Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome Episode number twenty five The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I'm Ben O'Brien and today continuing our tour of Texas
Speaker 1: as my family leaves to head north to Montana, and
Speaker 1: this tour stop is close to my home in Tripping Springs, Texas.
Speaker 1: And Russell Cunningham is is our man today, and he's
Speaker 1: gonna tell us about archaeology, about amateur archaeology, but about
Speaker 1: a passion for the history of his state of Texas,
Speaker 1: his home place of Dripping Springs, and his lineage, which
Speaker 1: is hunting. Here's a man who has found thousands, maybe
Speaker 1: one of the largest amateur collections of arrowheads in the
Speaker 1: United States. He has collected artifacts from around the West.
Speaker 1: He has collected paintings, and he has collecting art that
Speaker 1: all point back to one place. That point back. They
Speaker 1: point back to his appreciation history and of the cultures
Speaker 1: that led us to where we are now, most specifically
Speaker 1: the cultures that lived the place he's lived his entire life. Uh,
Speaker 1: He's as much a part of this land as anyone else.
Speaker 1: His family has cultivated this land over many generations. He
Speaker 1: has lived there for most of his entire life, and
Speaker 1: now he's raising his kids there and it just so
Speaker 1: happens to be you can go pretty close to their
Speaker 1: backyard and fine air heads that are three thousand years
Speaker 1: old and speak to us about a culture of people
Speaker 1: that live in Texas. So enjoy my friend Russell his
Speaker 1: amateur archaeology career and the collection that he has a
Speaker 1: mass that is impressive. Episode number come in at all, right, Russell,
Speaker 1: this is your first podcast ever, first one virgin version.
Speaker 1: Well we'll get you through it. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting stuff to cover, of course. Um, but first,
Speaker 1: I always like to have people describe where we are
Speaker 1: because we're having a video here, So give us a
Speaker 1: quick description of the room or sitting in. So be
Speaker 1: as detail as you please, because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in here. Well, we're in uh, my dream home
Speaker 1: on the ranch I grew up on. Um. The room
Speaker 1: is uh was planning to be the Indian Room, and
Speaker 1: so growing up, all the artifacts that I had been finding,
Speaker 1: I had a dream of putting them in a room
Speaker 1: which would be someone's similar to a study. But I've
Speaker 1: done all the study and I need to do so
Speaker 1: it's uh, all the walls have either have you know
Speaker 1: either great big mule deer or pre reservation, bow and
Speaker 1: arrow quivers, UM, arrows with trade points, lots of arrowheads
Speaker 1: that we found on the ranch. UM, lots of stones,
Speaker 1: grinding stones, UM, a couple of old bison heads that
Speaker 1: that predate the bison, bison, and uh, mainly just artifacts
Speaker 1: that my family and I have collected over the years. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Would you label yourself an artifact collector? How would you
Speaker 1: label yourself as a in general in that space? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess of amateur archaeologists of sorts, but yeah, a
Speaker 1: collector definitely. I just can't get enough of the prehistoric hunter?
Speaker 1: Is that what drove you to collecting? I mean, would
Speaker 1: you call it a collection or more just an exploration
Speaker 1: of one the place you live, this ranch, which is beautiful,
Speaker 1: but to just kind of that connection, like you say
Speaker 1: to our ancestors. Yeah, both, I mean it's I love
Speaker 1: to collect, um. I like to to show people what
Speaker 1: we find, what we're looking for out here, what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: There's so few people that actually get to experience what
Speaker 1: we get to experience. And my kids, Um, my kids
Speaker 1: are six and nine, two girls, and they found more
Speaker 1: airheads than most men will ever find. And uh, we're
Speaker 1: just in it so deep, it's just part of it's
Speaker 1: just a passion that I have and it's and it's
Speaker 1: the same passion that I have for hunting. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to describe and less you know you're a you're
Speaker 1: a true hunter yourself. Well, I think when you see
Speaker 1: what's in front of us on this table or hopefully
Speaker 1: all let folks get a good look at the way
Speaker 1: that you dig, what you dig for, but then at
Speaker 1: the same time, how you display it in the reverence
Speaker 1: with which I mean in this room you're just playing
Speaker 1: things you've found. And we were talking before this. I
Speaker 1: grew up my dad and I uh relicanted my entire
Speaker 1: childhood and he had the same kind of way of
Speaker 1: displaying his fines. It was mostly Civil War era artifacts things,
Speaker 1: but the same reverence that you could see. And sitting
Speaker 1: in this room, you can tell by the way you've
Speaker 1: displayed things you found, the reverence you have for it,
Speaker 1: how important it is to you that it's appreciated. Um,
Speaker 1: it's evident in these displays. Well, thank you. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of time has gone into two finding the points
Speaker 1: and then like you said, just the way they're displayed.
