In the Clavey Watershed there are sites dated from 5,000 years ago and evidence of Me-Wuk culture for at least 800 years. The Central Sierra natives used “…fire, selective seed collection and sewing, transplanting, pruning and coppicing [cutting back to ground level], weeding and tilling, water diverting and ditching, and other adaptive techniques,” which of course affected the environment.

The Central MiWok (also spelled Me-Wuk) people are known to have lived in the Clavey watershed, and bedrock mortars, projectile points, stone chips from tool-making, and
evidence of camps and dwellings have been found.

These artifacts are believed to be from campsites that were used seasonally as the peoples moved into the higher elevations for the procurement and processing of food.  Leading out of the canyon, toward the west, were more complex sites including villages, with possible ceremonial and dwelling structures and smaller camps where milling may have taken place. Me-Wuk subsistence was based on the plant and animal resources available in the environment.

In the foothill region, the Me-Wuk villages were located below the heavy snow line at elevations from 3,500 to 4,000 feet. The people moved to the higher elevation in smaller groups in the summer and fall, establishing camps convenient to gathering and hunting the plant and animal resources within the higher zone.

On the basis of this information, one can imagine that numbers of Me-Wuk lived during the
winter in the more hospitable lower elevations to the west of the Clavey, and then that many
would migrate over Duckwall Ridge into and then up the Clavey Watershed to summer camps in the upper Clavey meadows.

At the time the dam was proposed in the twentieth century, Phyllis Harness concurred with the archaeologists’ judgments. “The river’s part of our heritage. It’s a place our people migrated through” (Union Democrat, 28 June 1994). Thus archaeological, anecdotal and other historical evidence
suggests human interaction with the Clavey Watershed for many centuries.

In 1852, the Clark-Skidmore Party made the second crossing of the Sierra in this area by non-indigenous people and part of their route came through the Clavey Watershed. Lured by the gold in Columbia, their wagon train came over the Sierra crest through Relief Valley in what is now the Emigrant Wilderness. They then moved south around Dodge Ridge, past Burst Rock through the watershed of Bell Creek (one of the two sources of the
Clavey), and finally down to Sonora through the neighboring North Fork Tuolumne basin.

The Lower Tuolumne River

The Yokuts were the primary tribal group found along the lower Tuolumne River.  In fact, the name Tuolumne is believed to be derived from the Yokut word tal-ma-lam-ne meaning cluster of stone wigwams.  These early humans hunted, fished and gathered food along the river.  They used spears and nets to catch fish and traps to capture birds and small mammals.  Abundant tule, a type of bulrush, was used to make large boats with which to navigate the river, as well as smaller rafts and baskets.  While this group of native people was known to use fire as a management tool, it had no significant impact on the river ecosystem at that time. 

By the end of the 18^th century, Spanish explorers had arrived in the Central Valley and large ranches were established along the lower Tuolumne, resulting in extensive clearing of the native riparian vegetation.  When the Gold Rush began 1848 the Tuolumne River became a steamboat route until extraction methods such as hydraulic mining gouged out the adjacent floodplains and released so much sediment into the river that commercial traffic had to be stopped.  By the early 1900s ferries had been replaced by bridges and settlements along the river were well established.