Site could shed light on Fremont

RANGE CREEK CANYON — The newly discovered ruins of an ancient civilization in this remote eastern Utah canyon could reveal secrets about the Fremont people, descendants of the continent's original paleoindians who showed up before the time of Christ to settle much of present-day Utah.

Archaeologists estimate as many as 250 households occupied this canyon over a span of centuries ending about 750 years ago. They left half-buried stone-and-mortar houses, cob houses and granary caches, and painted colorful trapezoidal figures with spiky hair styles on canyon walls.

"It's like finding a Van Gogh in your grandmother's attic," said Utah state archaeologist Kevin Jones.

The Fremont, named after a Spanish explorer who never met them, remain a poorly understood collection of widely scattered archaic groups. Yet they represent a tenuous link to the earliest inhabitants of North America, who are believed to have arrived by way of the Bering Strait more than 10,000 years ago.

As a culture, the Fremont were distinguished by their style of basket weaving, animal-claw moccasins and dual survival strategy of farming and hunting.

Their everyday tools and gray pottery were different from the farming-dependent Anasazi south of the Colorado River — even as they shared a similar fate. Both cultures packed up and left about the same time for reasons not fully explained — the conventional explanation of drought is coming under question. What became of the Fremont and Anasazi also is a mystery.

The earliest traces of Fremont life show up three centuries before the birth of Christ, but they disappeared around A.D. 1250. This unlooted canyon — turned over by a rancher who kept it secret for more than half a century — could have been one of their final strongholds.

It could reveal why the Fremont were driven out of Utah and possibly left in isolated pockets to die off. More recently, makeshift sites found in northwest Colorado suggest to archaeologists they were forced into exile from their homelands by Numic-speaking Ute, Pauite and Shoshone tribes.

Utah's Indian leaders take exception to that, believing the Fremont are their ancestors who were absorbed into their more modern tribes. "The sacred belief is that we are all related," said Mel Brewster, an archaeologist and historic preservation officer for Utah's tiny Goshute tribe of Skull Valley.