Hunter at Broken Mammoth North of the Tanana River

Perhaps as long as eighteen thousand years ago, a small band of hunters made their way into the central Tanana Valley of Interior Alaska, near the modern community of Big Delta. These Early People found conditions favorable for campsites on the high river bluffs where they could easily stand vigil to scan the floodplains for migrating animals and for sources of water. As the wanderers hiked the riverbanks they also searched for the most useful stones, such as chert and obsidian, for making their weapons and tools. Fragments of mammoth ivory found scattered amongst the cobbles and pebbles of the streambed were also collected for tool and weapon making.

More than anything, however, the abundance of animals in the area attracted these wandering Early People to the cliffs of the Tanana. Large herds of bison and elk (wapiti) grazing across the shrub covered rolling foothills, mountain sheep and marmots in the uplands, small mammals such as hares and ground squirrels in the open fields, and grayling and waterfowl in the rivers and backwater lakes were the rich resources needed for survival.

They may have established their more permanent settlements in the river valleys, where today they have been lost to the movements of the ever-changing river, but some households moved on to the nearby bluffs, probably for weeks at a time, where they scanned for game moving through the Tanana Valley.

While they were there they butchered the game that they killed, they skinned the game, tanned furs, and manufactured clothing. They also manufactured new tools and weapons from local stones and others that they got in trade from other groups of people to the north and south, and from the mammoth ivory that they scavenged off the Steppe. For fuel, they used the birch, willow, and cottonwood shrubs that were coming into the landscape following the retreat of the Ice Age glaciers.