Indian Relics and Artifacts

As a child I “collected” various items; rocks, buttons and so on.  One of my collections was of “Indian beads.”  Indian beads were not literally beads made by the Indians, although they may have been used by some.  They were trilobite fossils.  I would spend hours searching through the gravel we brought up from the creek to put onto our lane.  It was while doing this that I found my first arrowhead.  That began a new collection.  Over the years I found many arrowheads or pieces of arrowheads.  My dad had some he had found that he gave me as well as some that he had obtained in boxes of “junk” he had bought at a sale somewhere.  I have found a few since reaching adulthood, even a few here in Kentucky.  Many Sunday afternoons were spent with my cousin, Marvin Kirby, walking through fields hunting for arrowheads.  And, I also hunted alone.  I still have my collection, the better ones mounted on a board, pictured below.

Today Darryl, his boys and I spent a bit of time at a small show featuring Indian artifacts.  Darryl had gotten acquainted with one of the fellows showing and we especially wanted to see his pieces.  He was good enough to come out to the van before we left to look at my collection.  He said he is always happy and willing to look at what others have collected.  Below are a couple of photos of some of the items being displayed at the show.

As you can see many of these pieces are stone tools, not just arrowheads.  The amount of work that went into making many of these items is hard to imagine, especially using simple stone tools.  A lady showed us how a hole was bored through stone to make a pipe.  The pipe apparently had been broken in the process but with it was a stone core that came out of the hole.  She said that the process was to use a hollow reed and sand.  The reed was turned and the sand was the cutting agent.  Amazing!

(Remember, if you would like to see a bigger view of these pictures just click on the picture.)