Speaker 1: It's it's uh I almost want people to think when
Speaker 1: they come in here, to be able to put themselves
Speaker 1: back five, six, eight thousand years ago and did look
Speaker 1: at each point and wonder where that point has been,
Speaker 1: who made it, the weather that was going on at
Speaker 1: the time, in the struggles that those people's that were
Speaker 1: we're having at the time that uh or or not struggling.
Speaker 1: I mean, the people probably had a lot better than
Speaker 1: we did. And anyway, yeah, each piece, I mean, as
Speaker 1: you take them, we'll go through kind of how you
Speaker 1: came to to to be an amateur archaeologist and how
Speaker 1: you came to be on this piece of land. But
Speaker 1: we we went for a little ride to look at
Speaker 1: one of your uh sites where you're you're currently finding heads, arrowheads,
Speaker 1: and it's clear to me that all those things are
Speaker 1: relevant to you when you find a piece. The first
Speaker 1: thing you said to me when I picked up my
Speaker 1: first arrowhead over there was the last time somebody had
Speaker 1: their hands on that was probably three thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: And that's um something I hope it's not lost on me.
Speaker 1: And I even looking around here, I'm geeking out and
Speaker 1: want to ask question about every little piece of stone
Speaker 1: that you got here, and so I hope everybody listening
Speaker 1: to this can can realize the amount of history that
Speaker 1: is built into hunting, the amount of history that is
Speaker 1: built into what we're doing. Uh, it's built in our
Speaker 1: genetic code, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, this being even for your little girls
Speaker 1: to grow up in a place where they're so connected
Speaker 1: to three thousand years prior is really unbelievable to me.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the reasons why I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to you, just to to find out why or
Speaker 1: how you got here. Maybe you don't even know why,
Speaker 1: but how you got to this point in your life. Well,
Speaker 1: I think if if anyone had the opportunity, um, I
Speaker 1: think we all of the hunters would would be in
Speaker 1: this room seeking out over and they probably have a
Speaker 1: room just like it if they had that that opportunity.
Speaker 1: And and uh, you and I are talking about um
Speaker 1: earlier that my philosophy in life is to get off
Speaker 1: the couch. You cannot you can't do all this if
Speaker 1: you're sitting on the couch. And but the d n
Speaker 1: A that we share with these ancient hunters is what
Speaker 1: drives us, and everyone shares it, whether you know it
Speaker 1: comes out more so, and others is evident, it certainly does.
Speaker 1: But I can't imagine just you know, seeing where these
Speaker 1: people lived and seeing and picking up an era head,
Speaker 1: not just being completely intrigued with what went on five
Speaker 1: thousand years ago in this area and what was each
Speaker 1: specific style of point made for. You know, some of
Speaker 1: these points are seven inches long and some of them
Speaker 1: are seven millimeters long. Yeah, it's it's unbelievable, the variances
Speaker 1: and in all the heads that you have here, in
Speaker 1: all the artifacts, but just the variances in the people,
Speaker 1: in the way they lived, by by generation hunter, you know,
Speaker 1: by type of people a boy, where they lived. It's
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. I mean, there's you've got arrowheads here that
Speaker 1: are the size of quarters, and then you've got points
Speaker 1: here that are as long as you know, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better term, like the snickers bar, as long
Speaker 1: as one of those six inches long. And so every
Speaker 1: one of these pieces I think is an answer to
Speaker 1: a question, or at least some evidence that will help
Speaker 1: you answer a question that we all should have was
Speaker 1: just how does this? How did this happen? You know,
Speaker 1: it's I think maybe fool hardy or it's some fool's
Speaker 1: errand to try to compare our modern hunting to this
Speaker 1: in a direct way. It's so far removed. Uh, these
Speaker 1: ancient hunters are so far removed from us, but they
Speaker 1: have so much to teach us that, um, yeah, we could.
