Hi All,
I was just reading Rufus' thread "Ancient Find" about the nice flint arrow head he'd found. Reminds me......
When I was a kid (circa 1957) there was a little old man who lived across the street from us. He was retired, and besides going to church, he didn't seem to do much but sit on his porch. My Mom urged me to go over and ask him about his "collection". After a week or two, I saw him sitting in his rocker, and wandered over. His "collection" was a couple thousand flint arrow heads he had picked up within five miles of his front porch. The ones he had under glass for you to see were virtually unmarked, undamaged, ready to be remounted and taken into the field. He had walked the banks of the two local creeks after any high water, especially in the spring and picked up what had been washed out. Local farmers would call him when they were doing their spring plowing, and let him walk their newly plowed fields. The gold mine was an eight hundred acre flood plane plowed and planted by a feed lot dairy farmer each year. This site was the location of the winter camp of a local village of Indians. The old gent gave me a very nice flint arrow head as a memento of that visit, and I have it to this day. Do keep your eyes open, there are probably more where the first one comes from!!
Hey ya, there are still a lot of tools out there too. Quite often people don't recognize a flint or even some other kind of stone implement. Sometimes you can tell the item has been used but your imagination has to go to work to figure out what for and how. My wife's Dad had a bunch of really good stuff he picked up when he was running a maintainer on the Indian lands in N.M. He was robbed of nearly all of it. (Maybe the spirits took them back). :campfire:
I had the pleasure to share a camp with a man. He showed up at the last moment at the hunt of many. A gifted man he was, he lived by
Walks upright, makes stone tools.
What a treat to see the stone flake. His workmanship was beyond compair.
Just a like this
(http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l101/GUNSMITHAMMO/DSC00843.jpg)
That is a work of art and function :thumbsup:
Very nice! I'll be there one day.
There's alot of flint in my area. The spot behind my house I hunt on is Flint Knob. Flint scattered all over the place. I can't garden in my yard because of it. I've found a few pieces here and there but not the great find I hoped for as of yet.
Before you knappers get excited, most of what is scattered is just broken pieces, not anything big enough for using.
Brutus
(http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/mm299/bowdart/005.jpg) A tool to go with point. The petrified wood is as smooth as a baby's butt. My guess it was used for rubbing hides or something of that nature. You can still feel the oil from hands impregnating the stone. There are matates (sp?) nearby also that I've found. I know a camp is there somewhere but I need to look for deer every now and then. I'll find it one day.