The Big Skin Bayou Arrow Point Cache Sequoyah County, Oklahoma Part One It was late fall of 1989 when I first met Bill, a man that was to eventually become one of the closest friends I have ever had in this lifetime. I had just moved to Mountainburg, Arkansas to take up a new job as the towns Chief of Police. Bill Carter was the local Freewill Baptist Minister, and although a man of God, he was never without a few practical pranks up his sleve, regardless of his often bouts with his many health issues in those days. The man that was to be the best friend I have ever known hurt, and he hurt often, with problems from stones to kidney failure and loss, to different forms of cancer, and frequent trips to various hospitals and doctors most of the entire time I knew him. Why do I reflect now on such things, the difficult times as opposed to the seemingly few better times we shared ? Well, its to give you just a beginning glimpse into Bill, the man, the friend, the servant of God and helper to so many. It was not long after Bill and I became acquainted that we were sitting at his and wife Virginias dining room table one Friday evening, discussing, comparing, and becoming increasingly intrigued with the similarities in our respective interests and hobbies. It seemed we had much more of this world in our mutual interests than even two people who had spent their entire lives together. There were coin collections, guns, civil war history, metal detecting, and the one single interest that probably meant more to both of us than most any of the others...... Native American Indian artifacts, arrowheads, stone impliments, pottery, the history and all of the related subject matter that comes with the hundreds and thousands of years of human occupation here on the North American continent. It was not long before Bill and I were planning a few excersions to the different secret artifact hunting areas stowed in the back of each others minds, some of which not surprisingly ended up being mutually familiar locations where we had both independently searched for ancient artifacts, and others that we began to share for future trips. We also discovered along the way that we had several mutual artifact hunting acquaintenances around Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. Bill mentioned one evening of an older couple he knew from the Sallisaw, Oklahoma area who frequented LeFlore and Sequoyah Counties along the Eastern Oklahoma and Western Arkansas border. Bill mentioned that the couple, I will call them Jim and Mildred for reasons of privacy, had confided in him on a couple of occasions about a large group of small arrowheads or bird points as they are commonly referred by collectors that they had discovered several years earlier, about 1975, along the banks of Big Skin Bayou, a tributarial creek feeding into the Arkansas River almost due north of the famous Spiro Mounds Archaeological Site located just off the southern bank of the Arkansas River in LeFlore County. The location of the cache points itself was actually located in Sequoya County, with the boundary of the two counties being located along and near center of the Arkansas River. At the time Bill first took me over to Sallisaw to meet Mildred, Jim had been deceased for a few years, but Bill had stayed in touch with Mildred as he was inclined to do in helping elderly folks in things of a spiritual matter. Jim and Mildred had formed a very respectable collection of Native American Indian artifacts through the years, mostly from the area of Eastern Oklahoma. The first time I went with Bill to visit, Mildred sat and told us of the discovery of the arrow point cache that she and Jim had found several years earlier. They had friends who owned properties along Big Skin Bayou and were told of artifacts found in the area during earlier farming days. Being the avid collectors and hunters they were, they obtained permission to hunt the area when they could get away for a day or a weekend, and it was not long before they were finding many very nice relics. Mildred continued to tell us of their first discovery of the arrow point cache as the most memorable thing that either she or Jim had ever experienced on their hunts. At one point during the conversation, Mildred excused herself and returned shortly thereafter with a tray of glasses and ice tea, and a mysterious little wooden box that I estimated measured about the size of a medium cigar box. After pouring a round of sweet ice tea, Mildred slowly reached over and opened the hinged top of the wooden box, and as the lid lay back onto the table, Bill and I nearly choked on the now unimportant glasses of tea as we saw what was simply a HUGE pile of some of the most beautiful little points we had either seen. Perhaps it was not so much the quality, color, or materials used in their making as much as it was the sheer volume of points involved. On top of the pile of points was a small slip of paper that had the simple information written in pencil...... Big Skin Bayou - 1087. To my and Bills amazement, 1087 was the total number of individual arrow points in that old wooden box, all found and recovered from a single location, a small area Mildred described as being no more than approximately a 4 foot by 4 foot area. Mildred explained that one Sunday afternoon, she and Jim had made a visit back to the area they had hunted many times over the years, and at one point, she had noticed several flakes that all seemed to have been piled together by another hunter, something commonly seen by those of us who frequently surface hunt for artifacts. She remembered the flakes appearing somehow different as she approached closer, finally coming to the realization that she was looking at dozens of tiny complete flint and chert arrow points lying in a washed out area along the bayou not much above the water line. I was so excited she said, that all I could do was make a long and loud high pitch squeel, scaring the ba-jeebies out of Jim cause he thought I was snake bit. Realizing later too that the particular area was replete with various different varities of poisonous and non-posionous snakes that time of year, she said she kind of felt bad about frightening Jim, who by that time was standing by her side and just as excited as she was at the sight. Mildred went on to tell us about the time and process they went through in carefully picking those little points out from amongst the dirt and sand, and although there were no real significant laws about digging for artifacts at that time, they had their own personal pact about not digging where there might be the possibility of human burials. Instead, she continued, they just brushed the ground and picked points until they stopped finding any others. She said there was never any indication of their being anything else at the location other than the cached points, no bones, pottery, other stone items, or etc. Mildred said that although she and Jim had returned to the exact area several more times after the first discovery, they never again found more than about a dozen or two additional points on any given trip. By the time they had pretty much given up on finding any more, they had the total one thousand and eighty seven points. Mildred added that although they had several other friends who liked to hunt artifacts, that she and Jim kept the find to themselves with very few others ever being told of the cache or being shown the points other than immediate family. But Mildred always liked Bill, and said she trusted that old preacher man. It was a couple of years later that Bill and I were out hunting relics in the area of farmed fields surrounding the Spiro Archaeological Park, when Bill suggested that we should try to contact Mildred sometime and ask her if she might be able to direct us back to that same location where she and Jim had first discovered the cache. Sounded like a plan to me, so the following weekend we contacted Mildred by phone and as usual, she invited us to come by for a visit. That Saturday morning we left early and were in Sallisaw by 7 a.m. Amazingly, Mildred had a full breakfast awaiting us on the kitchen table within 20 minutes of our arrival. As we ate, we mentioned our thoughts to Mildred about possibly giving us instructions back to the location of the cache. She had a thoughtful look on her face at first, but soon became excited at the thought of returning and the prospects of finding more of the little points after all of those years, no matter how slim the possibilities. You boys understand now that I am not a young chick anymore she laughed. Bill just gave her one of those hubba hubba looks that he was sometimes inclined to do with the elderly ladies to make them feel a little better about the creeping ages. How about I just give you boys the directions to get there, and you can go see what you can find while I stay home she said. With that agreed among us, Mildred continued......now you know where Wilsons Rock is ? she asked. And with that, the specifics to the location continued. To Be Continued.....
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:39:19 +0000
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