Speaker 1: We could talk about this all day. But take me
Speaker 1: through how you came to be on this land, your
Speaker 1: family's history, and then we'll start talking about specific some
Speaker 1: of these really interesting pieces. So when we when I
Speaker 1: was about ten, we moved out because our our little
Speaker 1: farm out and uh brown Drock, Texas, which is north
Speaker 1: of Austin, uh town, kind of got a little close.
Speaker 1: So we decided to move further out. And we found
Speaker 1: this area out southwest of Austin in the hill country,
Speaker 1: dripping springs area. Um, we're able to it was so
Speaker 1: far out back then it just big, you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of cedar. And so we're able to get this
Speaker 1: ranch and and if over the last thirty years have
Speaker 1: been improving it, removing cedar, developing the springs, and and
Speaker 1: as we've been doing so. Um, it wasn't long after
Speaker 1: I was about eleven years old when we found our
Speaker 1: first true mound, is what we call it it's an
Speaker 1: Indian camp and started finding points and have been just
Speaker 1: completely uh taken by the thought and the the chase
Speaker 1: and the what's next, what's behind the next rock? And um,
Speaker 1: what am I going to find next? And what were
Speaker 1: these in the is doing and the whole deal and
Speaker 1: so um. The ranch is about seven hundred acres and
Speaker 1: we have almost a mile of Barton Creek running through.
Speaker 1: We have both sides of Barton and then um every
Speaker 1: several hundred yards there's a feeder creek that's spring fed.
Speaker 1: So it's just the perfect environment to camp nowaday too
Speaker 1: and back then for these Indians to survive. The great
Speaker 1: water um, and that's the key, is the water source.
Speaker 1: And you know we're we're on the near the Edwards
Speaker 1: Plateau and in the the bison were roaming through here,
Speaker 1: probably not as much as a little south of us
Speaker 1: because it's a little more hilly, but they had lots
Speaker 1: of deer, They had plenty to eat. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: every site that we find is just a beautiful camp
Speaker 1: site that we'd want to hang out in. No great
Speaker 1: cover and just beautiful, big old trees and um. So
Speaker 1: the lys Um had this place for you know, thirty
Speaker 1: years or so. And and that's what we do. We hunt,
Speaker 1: we fish, and we look for airheads. And we found
Speaker 1: a lot of thousands. I would saying how many totally
Speaker 1: you think you found your lifetime. I upwards of five thousand.
Speaker 1: I would imagine on this property UM between here and
Speaker 1: and uh within five miles of here. I get people
Speaker 1: that will call mean and have sites that you know,
Speaker 1: we'll look at. But have you ever took stock at
Speaker 1: your entire collection of the family's collection is to how
Speaker 1: big it is or or where it ranks, and the
Speaker 1: you know, list of biggest airhead collections are most established.
Speaker 1: There's there's a huge subcultures. Now that we've gotten into it,
Speaker 1: I've gotten to know some of some of the people
Speaker 1: that have the biggest collections of perishables, cave finds, um
Speaker 1: in the nation, and we've been we've we've my family
Speaker 1: and I've been able to see their private collections, which
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian wants lots of the pieces that they have,
Speaker 1: and frankly most of the private collections have the best stuff. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, as far as an amateur, you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've probably certainly you have one of the biggest
Speaker 1: collections in this area. But just because there's it's hard
Speaker 1: work finding these and uh, there's not many people that
Speaker 1: will get off the couch get it done off the couch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you started hunting and finding air heads around
Speaker 1: the same time when you were a kid. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was all just what you did. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: we're We my brothers two years old or nine, and
Speaker 1: we would be um, you know, like most kids. Then
Speaker 1: nowadays it's a different story. But we would be gone,
Speaker 1: son up would either be riding horses or we'd be
Speaker 1: digging airheads, and Dad would pretty much know where to
Speaker 1: find us. He'd either we'd be down there digging or
Speaker 1: if the horses were gone, he'd see us at dark,
Speaker 1: you know. But yeah, so that's lots of time spent.
