A casual conversation with Larry Lindberg this week rekindled my interest in finding links to a time in Allen County long before Europeans interrupted lives of the first settlers, who meandered across a narrow land bridge in the Bering Strait from Siberia. The bridge surfaced when formation of glaciers lowered ocean levels by as much as 300 feet.
It seems incontrovertible that’s how the Western Hemisphere was populated. Several forms of scientific dating have shown people crossed into what is now Alaska and then slowly migrated south along ice-free corridors when glaciers extended well into the northern tier of states.
In 1969 John Zahm, who then barbered on West Street, told me about finding arrowheads in fields along creeks. I was fascinated and begged to go along.
The first time out I found a couple of points. I was hooked.
For a good many years afterward I frequently walked many miles over farm fields and in stream bottoms looking for a piece of flint that some fellow had formed into a stone tool hundreds of years previously.
I was rather successful — probably from perseverance.
A handful of finds stands out.
One, as I mentioned to Lindberg, came from a field he farmed along Big Creek. After a heavy rain the creek poured over the field, washing away topsoil. A couple of days later wife Beverly and I found 27 perfect points, along with dozens of broken ones.
One point was memorable. It was about three inches long, white as snow, thin and perfectly formed — a work of art.
A second find I recall fondly was a six-inch-long knife made of beautiful bluish-gray flint. It came from a gravel bar in the Neosho River south of Iola. The knife was lying in full view, as though it had just been put there. About the same place I found a fluted point that diagnostically dates to 7,000 or 8,000 years ago.
A third, and most amazing discovery, was a corner tang knife of about five inches length.
I was walking along a draw in a horseshoe bend of Deer Creek when I saw just a smidgen of a point protruding from the dirt. As I carefully dug it free, my hope of it being complete was realized.
A few years later an archeologist told me less than 20 corner tang knives had been documented in Kansas. The name comes from a tang in one corner so a wooden or bone handle could be attached.
To share the tang knife, I framed it and gave it to son Bob to display in his law office in Iola.
Whether arthritis will permit me ever to hunt again I don’t know. But, Larry’s invitation to search his fields is mighty tempting.
Fields still hold relics
