AMERICAN FORK — The people who lived in Utah Valley thousands of years ago depended on the Utah Lake for fresh food and water but counted on the mountain sheep from American Fork Canyon for meat.
Bone Cave in particular illustrates how important the sheep were to the ancient Indians, said Charmaine Thompson, a Forest Service archaeologist with the Uinta National Forest. Thompson talked about the ancient people and the history of the canyon as it related to their lifestyle at a recent Monday evening lecture at the Timpanogos Cave National Monument Visitor Center.
Thompson said the cave, located a quarter-mile from the famed Timpanogos Cave, was found to be full of mountain sheep bones piled up to 6 feet deep. There were also plenty of arrow and spear points and some grindstones found in the cave.
Thompson said that showed the tribes probably killed their prey in the canyon and dragged it to the cave to butcher and skin it, saving themselves having to drag the whole carcass down to the lake for winter storage. (All around Utah Lake there is evidence of shallow pits having been dug and used for winter food storage.)
Some woodrats, porcupines, marmots and deer bones were also found in Bone Cave, but the mountain sheep was the most common.
Thompson said other evidence, including stories from Ute and Shoshone Indian elders, shows the early dwellers of the valley liked to escape to the canyon from the heat.
They like the mountains for ceremonies and social occasions as well.
All the large habitation sites have been found on the east side of Utah Lake, Thompson said, which meant the people like having easy access to the mountains as well as the body of water.
As far the Timpanogos Cave itself, Thompson said it doesn't appear that the Indian people lived in or visited the caves.
There are no bones to suggest they were in there, she said.
But the canyon has a number of sites that either have Indian art on the rocks or grindstones in the ground that hark back thousands of years, she said.
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