I am posting this to the PALEOFOODS list because it seems particularly
relevant.  It is basically a forwarded message by one of our most active
poster's on the CR society list, Ed Sullivan.

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More than a third of Oregon,  the Southeast
portion,  is desert.  There have been people
living in or visiting this area for thousands of
years,  but,  as a true desert,  it is a
difficult place to live.  Most most of the early
European settlers passed on through,  after
attempting to live in the area for a few years.
Many tried to homestead there,  but only a few
survived financially.  Two of those who managed
to live there (actually,  they were born there)
and eventually prosper were E.R. Jackman and R.A.
Long.  They became friends,  and wrote a book
together called "The Oregon Desert."  They lived
from before the turn of the century, and may
still be living.  The book was published in 1964
by The Caxton Press,  in Caldwell, Idaho.
I lived in Bend,   which is not in this area,
but is about 20 miles from the Northwestern Edge
of it,  and I have spent a few months within it.
It was a wonderful place to be for a young man.
It still is,  it has changed little.  It is still
very empty.  But,  mostly,  the sage grouse are
gone.

There is a group of people who have lived in and
by the desert since before the time of the
horse.  These people are called the Paiute.
They were,  at the time Jackman and Long were
writing about,  true opportunistic
hunter/gatherers.   They lived according to what
was available, and they had great skill in
extracting a living from a difficult land.  This
book includes explicit information about what
they ate.   There is more information in the book
about the peoples inhabiting the desert,
including about the sandals found near Fort Rock
that dated back 10,000 years (one of the authors
owned the cave in which the sandals were
found)....here is a rather long quote from the
book about their food sources:

"Food from the Land Around them.

    Before white man,  and particularly before
horses, each Indian tribe was fairly well tied to
its own domain.  The necessary chores of their
civilization --maintenance work -- took most of
their time.  A typical desert Indian group of
perhaps forty persons had a different home for
each season of the year,  but the homes weren't
too far apart.  If, for example,  the group had
four homes, they might be located something like
this:
Winter -- near a hot spring or a creek so swift
it didn't freeze.
Spring -- near a camas meadow, with rocky ridges
nearby where couses and wild onions grew.
Summer -- hills with beries, haws,  and rose
hips.
Fall - good deer hunting.....
    We are concerned here withthe desert
Indians,  the Paiutes.  Their groups were small
because the desert gives food sparingly,  and
often each family lived apart from other tribal
members most of the year.  The women did much of
the work of food gathering -- except for meat.
These Indians kept few horses, because a desert
vegetation didn't supply enough feed.  Horses
didn't arrive here much before white men anyhow.
    We often think of Indians as meat eaters or
fish eaters.  Neither classification is true.
All tribes had variety with plenty of vitamins
and minerals.  They had over twenty salad dishes;
a tremendous variety of starchy foods to
correspond to potatoes and bread;  protein dishes
by the dozens;  seasonings;  fruits and berries.
They had plant tonics and medicines,  at least
one medical treatment for each human ill --
inside or out.  This complicated diet was
accomplished by using the plants and animals
around them.  Their supermarket basket was the
squaw's basket woven from reed, grass, and root.
They were pretty healthy until white man
civilized them with his viruses and
spirochetes....
    The Indians couldn't make a good living from
the desert alone.  They lived around the edges;
they haunted the lakes for wildfowls, eggs,
tules, cattails, and yellow water lilies.  They
moved to the hillsides for berries and wild
plums.  The few streams yielded fish.   The
marshes spread a fine table with bulbs, seeds,
salads, and wildfowl.
    Here are a few of the plants the Paiutes
used:
Food from seeds:
Grasses -- giant wild rye,  Indian mountain rice,
native bent, manna grass, wild forms of wheat and
barley grasses, various marsh grasses.
Weeds - dock, tarweek, mustard, lamb's quarter.
Water plants -- yellow pond lily, rushes, sedges,
tules.
Trees -- sugar pine.

Food from Leaves and Young Shoots

    Dock, camas, sedge, cattail, reed, mint, wild
parsnip, false dandelion, mushrooms, pigweek,
watercress, shepherd's purse, lamb's quarter,
dandelion, mustard, fireweek, wild lettuce,
peppergrass, mallow, wood sorrel, plantain,
solomon's seal, purslane, bracken fern, bulrush,
sow thistle, chickweek, pennycress, nettle, wild
violet.  All of these furnished salads.

Food from Roots and Tubers

    Wild onion, mariposa lily, camas, bitterroot,
cous, Ipo (squawroot) cattail, Brodiaea, yellow
bell, primrose, water parsley, balsamroot (Oregon
Sunflower),  wocus (water lily).
These roots corresponded to our potatoes, or, as
with the onion,  furnished flavoring.

Food from Fruits

    Huckleberry,  serviceberry,  chokecherry,
plum, currant,  gooseberry, strawberry,
raspberry, blackberry, manzanita, rose hips,
oregon grape, kinnikinnick (bearberry),  haw,
cactus (prickly pear), elderberry, juniper
berries, false solomon's seal, twinberry.   These
fruits were eaten fresh;  were made into soft
drinks;  but above all, were dried and pounded
into dried meat for flavoring.

Food from Trees

    Lodgepole pine -- this was only a famine
food,  but was considered far superior to
starving to death.  Julia Rogers reports hat the
trees were cut down,  the thin layer of inner
bark (cambium) stripped out,  worked into a pulp
and molded into cakes.  Stones were heated in
ahole in the ground,  the cakes packed inwith
leaves....were smoked for a week.
They would keep indefinitely....

    The Indians watched what animals ate,  and
figured that eld or deeer feed wouldn't hurt
humans..."

This is me again.  There are several more pages
about food.  I notice that the Paiute were
already eating some foods that I understood to
have come in with the settlers.  but this gives a
good idea of what they ate,  and so,  may help
add to the information about paleolithic living
in near modern times.  There is much more
information in this book,  including a brief
reference to a group that clearly had a system of
writing...

Ed Sullivan