ranches as laborers for food and protection; others
congregated near towns or military forts where
they would receive handouts or government
rations. Still others acquired horses and organized
into mobile predatory bands, living off the land by
hunting, gathering and stealing, punctuated with
periods of employment on ranches or residences in
Indian colonies. By the mid 1860's, the activities of
these predator bands had become so troublesome
that army camps were established throughout
northern Nevada and southeastern Oregon to
368

protect travelers. By the late 1870's, however, these
bands had been destroyed and most Nevada
Indians were registered by the Federal
Government. But their lot was no better under the
government's protection. Many languished under
its benign neglect and slowly starved or died from
disease. The establishment of reservations in the
1870's removed Nevada Indians from public notice
and placed them at the fringes of American society.
From the 1870's into the beginning of the twentieth
century, isolated bands of Nevada Indians
vacillated between the settled and dependent life
as Federal charges and reversion to hunting and
gathering to supplement their food supply. Mike
Daggett belonged to this latter group and although
he was registered on the Fort Hall Reservation in
Idaho, he repeatedly reverted to living off the land.
When he chose to spend the snowy winter of
1910-11 in the protection of Little High Rock
Canyon, the branded cattle grazing nearby were
key to his survival.

^Hie type of camping and rustling existence that
Mike Daggett and his clan pursued has now
been documented at three recently excavated
archaeological sites. They are located from twenty
to thirty-seven miles from the Little High Rock
Canyon site of the 1911 massacre. Such discoveries
not only substantiate the posse's description of the
Little High Rock Canyon camp, but also indicate
the existence of similar rustling clans at this late
date. At Hanging Rock Shelter, for instance,
located twenty miles north of the 1911 massacre
site, there is compelling evidence that Indians lived
in the area some time between 1911 and 1918. The
butchered and cooked remains of a cow have been
recovered from a fire pit in association with
chipped stone tools. Additionally, perforated brass
pendants and a knife flaked from a fragment of
embossed bottle glass have also been excavated at
this large rocksheiter. The glass knife was made
from a broken one-quart bottle and can be traced to
the Fels Distilling Company of Kansas City by its
inscription. This company was founded in 1911
and remained in business until the onset of
prohibition in 1919. In 1918, a government
predator trapper named Leo Weilmunster built a
cabin below Hanging Rock Shelter terminating any
continued use of the site by Indians. It seems most
likely that foraging Indians periodically occupied
Hanging Rock Shelter during the seven year period
after 1911.
Archaeology Magazine - November 1977

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - November 1977
