Timeline of Shared Secrets

What the Creek Showed Us and When

When Margaret and I moved back to Lone Tree Farm about 25 years ago, we were the fourth generation of our family to live there. After about 10 years, Kanaranzi Creek started to show us the record of the people who had lived there in the distant past.

When my family settled on the Farm in the early 1870s, the Creek had been eroding the high banks and depositing material on gravel and sand bars for thousands of years. The valley was originally formed by meltwater flowing off the last glacial ice sheet that was in the area about 10,000 years ago. In addition to the gravel and sand and the silt and clay, the Creek washed out bones and artifacts and redeposited them along the channel.

Figure 1----Projectile points found on Lone Tree Farm before the 1970s.

During the first three or four generations, the Creek only occasionally shared these objects with the children and grandchildren of the settlers. Before the 1950s I know of only one projectile point (Figure 1-A) that was found. In the 1960s, my brother Bob found a second projectile point (Figure 1-B) and it was a big deal because so few artifacts had been found even though several generations of kids had scoured the Creek looking for them. Bob’s arrow head was reported to an archeologist doing a county-wide survey. That resulted in the formal designation of a “Smithsonian Number” for the site.

Figure 2----Unique artifacts found before the 1990s.

The search continued throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but only a few items showed up. We’re not even exactly certain when the discoveries were made and they weren’t as distinctive as the arrowheads. But, they were “exotic curios”: a single piece of pottery (Figure 2-A) and a distinctive spherical rock (Figure 2-B) described in the previous post about Blood Run.

Figure 3----Meander cut-off and oxbow formation in 2014.

Then in 1996 things began to change and the Creek started sharing some real treasures that were clearly important! That year a relatively complete buffalo skull eroded out of a steep cut-bank and a paleontologist at the university where I taught confirmed that it was Bison bison. A few years later, Margaret and I moved back to the family farm after more than four decades. My parents, John (grandson of the original settlers) and Bernita, passed away during the winter of 2014. That spring the channel of the Kanaranzi Creek cut through the neck of a meander (Figure 3-A). The resulting changes eventually produced a landscape with the standard components (Figure 3-B) of a cutoff meander or oxbow. And, the altered flow released an unequaled treasure of memories especially in the vicinity of the downstream and upstream plugs.

The Creek had apparently decided to share its secrets on its own time and at several different locations along the channel.

Figure 4----Projectile points found in 2015.

The next four years were characterized by a “flood” of treasures whenever I took my four grandchildren on a rambling adventure in the creek pasture. The beginning of this cascade of information started in 2015. First, our grandson Grayson found a projectile point/arrow head (Figure 4-A) and then a few days later Margaret also found one (Figure 4-B). In both instances I was right there with them, looking for the same things, but missing both opportunities!

Figure 5----Bifacial blades found in 2016 and 2018.

In 2016 that pattern continued. Grayson found a complete biface (Figure 5-A) made of Bijou Quartzite which came from a quarry more than 150 miles away, as described in a previous post. He made the find while I was standing there right in front of him! The discovery was made on a sand bar located near where a descendant of the original Lone Tree stood. Two years later, his sister, Nora, did the exact same thing at the exact same place! This time I saw the treasure at the same time as she did, but she was closer to the ground and moved much faster than I did. Her biface (Figure 5-B) is broken, but is clearly a similarly shaped blade made of the same exotic material.

It was beginning to become obvious that we needed to have expert help to understand what information the Creek was providing. Dr. Dale Henning is an authority on archaeological sites  in the Midwest, including Blood Run. I had met him at several conferences and knew that he was very patient with amateur archaeologists (aka “avocational” archaeologists) and is interested in their discoveries/activities. Dale identified the piece of pottery (Figure 2-A) as associated with a culture known as the Great Oasis that was active from about 900 to 1100 AD. He also confirmed that the blade Grayson found (Figure 5-A) was a biface made of Bijou Quartzite and that similar artifacts characterize collections from Blood Run.

This sets up an interesting problem. The Oneota culture was at Blood Run from about 1500 to 1700, but the Great Oasis culture dates to 900 to 1100. Were people from both cultures once living along Kanaranzi Creek? Clearly we needed more information from the Land and more input from outside experts.

It may be difficult to accept that a humble prairie pasture stream has “agency”, meaning that it can decide when, where, and what specific memories are released and revealed. However, I remember a story about an enlightened sculptor who acknowledged that an artist perceives a pattern in the stone and simply frees the figure to be shared with everyone. The Creek holds a pattern of memories that are just now being more actively shared….from the Land, to my family, to archaeologists, and now on to you.

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A Timely Sidebar:

The total eclipse on April 8 happened while I was working on this essay. And, I am surprised (also gratified!) at all the media attention and excitement that this event in Nature generated. One commentator pointed out that it was an event that a unified people experienced together at the same time. So, it was a widely-shared and well-understood, predictable event in the world of Nature at a time when our human world seems full of division and chaos. Nature can still speak directly to us and raise distinctive emotions, thank God! I hope that Earth Day on April 22 will generate the same level of public support and media coverage.

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Acknowledgement:

Thanks to Margaret Shurr for help with the photos. The good ones are hers!

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In memoriam:

Brother Bob was killed in Vietnam on this date in 1970. As a family, we have no collective memory of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, because we were waiting for his body to be returned home. I’m grateful for the time that he and I spent together growing up on Lone Tree Farm, roaming the Creek pasture. We were the great-grandchildren of the settlers and together we found adventures along Kanaranzi Creek.