by David Marolf, Manchester, Iowa
Volume 67, Number 4, October 2020 Central States Archaeological Journal
My grandmother Mae (Williams) Marolf came from a large family, 11 brothers and sisters. I knew them all as Grandma lived next door to me in Clio, Iowa, and most of her siblings lived fairly close in the 3-county neighborhood surrounding Clio and Lineville, and South Lineville, Missouri. Grandma’s two siblings that I became most familiar with were two of her brothers, Joe and Ray, because they picked up arrowheads in the late 19th and early 20th century in streams they literally lived on. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know either of them well as they were both gone before I was out of high school. In this article I’ll relate a couple of experiences I had when hunting for artifacts in Uncle Joe’s Ditch. I will hopefully get to Uncle Ray in a future article.
By the time I joined in the family artifact collecting clan, Uncle Joe was old and living with his son Arlo and Arlo’s wife Helen, at the small family farm on the south side of the State-Line road, just West of South Lineville, Missouri and Lineville, Iowa. Over a couple hills to the north, in Iowa, is a small stream that Uncle Joe, and ONLY Uncle Joe, would hike to from the family farm and look there for arrowheads. By the time I came around Uncle Joe, because of age, had lost the exclusive hiking rights that the family honor system provided (Arlo’s Creek, 2018 CSAJ, Vol. 65, No. 2, page 92). So, by the time I was a youngster, all of us (family) hunted for artifacts there, but still referred to this little creek as Uncle Joe’s Ditch.
Story 1: It was 1963; I was 11 years old. One evening after Dad got home from work, he took me to Uncle Joe’s Ditch. There is no bridge that crosses Uncle Joe’s Ditch so we hiked through the forest down a very long hill to roughly the mid-point of the stream. After we got in the creek bottom Dad said, “If we stay together, we’ll run out of daylight before we can look the whole stream so you go that way (upstream), and I’ll go down stream”—and away we went on our separate ways.
Figure 2. Four pieces found by the author the same morning in Uncle Joe’s Ditch.
…was my very first experience of hiking alone in a remote stream. I had hiked with my Dad and found a few artifacts prior to this, but always in Dad’s presence. I’ve always had a hunch that he may actually have seen a couple of my earliest finds before I did but he would never say so. That’s what Dad’s do. After a while, almost between my feet, there laid a beautiful Adena point (Fig. 1) fully exposed amongst the pretty gravel and beside the clear flowing water. I grabbed it and never let it out of my hand. The point is very thin and well-made of a mottled brown, glossy chert of unknown origin. I looked at it so much that I probably walked over something else before I met back up with Dad. We hiked together, in the dark, back up the long hill to the car. I’ve hiked Uncle Joe’s Ditch many a time since—sometimes I find nothing.
Story 2: Fifty years later, 2013. Early one morning I was sitting in my brother Ron’s hardware store in Clio having a cup of coffee, chatting with the locals and waiting for Ron’s son-in-law Adam, to show up to go artifact hunting with me. The phone rang; it was Adam, he works the night shift and needed some sleep so he was going to be late. I told Ron to tell him I’d be back to meet up with him about 10 am.
Uncle Joe’s Ditch is only a 15-minute drive and only takes a couple hours to hike. Off hustled so I could be back mid-morning to pick up Adam. It was a great day in Uncle Joe’s Ditch!! Shortly after arriving, high on a rock bar lay the perfect 5 3/8” x 1 1/2” an Archaic knife blade—and I thought—A good day even if I find nothing else—and on I went. A short distance later beneath 4 inches of crystal-clear flowing water lay the 4 3/8” x 1 1/4” black (it might possibly be Moline chert, as this is 150 miles from the quarry source) knife/spear shining like a newly minted coin—on I went. The stream forks and I took the right fork first and laying there was the broken classic Snyders point. Too bad, for had it been whole it would have been huge and awesome. Returning to the fork and a while after heading up the left branch, I spotted a well camouflaged but fully exposed classic 3” x 1 1/2” Hardin barbed point on a rock bar half in and half out of the water. It was 9:30 am, so I turned around and headed back to the hardware store to get Adam. It was a great day (Fig. 2), and sometimes that’s the way it is. Adam probably lost some sleep wishing he had lost some sleep!! Sleep tight Adam; maybe you’ll get those four points in your collection someday.