by Tim Dunham, Otterville, Missouri
April 2014 Central States Archaeological Journal
On September 15th 2004, I was hunting Flat Creek in Pettis County, Missouri, which is south of the town of Smithton. I was not having much luck, as I only found a small Etley, a decent dagger and some broken bases. I didn’t have any more time to spare, so I headed to Smithton to buy some lumber to finish the front porch I was building. My brother, Steve, was an employee at the lumber company and when I arrived, he was loading a truck for delivery. I asked him if he had time to look at the artifacts I had picked up earlier. We walked into the office, and while he was examining my finds, the owner of the lumber company, Maureen Bluhm, came in and started visiting with us. She told us of some Indian rocks her father had found many years ago. She said that some time when she wasn’t busy, she would be glad to show them to us. I thanked her, purchased my lumber and departed.
I forgot about our conversation until the next time I visited the lumber yard seven months later, in search of some plumbing supplies. While we were both looking for the fittings, Maureen approached us and asked if I wanted to look at the Indian rocks she had mentioned the last time I was there. I did not want to pass up the opportunity, so I went with her to her home, which was next door to the lumber company. We went into the kitchen, and she asked me to open a small closet there and retrieve the shoebox that was in the back on the floor.
When I pulled the shoebox out, I realized it was full of arrowheads. As I sifted through them, she told me her father had found them on the family farm near Clifton City in Cooper County, Missouri. She still owned and farmed nearly 400 acres of land on the Lamine River, on which my brother and I had hunted for artifacts most of our lives. In the shoebox, there were many nice points of various sizes and colors, all piled upon each other. Most had poor dull edges, and amongst the point types were Etley, Sedalia, Snyder, Smith and one small Dalton. Two points really caught my eye; a large corner-notched Hopewell point and a large blade made from Burlington chert, neither of which had any noticeable damage (Fig. 1).
After looking at the points, I wrapped the two that had caught my eye with some tissue paper, and returned all of them to the shoebox. I told her that I would like to purchase them if she ever wanted to part with the points. She was a rather wealthy woman, and I didn’t really think anything would come of it.
Funny things do happen, and imagine my surprise when two weeks later she called me and asked if I would like to buy them. Once at her house, we spent an hour negotiating a price, and then they became mine!
I gathered as much information as I could about her father and the circumstances surrounding them. She was very proud to say that she had helped pick up some of them, but couldn’t remember exactly which points she found.
Over the many years of hunting her property, I have never found any points to compare to the quality that she and her father had found. From then on, I came to visit her regularly, sharing vegetables from my garden with her, which she really enjoyed.
Sadly, she passed away from natural causes on May 28th, 2013, at the age of 97. I am very proud to carry on a legacy that was started by her father, who had farmed the family farm with a team of mules in the early 1940’s. Today, when I hunt for artifacts on the same land he plowed, I still occasionally find a mule shoe.