Speaker 1: And it's great, great family stuff. I mean, my brother
Speaker 1: and I have great memories digging and and and now
Speaker 1: my my little girls and my wife love it. The
Speaker 1: girls are making mudpies and and my wife is is
Speaker 1: coming through the dirt with me. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a neat deal. Yeah. No, it's amazing, um to
Speaker 1: see the work you put into it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: easy to come into a room like this and and
Speaker 1: kind of feel the artistry of it, your own artistry
Speaker 1: and creating the presentation of the stuff, but the artistry
Speaker 1: of the folks that made this so many generations to go.
Speaker 1: It's easy to see that. But then we go out
Speaker 1: to your dig site, to your mound, and you see
Speaker 1: all the work you put in in the Texas summertime.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah that's hot, man, it is hot. And
Speaker 1: we come back just drenched. But each each point is
Speaker 1: just you ever sat down and had a whiskey in
Speaker 1: this room thought why? Why? Really? Why? You know, you
Speaker 1: know why? It's fun, it's you know, we can talk
Speaker 1: about why, but why why? The passion is it gets
Speaker 1: pretty deep in here, uh, us coming and sitting here
Speaker 1: with with those that are as passionate as you are
Speaker 1: about honey. And that's when it gets neat is when uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we we start thinking about, um, yeah, why
Speaker 1: why we're why are we here? Um? You know, in
Speaker 1: a sense, we're here to serve the Lord, that's one reason.
Speaker 1: But how but why did he? Why do we have cars?
Speaker 1: And these guys we're banging out flint, I mean, um,
Speaker 1: they were hard workers and and um, I can't imagine
Speaker 1: living like they did, but I think that they probably
Speaker 1: had it easier and we do. But why why were
Speaker 1: they here? And why so many points? Why did they
Speaker 1: lay this perfect point down that has not a scratch
Speaker 1: on it? Yeah? Yeah, I mean each one of these.
Speaker 1: We're both holding point arrowheads now, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: because you could just look at this and each little
Speaker 1: piece of it, each detail tells something about someone now somewhere,
Speaker 1: and if you let it speak to you, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it does. And so I imagine I knew the answer
Speaker 1: to that question. But for for folks listening to think
Speaker 1: about um while you're out there on a Sunday afternoon
Speaker 1: sweating your balls off, thinking what does it mean at
Speaker 1: the end of the day? Yeah? What? What? What gives
Speaker 1: me the drive to go the I mean it's not
Speaker 1: gold these things. Someone may come in and offer me of,
Speaker 1: you know, hefty chunk of change, but it wouldn't It
Speaker 1: would be essentially getting paid fifty cents an hour for
Speaker 1: all the hours I put into it. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: they're priceless to me, but they're not really worth all
Speaker 1: that much about your Your dad does he still? Does?
Speaker 1: He get after it? Pretty good? Dad? Loves, loves to
Speaker 1: see it and talk about it and sit in here
Speaker 1: and and uh and have a t or something, um,
Speaker 1: and and look at it. And he feels that the
Speaker 1: gravity of it, and he can feel the the culture,
Speaker 1: but he's he rather not go dig and the heat.
Speaker 1: He never has really cared much too. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's ever found a narrow head. But it's cool because
Speaker 1: he gets to live that through us. So essentially he
Speaker 1: didn't have to. He can he can have a cold
Speaker 1: beer and not sweat and still get the same enjoyment
Speaker 1: out of it. That's smart. Yeah, that's smart. Um, So
Speaker 1: we kind of you know, we know what you're doing here,
Speaker 1: and then can we'll just talk more about why. Um?
Speaker 1: But how I mean, when you're leving you find an arrowhead, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool, right, pick it up. That's a cool arrowhead.
