Nightfire Island

Archeological Site 4-SK-4, nearest to Dorris, California, is a stratified archeological site that was a hunter-gatherer village west of Lower Klamath Lake. The site is located in the heart of the Klamath Basin wetlands, on the west shores of Sheepy Lake at Sheepy Creek. It has also been known as Nightfire Island and as Sheepy Island. Modern Modocs have called the island Shapasheni (Shapash /xpni), meaning "where the sun and moon live", or "home of the sun and the moon. Prehistorically, it served as a village camp on a man-made mound in the wetlands and as a ceremonial site. The site shows evidence of human occupancy from the peak of the Hypsithermal era, approximately 7,000 years ago. Archeologist have unearthed three villages one on top of the other through the centuries. Obsidian arrowheads are frequent finds, whose varieties include Northern Sided Notched, Elko type corner notched, and Gunther type points. Excavations and sampling started in 1966 by Klamath educator Carrol Howe. The site was described by Garth Sampson in a 1985 publication of the University of Oregon.