In the Big Bend region, small bands of nomads hunted terminal Ice Age animals such as mammoth and giant bison and gathered wild plant foods by 9500 BC, with very little evidence of Clovis people in the region, and by 8900 BC small bands of nomads gathered wild plant foods and hunted giant bison and other animals, with limited evidence of Folsom people. By 8200 BC several different mobile hunter-gatherer groups were present across the region, adapting to drier environmental conditions and changing plant and animal communities with spears sometimes used with atlatls. By 6500 BC small bands of hunter-gatherers occupied the region, apparently within more restricted geographical ranges, and with groundstone artifacts used to process plant foods there appears to have been increased reliance on plant gathering in addition to small game hunting. During the Middle Archaic Period by 2500 BC, small bands of hunter-gatherers lived in loosely established territories, increasingly relied on wild plant foods, used earth ovens to process select desert succulents, and had minimal interactions with adjacent regions, while some sites and unusual features suggest ritualistic behavior. By 1000 BC Plains bison hunters began entering the area even as existing nomadic hunting-gathering lifeways continued, population appears to have increased, trade networks developed with surrounding groups, and spears and atlatls remained the primary weapons. Around AD 750, traditional nomadic hunting and gathering continued with intensified use of earth ovens and possibly limited experimentation with agriculture, while the Livermore culture, a distinctive nomadic hunting-gathering group practicing mountaintop ritualism, appeared and the bow and arrow were introduced alongside spears, atlatls, and throwing sticks. Around AD 1200, the first regional Indian villages using pithouse dwellings, ceramics, and agriculture appeared at La Junta, while elsewhere in the Big Bend nomadic hunting and gathering persisted; farmers and nomads participated in extensive trade networks, a distinctive nomadic Cielo complex using stone-based wickiups appeared by around AD 1250, and bows and stone-tipped arrows were the primary weapons. Beginning in AD 1535 with Cabeza de Vaca, the first Spaniards entered the Big Bend; later Spanish entradas led to missions around La Junta by the 1680s and presidios on the south bank of the Rio Grande in the late 1700s. Over time weapons changed from bows and stone-tipped arrows to bows and iron-tipped arrows and then to guns, while cultural change and conflict intensified as mounted Apaches and Comanches entered from the Southern Plains and harassed local Indians and intruding Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American settlers.