THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF SEVIER COUNTY
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n south-central Utah the bridge between pre-history and recorded history was crossed in October 1776 when Europeans made contact with native peoples near the Sevier River in today's Millard County. Catholic priests Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante instantly struck fear in the Indian women and all but two successfully fled.' These women were Southern Paiutes. The Southern Paiutes were not, however, the earliest native inhabitants of central Utah and today's Sevier County. They were preceded m u c h earlier by other prehistoric Indians identified by anthropologists as Paleo-Indians (10000 B.C. to 7500 B.C.), followed by the western Archaic culture (7500 B.C. to A.D. 500), and then the Fremont culture (A.D. 500 to about A.D. 1300). The first physical evidence of Paleo-Indians living in the county was the discovery of a weapon point identified as a Clovis fluted point found near Accord Lake in northeastern Sevier County. 2 Prehistoric Indians used such points to h u n t m a m m o t h s . In the 1980s a large m a m m o t h skelton was found high in the mountains between Emery and Sanpete counties. Clovis fluted points have been 34
