The cultural continuum established in the Klamath Basin is the most important population source for prehistoric occupation or use of Crater Lake National Park lands, on the basis of the evidence assembled to date. The Klamath Basin chronology has an antiquity probably in excess of 7,000 years. Sometime prior to 5,000 B.C. a generalized hunting and gathering culture with Great Basin affiliations took up residence in the Sprague River area. At first, large game, rodents, birds, and carnivore were taken in roughly equal amounts, fish were of minor importance,, and tubers, seeds, and other vegetable crops were gathered. The following millennia show increasing adaptation to riverine-marsh economy. Animals and birds were still utilized in similar proportions, but fish were increasingly important in the diet. Both the mano-and-metate and pestle and mortar milling implements were used to prepare a variety vegetable foods. Cultural orientation was still toward the Great Basin, but the area appears to have been relatively isolated.
By the first millenium. B.C., the riverine-marsh economy had became set. Vegetable food preparation using Great Basin style utensils continued, but fish became the dominant protein food, birds were second in importance, and game was a poor third. By A.D. 1 , cultural influences from Northwest California and the Columbia river and plateau regions become apparent. The use of earth lodges is recorded at about 250 A. D., and the pattern of winter villages as the focas for local bands with autonomous political organization probably had its inception at this time. In the succeeding centuries the Klamath culture, derived from a basic substrattum of Basin-Plateau traits with infusions of later traits from California. the Columbia River, and the Northwest Coast crystallized into the form recorded ethnographically .(Spier19)30:233 ff.)
Fish and. mussels had become the most important protein food supply, and were especially important during the winter. The seeds of the pond-lily (Nivaphea polysepala, Colvil le 1897:096), called wokas by the Klamath, had became the most important vegetable food. It was gathered in great quantities, processed and stored for winter consumption. Specialization in the preparation of wokas led to changes in early style maxnos, or mullers, resulting in the development of the two-horned mano by 150-0 A. D. (Cressman 1956:Char-t- 2). By this date, the village settlements, band groupings, family seasonal subsistence activities, and possibly trade and intertribal hostilities and friendships, were established very much as they were at the time of White contact. At the time of White contact, the Klamath had the horse, and a superficial veneer of Horse Indian trappings acquired via their Sahaptin- speaking friends of the Columbia Plateau.
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