hen my friend Professor George Arthur, our
first Archeologist at Regina Campus, learned I was going on an expedition into
the LaLoche area, he quickly recruited me to keep an eye out for prehistoric
artifacts. He was going into the Cypress Hills area
where the Alberta, Saskatchewan border meets the US state of Montana, specifically
to look for evidence of the Clovis culture. George, a former student of Richard
MacNeish, was one of a new breed of Archeologists who believed in an interdisciplinarian
approach to Archeology. He believed that if man had followed the large game and other animals
across The Bering Straits near the end of the Wisconsin Glaciation of the
Pleistocene Ice Age, there should be evidence supporting the notion. George
and his colleageus studied Alaskan Geography, as well as North American Geology,
and Paleontology. They noted that as a migratory route, man and the animals would
have to travel eastward across the top of Alaska before they could move southwards,
because of the Alaskan Cordillera. They would in fact have to go as far East
as the Alberta, Saskatchewan border.
The spot where the Methy Portage meets the
Clearwater River is only a couple of miles from the Saskatchewan, Alberta
border, in Northern Saskatchewan. George specifically wanted me to look for
evidence of the Clovis Culture in the LaLoche area.