Speaker 1: Take me through how you have gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where you're out there with a giant sifter and a
Speaker 1: cat and you're digging. You know, how big was the
Speaker 1: sight we were just at that was probably a hundred
Speaker 1: yards by sixty yards? And how deeply you dig when
Speaker 1: you dig, well, we'll get through about five ft average,
Speaker 1: I'd say, so that's a lot. Take me through how
Speaker 1: you get you know, obviously your passion will lead you
Speaker 1: to that this extreme way that you do it. But
Speaker 1: so when I was a kid finding them and digging
Speaker 1: the excitement of really I would I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I really would like to know who made this and
Speaker 1: and all, But really it's like how many can I get?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come home with ten and see what kind
Speaker 1: of different shapes. I knew nothing about the cultures. The
Speaker 1: shape of the base kind of tells you what culture
Speaker 1: it is, how old the point is, like the Clovis
Speaker 1: has the flute and it we don't have any Clovis
Speaker 1: on the ranch, but I'm sure they're here, but we
Speaker 1: hadn't found him. But then, you know, as I got older,
Speaker 1: started reading more about it, going to the shows, and
Speaker 1: learning about how they cooked and uh what they ate,
Speaker 1: how they actually hafted or put the point onto the
Speaker 1: to the stick and the the shaft and the ladle
Speaker 1: versus the bow and arrow, and really getting into big
Speaker 1: and deep and reading and and getting with the big
Speaker 1: wigs in the in the the culture of this artifact,
Speaker 1: hunting and learning so much more about it, and and
Speaker 1: the more I know now the more I want to
Speaker 1: get out in the field and see the evidence of this.
Speaker 1: And so we're talking about how they cooked. And in
Speaker 1: this country, they they would cook a lot like like
Speaker 1: the Mexicans cook caprito. They do a big hole, build
Speaker 1: a big fire, coals on it, put uh, put in
Speaker 1: big stones, and then cover it with grass acorns than grass,
Speaker 1: and then cover that with dirt and let it cook
Speaker 1: for up to seventy two hours. And they'd come out
Speaker 1: and the rocks would be broken up and what's called
Speaker 1: midden and over the over the different cook cycles that
Speaker 1: would just build a big mound of broken rock. And
Speaker 1: so the sites are a lot easier to find in
Speaker 1: this country than there are North Texas or than they
Speaker 1: are and in Arizona or Colorado or east and so
Speaker 1: it's not it's hard to find the sites. And so
Speaker 1: um once for once we find the site, then we
Speaker 1: can kind of we know where most of the points
Speaker 1: are and and uh we can kind of go to
Speaker 1: them and see what they've been eating. Lots of bison bones,
Speaker 1: lots of tune, fox, kyote, jaws, rabbits, all kinds of
Speaker 1: neat stuff. It's unbelievable, is there, you know? As you
Speaker 1: go through your collections, and as you started to gather
Speaker 1: more things and wanted to travel, was there I want
Speaker 1: to just continue to stay here and find out more
Speaker 1: about these people or go out into other parts of
Speaker 1: the country and you know, connect the dots to the
Speaker 1: ancient hunters that were here, or the ancient hunters that
Speaker 1: might have been into Mexico or Arizona or wherever. I'm
Speaker 1: always looking to expand, uh my knowledge based on the
Speaker 1: different cultures we you know, we we can call them
Speaker 1: tribes in the in the historic sense, uh, and then
Speaker 1: the cultures go back beyond the prehistoric. UM. But every
Speaker 1: time I go hunting, I take one of these airheads
Speaker 1: with me, UH and I go. I give a lot
Speaker 1: of places hunting, and I talked to the guides and
Speaker 1: all of them were It seems there's some sort of
Speaker 1: connection that they're artifact hunters and the culture out in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, UM, the pottery makers, the members culture is
Speaker 1: is very intriguing to me. And for these guys to
Speaker 1: be making these beautiful pots of thousand years ago, it's
Speaker 1: just amazing. And UM, the little ear rings that we've
Speaker 1: the shell ear rings that that I've found, UM, and
Speaker 1: some of their ruins while we're ill counting in the
Speaker 1: big huge pottery shards that just tell a story of
Speaker 1: its own. These guys were trading shells and all from
Speaker 1: from the the West coast, um and some caves that
Speaker 1: I've been in and in West Texas finding some amazing
Speaker 1: stuff braided rope and yeah, sandals, sandals, thousand year old
Speaker 1: sandals that we're we're finding in pack rat nsts and um.
Speaker 1: These they're all tied. I mean, these these cultures, that's
Speaker 1: the Castile culture. They're out of the caves in West
Speaker 1: Texas there about eleven years old. These guys are communicating
Speaker 1: and trading and with the Indians in our country, I
Speaker 1: would certainly imagine, and we do see proof of that.
