Arrowhead Chronicles: Episode One

I will never forget my first discovery of a Native American artifact: a long, multicolored jasper arrowhead that was sitting exposed atop a mound of dark soil in our neighbor's garden in the tiny, quiet town of Doniphan, Missouri. The year was 1980.

Unfortunately, that exquisitely carved and beautifully banded blade has been lost for at least the second time in its long life. I would love to have it back again. It would be another nine years before I would find my second Indian relic, this time time along the shores of the Little Gasconade River near Freeburg, Missouri. A small rise in the center of a long, muddy field yielded multiple arrowheads and scrapers, along with several chip piles. Due to the quantity of artifacts continually produced by each season's tilling and turning of the soil, it was obvious that the area had been a Native American campground for many years.

Artifacts from near the Little Gasconade River, Missouri

Fast forward nearly thirty more years. I am now not only a rockhound and relic collector, I am also a father. And I have done my best to impart my passion for geology and history to my offspring. My first two children (daughters) carefully avoided these pursuits, but my third child, Chase, has been bitten by the bug. He has joined me in the shale piles in Utah splitting for Trilobites and has sifted through hundreds of pounds of wet sand and gravel seeking for fossilized shark's teeth in the deep South. He has scratched through the rusty, iron and silica rich earth near Mt. Ida, Arkansas to acquire the finest quartz crystals in North America, and he has scaled the heights of the Colorado Rockies seeking for pyrite cubes strewn about in the tailings of abandoned mines.

But lately he has been bitten by a slightly different (yet related) bug: Arrowheads.

We've spent endless hours watching the antics of Randy and Spike over at the Heartbreaker Relics channel on Youtube, or the predictable "We'll get back to ya" closing line after each exciting find on the channel TheDitchWalker. My son lamented that he himself had never found an arrowhead.

That problem was resolved....today.

After receiving a hot tip about a productive site not quite 10 miles south of our home, we spent 2-1/2 hours traipsing through a huge, flat field that was still moist from a few days of steady rain and littered with the remains of short, shattered corn stalks and withered cobs. Within minutes of hitting the soil, Chase landed our first and his first-ever Indian find: a broken base. By the end of the short adventure, we had a nice little collection of blades, bases, tips, and one whole arrowhead.

Enjoy this 90-second video about our experience:

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