Читать книгу Hiking & Backpacking Big Sur. Your complete guide to the trails of Big Sur, Ventana Wilderness, and Silver Peak Wilderness онлайн

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The American Indians were hunter-gatherers, harvesting a variety of food sources throughout the year rather than farming. In fall they moved inland to bountiful oak woodlands to collect acorns, in spring to the valleys and grasslands to harvest nutritious herbs, and in winter to the Pacific to fish and hunt along the rich coastal waters.

Ancient middens speak to this variety in their diet. Lying amid former Indian villages and encampments, middens are essentially trash heaps, offering a stratified record of animal bones, shellfish remains, stone tools, weapons, and ornamental artifacts. Coastal middens largely contain the remains of mussels, abalone, chitons, barnacles, seabirds, marine mammals, and fish, while inland middens feature the bones of deer, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, mice, and gophers.

Aside from the middens and written records from Spanish explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists, we know little about these people and how they lived. Tragically, their culture vanished soon after contact with the Europeans. Within a few decades, thousands succumbed to European diseases for which they had no immunity. Many of those who survived such diseases as whooping cough and measles were driven from their lands, converted to Christianity, and put to work raising cattle within the mission system.