Muir Valley Memories

Native Americans and rock shelters

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(Much of the information in this section was provided by the Living Archaeology Weekend Steering Committee that conducted meetings in the Red River Gorge in 2008.) 

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The first human inhabitants of the Red River Gorge arrived about 12,000 years ago. These native peoples are referred to as Paleoindians. These were nomadic hunter gatherers who lived in small groups and who had descended from people who had begun crossing the Bering Land bridge from Siberia more than 3000 years earlier.

 

At the time Paleoindians started arriving in the Red River Gorge, the last glaciers were retreating. It was cooler and wetter then, so the natural environment was different from today’s. These people hunted animals with distinctive stone-tipped spears and gathered wild plants. They discovered cavernous undercuts in many of the rock faces that are now commonly referred to as rock shelters. These were not caves, inasmuch as they didn’t extend deeply into the rock. But, the overhanging sandstone provided dry shelters for these early people.

 

By around 10,000 years ago, the natural environment was like today’s. And, over the 2000 years since Paleoindians first arrived, the residents of the area were predominantly a new group of hunter-gatherers called “Archaic”. They gathered wild plants for food, medicines, and dyes. These people used ground stone tools, like mortars and pestles, to shell and grind-up nuts. One of Muir Valley’s larger rock shelters contains a deep mortar carved into a large flat rock. In the same shelter, a huge cache of flint knappings were discovered along with complete and partially completed flint tools.

 

Around 3,000 years ago, the prehistoric gardeners of the Red River Gorge began to make jars from local clays. We call these pottery-making groups the Woodland peoples. Ceramics joined wooden and gourd bowls and cane baskets as the containers they used for cooking and storage.

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These natives’ livelihood, as was their forebearers, was hunting and. Woodland peoples hunted with the atlatl until about 1300 years ago, when they replaced it with the bow and arrow. Like their ancestors, they planted seeds in gardens near their camps. With a source of food they could count on, these prehistoric gardeners lived in rock shelters for longer periods. They made short trips to other places for the raw materials they needed.

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Within the hundreds of rock shelters in the Gorge, Archaeologists have identified many important Woodland camps. At these sites, archaeologists found the remains of Woodland peoples’ storage pits, trash pits, and the fires they built for heat, lighting, and cooking. They also found pottery, spear points, cordage, textiles, leather items, and grass beds. 

 

Around 1,000 years ago, outside the Gorge, people began living in villages and had, at least partially, put aside hunting and gathering for farming. These people are referred to as “Fort Ancient, like their ancestors, they still grew squash and sunflower. But, they replaced most of the old crops with new ones, such as corn and beans. Tobacco became an important crop, too. They continued to hunt with bows and arrows and to gather wild plants. Within the Gorge, Fort Ancient people now lived pretty much full time in rock shelters. The prehistoric farmers of central Kentucky also may have come to the Gorge to hunt at this time. 

 

Around 400 years ago, Native Americans were trading with Europeans indirectly for glass beads and metal kettles. European diseases, like smallpox, influenza, and measles, appeared in the late 1600s. Thousands of natives died because they had never been exposed to these kinds of diseases before. Today, some of the residents in the Gorge area trace parts of their ancestry back to native Americans.