The Clovis culture was a pedestrian, hunter–gatherer society that depended on indigenous flora and fauna for their survival. They had to be masters of their environment. They traveled by foot in constant search of the woolly mammoth, bison, deer, elk, camel, horse and whatever else was available to consume for survival. Rabbit, snakes and birds of various types were abundant as well. They also gathered wild plants, berries and seeds to supplement whatever meat they consumed. Given the population of North America there could not have been shortages of food under most conditions. Changing weather conditions could and probably did alternately create wet and dry periods. The Canadian River valley is rich in fossil springs from the Ogallala Aquifer and those would have provided water during dry periods. Opportunistic humans in their mutual quest to survive probably ambushed animals, given their acute senses such as smell, at natural watering holes.      

 

    John Miller Morris believes there could not have been more than 1000 members of the Clovis society that populated the Llano Estacado in the late Ice Age. Diseases were not common and Clovis societies were probably more concerned with dangers presented by nature like the weather and other natural phenomena. Wild animals like the saber-tooth tiger, bear and wolf certainly would have been threatening, even when targeted by a band of hunters. They butchered and processed their kills with knives and other tools made of chert (flint) gathered from lithic resource deposits like the Alibates flint quarries near what is now Lake Meredith. This modern, man-made reservoir lies beneath the jagged dolomite and chalice cliff edges of the Canadian River that traverses the central Texas Panhandle.

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     This water source served the same function 10,000 years ago as it does today, albeit in a less technically fabulous manner. The Canadian River basin environment was the lifeblood of later Antelope Creek-phase culture that inhabited the Panhandle after about 1200 AD. In the post Ice Age continental warming carved the river as increased precipitation followed elevation changes into the Gulf of Mexico. Fed locally by fossil spring from the Ogallala Aquifer like the Blue, Horse and Antelope Creeks and hundreds of others, life surrounded the Canadian River basin. Cooking was done on fires started in pits with small wooden dowels or flint and kindling. They slept in bedding made from bear, mammoth or bison skins, or cloth woven from fibrous plant. They left fire pits where they cooked and slept. Flint points have been found in the animals they killed.

       One Clovis kill site establishes the existence of the Clovis culture in the Texas Panhandle. In 1933 a mammoth kill site was discovered along the Horse Creek near the city of Miami. Remains of five human-processed mammoths were can be dated as one of the earliest sites in Texas. Found along with the mammoth remains were three Clovis points and a scraper: tools ubiquitous to Paleo-Indian Clovis culture. The site not only established Clovis in the Panhandle but if current theories are held, the Miami site can be placed here in the early stages of North American Paleo-Indian history. We do not have a tight chronological framework for discussing and analyzing the biological and cultural origins of Paleo-Indians. It is safe to assume that Paleo-Indians were present in Beringia — the temporary, dry-land passage between Siberia and Alaska — sometime before 11,500 radiocarbon years ago (13,350 calendar years), and that they moved southward, hunting wild animals and gathering wild plants.

       They hunted game out of base camps for short periods but they seldom stayed at any one location for long periods of time. The Clovis cultures created no dwellings of record and had no system or standardized method of architecture. They probably stayed in caves, under rock overhangs and other natural shelters and when the brutal winter weather or their vulnerable location left no other alternative they lived in temporary shelters made from animal skins and local materials similar to the American Indians of the post-Columbian era. Their main sources of food were widely scattered or mobile and seasonal so they either stalked it or pursued it to survive. In an article on Texas Prehistory in The New Handbook of Texas Thomas R. Hester and Ellen Sue Turner wrote that 

“Campsites, the locales of daily life, were perhaps occupied for a few weeks or months before the group moved on to exploit the plant and animal foods of another area.

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      Professor of History at the University of Texas, John Miller Morris, has described the earliest inhabitants of Texas as living in a sort of Eden but with its own liabilities:

For the Clovis and their probable Folsom and Plainview descendants, Pleistocene Texas was an extraordinary environment: full of dangerous species, paleosavannas noisy with game animals, high-quality lithic resources, plentiful rockshelters, and tremendous springlands. Though never numerous, perhaps a thousand or so on the great Llano mesa, the Clovis people explored Texas vigorously from a network of base camps, overlooks, kill sites, quarries, and hunting camps.

       The activities of the Clovis hunter are most easily identified by the tools they used to gather subsistence. The animal hunters attached fluted flint points to wooden shafts to spear their prey. A tool called the atlatl was used to throw the spear, giving extra leverage to match the weak human to the tough hide of large mammals. The bow and arrow would not be introduced in Texas until about 700 AD. The spear tips, or Clovis points, of this period are distinctly identifiable and are one of the most important artifacts used in identifying Clovis complex activity. When discussing the Clovis and other prehistoric inhabitants literature on the subject generally tends to refer to the lithic artifacts and the fossilized bones of game and these objects form the mind set held by contemporary laymen.

“It maintains the myth that stone was he key element in the technologies of most, if not all, late Ice Age populations.”

In this quote from an article in Discovering Archaeology, J.M. Adovasio and D.C. Hyland prove that there was more to the Ice Age cultures than finely honed spear points, knives and scrapers. Stone artifacts last forever if they do not degenerate because of erosion. Artifacts based on plant fiber and skin deteriorate easily and still make up 95 percent of recorded artifacts. These ephemeral products dematerialize and are not considered by laymen in their final perception of the Ice Age civilization. Plant fiber products were produced in Europe as early as 23,000 BP. Basketry, cordage such as rope, netting for fishing, and textiles for clothing, bedding and shelter were common items produced, used and probably even traded by Ice Age inhabitants.

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     The Panhandle of Texas was no different than Europe. Paleo-Indians needed sandals for walking, layered clothing to protect themselves from the weather and storage items such as bags and baskets to carry and store plant food resources. Antelope Creek cultures of the 1200's used tough soap weed to weave items such as sandals and basketry. Ingenuity is a human trait possessed by all human cultures throughout time. There is every reason to assume that early inhabitants made use of all the resources that were available.

      Logical extensions of this thought would conclude that early post-Ice Age Texans exploited the complete range of resources: in addition to game animals such as bison and mammoth, fish and birds, reptiles and amphibians, seeds, grains, grass and other plant life were not only edible but had life saving and healing qualities as well. This knowledge of the environment was the beginning of a technical knowledge that would evolve into the culture of the American Indian ten thousand years later when Anglo-Europeans marveled at their simplicity. Old World Explorers were not masters of the hostile environment they discovered, thus the complexities of pre-Columbian cultures in the Texas Panhandle are under-emphasized and often forgotten.

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