On the Beaten Path : Archeologist Follows in Footsteps of Desert Indians

Archeologist Mike Mitchell picked up charred bone fragments along the ancient Indian trail in this remote stretch of Riverside County desert.

“These are deer or bighorn sheep bones more than likely barbecued and eaten by Indians a long, long time ago,” mused Mitchell, 48, an archeologist with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Mitchell was following what he described as a footpath, “perhaps 1,000 to 2,000 years old,” that snakes across the barren desert landscape.

The trail was covered with desert varnish, a patina formed by a combination of the oxidation of iron and manganese interacting with a microorganism, lighter than the older coloration of the stones and rocks embracing it.

It was one segment of a sophisticated network of ancient Indian trails preserved in this land of little rain and sizzling sun, undisturbed and seldom visited by man.

Daniel McCarthy, 42, a UC Riverside archeologist and coordinator for the California Archeology Inventory, has been studying and cataloguing Indian trails in the deserts of Inyo, San Bernardino, Riverside and Imperial counties in California and Yuma County in Arizona for the past 15 years.

McCarthy has mapped 70 miles of the aborigine footpaths, the longest segment running 6 1/2 miles. The trails, he said, are remnants of hundreds of miles of prehistoric arteries of travel and trade crisscrossing the Southern California desert.

“Indian trails are mentioned in the literature of the Old West, but no one has taken an inventory of the footpaths, recording evidence of people traveling over the same ground for centuries to get from one place to another,” explained McCarthy, who has undertaken that task.

There are more Indian trails remaining on the California and Arizona deserts than anywhere else in America because of the unique preservation qualities in this arid country, the archeologist noted.

Some of the trails across the desert were still used by Colorado River Indians as recently as 75 years ago. McCarthy has been gathering information about the footpaths from the Indians.

“Surprisingly, there are still Colorado River Indians alive who walked the trails with their parents and others when they were very young. They remember walking across the desert following the trails from one water source to another as their ancestors did. The trails have great sentimental meaning to them,” McCarthy said.

He said Indians would walk as far as 30 miles a day. They would stop over at springs where trees and plants flourished and game animals gathered.

“They would eat mesquite and palm seeds, cactus fruit, feed on deer, bighorn sheep, rabbit and other animals,” McCarthy said.

Along the Indian trails are petroglyphs (rock carvings) and pictographs (rock paintings) of geometric designs, abstract images and human, animal, snake and insect figures.

There also are rock alignments along the trails resembling humans and animals. And there are intaglios, large figures made by pushing aside rocks and stones covered with desert varnish to expose lighter soil.

It is possible to get an idea of the age of the trails from the type of broken pottery and other artifacts found along the paths, noted McCarthy.

“Many trails obviously have been eroded and washed away. Some have been damaged or destroyed by off-road vehicles. Until now there have been no attempts to save, protect and preserve the trails from modern man’s incursions. Fortunately most of the trails are in relatively inaccessible areas,” he said.

“You cannot manage something unless you know what is out there. Most people on encountering the trails are unaware they are products of many feet traveling over the same ground for centuries. In some places the foot traffic was so heavy it wore the bedrock down to form a path.”

McCarthy is hoping that the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service administrators of the desert where the trails are found will someday set aside some of the segments and provide information and access to the public.

“It is easy to use your imagination and envision Indians through the centuries tramping across the desert. The paths are . . . another clue to the understanding of prehistoric man’s existence in Southern California,” said McCarthy.