Speaker 1: But they're trading um shell conch shells from the Texas
Speaker 1: coast all the way up here. But the shells that
Speaker 1: we see traded from California coast all the way here
Speaker 1: to central Texas. It's just amazing how that makes it
Speaker 1: the network. So they're all tied. Yeah, I tell you
Speaker 1: so much. I mean, I'm sure it all comes back
Speaker 1: to this piece of ground for you though, just because
Speaker 1: you spent so much time digging in here um. And
Speaker 1: then in the sight that we went to today, it
Speaker 1: was interesting me how you identified where the airheads might
Speaker 1: be or where though artifacts might be. So take people
Speaker 1: through how you walk on a barren piece of ground
Speaker 1: and the creek and on your ranch in Texas, and
Speaker 1: how you come to know that there's relics or artifacts there,
Speaker 1: and then once you've determined that in your mind, how
Speaker 1: you find them and then continue to find them and um,
Speaker 1: how you sift through to find the ones you want,
Speaker 1: and what that process looks like. So that I get
Speaker 1: this question a lot is well, I don't even know,
Speaker 1: can you. I've got this place on my land and
Speaker 1: I just want to know if there's an air head
Speaker 1: out there. And really what it comes down to is
Speaker 1: to find a spring, a healthy spring. That the best
Speaker 1: time to find a really healthy spring is in the
Speaker 1: during a drought, and if that's still running, then you
Speaker 1: can almost picture of the Indians being there. And so
Speaker 1: we'll find a spring first in from the spring, we'll
Speaker 1: just we'll just make a big walk, you know, We'll
Speaker 1: just walk around and we'll look for those pieces of
Speaker 1: broken midden rock and that's the evidence of them having
Speaker 1: cook sites there and broken flint, and if you can
Speaker 1: find a little piece of that, then we'll dig some
Speaker 1: test holes. And if the test holes bring up more
Speaker 1: mid and rock and more pieces of flint, then at
Speaker 1: that point we know that we're on a site. And
Speaker 1: then we'll clear it and get all the seater off,
Speaker 1: because the seater in this country is everywhere. And then
Speaker 1: once we uh, once we know that that's where we're
Speaker 1: gonna dig, then we have come a long way. I
Speaker 1: used to just hand dig everything, and now we have
Speaker 1: a table that has a motor on it and it's
Speaker 1: offset drive shaft that um we engineered to help Jimmy
Speaker 1: Love join my my digging buddy, UM, and we'll take
Speaker 1: we'll go around the midden where the where where they
Speaker 1: would probably be been living that the midden is more
Speaker 1: where they're cooking. There's gonna be a lot of points
Speaker 1: in there, but the good stuff that's not broken is
Speaker 1: gonna be out where they're actually living and and working. Generally,
Speaker 1: it will be on the on the southeast side because
Speaker 1: the prevailing winds or southwest, so they're gonna be out
Speaker 1: of the smoke. And we'll start there and we'll just trench.
Speaker 1: We'll dig a big trench and then we'll find the
Speaker 1: habitation layer and and uh, when we're looking at it earlier,
Speaker 1: the snails would come in and get the organic matter
Speaker 1: after the Indians had left. And so there's generally a
Speaker 1: line of occupation, is what we call it. And once
Speaker 1: once we find that, we'll go below that and another
Speaker 1: six inches so we're not missing anything, and we'll dig
Speaker 1: that whole area one bucket at a time with a bobcat.
Speaker 1: Put it on the table. It sifts well, sift all
Speaker 1: the midden rock and in all out, and then uh,
Speaker 1: we'll find the points from there, and then we'll put
Speaker 1: them in a bucket and at the end of the
Speaker 1: day we'll put them out on the back of the
Speaker 1: tailgate of the chuck and have a cold beer and
Speaker 1: and talk about every time we'll talk about what what
Speaker 1: were these Indians doing? And Wow, we're actually getting to
Speaker 1: do this, the first people that have touched this in
Speaker 1: five thousand years, and and we'll have that discussion over
Speaker 1: a cold beer. And yeah, we'll sort the points out.
Speaker 1: The broken ones will go in a box, and the
Speaker 1: the whole pretty ones will be displayed for everyone to see.
Speaker 1: Do you imagine that one thing that struck me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a nice ranch here. Did you imagine that
Speaker 1: your place is much different than every other ranch in
Speaker 1: this part of the country with open ground that you've
Speaker 1: just over the time knowing what to look for and
Speaker 1: become passionate, and that's why you found the amount of
Speaker 1: heads you have or is you know, you said there's
Speaker 1: there's water that runs through your place, for sure, but uh,
Speaker 1: you imagine that there's so many of these sites, so
Speaker 1: much of this information that we could clean and and
Speaker 1: probably should clean in some way that just goes, uh
Speaker 1: goes unfound because there's no one to see it. Absolutely well.
Speaker 1: Even there's so many of these sites about every six
Speaker 1: hundred yards in this country down Onion Creek or Barton Creek,
Speaker 1: and these are some of the bigger creeks in the region.
Speaker 1: The Barton Creek runs all the way down into Austin.
Speaker 1: But there's so many of these sites, uh that if
Speaker 1: you have a property with a spring on it, you
Speaker 1: have a you do have a campsite on it. But
Speaker 1: a lot of these camps that I'm digging, I've known
Speaker 1: about for thirty years and I'm just coming up. I'm
Speaker 1: talking to the land owners and I'm showing them my
Speaker 1: Indian room. I bring him out to the ranch and
Speaker 1: they they see what's there, and then they still won't
Speaker 1: dog it. And then and I'll ask maybe both I'll
Speaker 1: dig it with them, and then I'll give them fifty
Speaker 1: the points. So lots of people have the middens or
Speaker 1: the camps on their place, but it's a matter of
Speaker 1: want to and drive. They get out there and dig
Speaker 1: for an hour and they're and it's hot, and it's
Speaker 1: a ton of work, and there over it and I
Speaker 1: can't get over it. Um, it's like Steve Ronnella or
Speaker 1: Ben O'Brien climbing him. It's like the big one. The
Speaker 1: big animal is not killed right off the road. The
Speaker 1: big ones killed back in there where no one else
Speaker 1: wants to go. And then when when when you get
Speaker 1: further back there, and it's the last day, and if
Speaker 1: if you just have enough energy to get over one
Speaker 1: more mountain range or one more mountain, that's where the
Speaker 1: big one is. And it's the last day, in the
Speaker 1: last hour and the last light. And I guarantee you
Speaker 1: that Ben O'Brien and Steve ronell are up there with
Speaker 1: their glasses until last light and that's what it's like
Speaker 1: for me. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's what strikes me
Speaker 1: about all people that you know, you don't sit in
Speaker 1: a room like this without having so ridiculous passion for
Speaker 1: the thing, right, Um, you just don't, and you don't
Speaker 1: come to the point you've come to as an amateur archaeologist.
Speaker 1: I love that term. Um. Yeah, I'm I think I'm
Speaker 1: like an amateur whiskey taster. I got a certificate one time. Um.
Speaker 1: But you don't get to that point without having that drive,
Speaker 1: without wanting to know that And you were talking about
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. There's in in some circles
Speaker 1: there's thought that digging this could be controversial because you
Speaker 1: may disturb some kind of evidence that could be found,
Speaker 1: or talk about that a little bit. You know. I
Speaker 1: know that's probably sense of subject for it, but I
Speaker 1: think it's important for people to hear you know, your
Speaker 1: passion is coming through this stuff and the respect for
Speaker 1: these artifacts and the fact that they're seen by many
Speaker 1: people that come in your home. Um. I think that's
Speaker 1: important for people to know because I know there are
Speaker 1: probably something that would ask why don't you just leave
Speaker 1: him in the ground? Right, And it's so it's a
Speaker 1: non renewable resource essentially, and the archae bologists are amazing.
Speaker 1: That's what I wanted to do as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was ten or eleven, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: my path went a different direction. But it is extremely
Speaker 1: important to to know what went on and and how
Speaker 1: it went on. But they, the archaeologist in this region
Speaker 1: have studied it so extensively that these camps are very
Speaker 1: common and they they don't want, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: have any more used to come find out what they
Speaker 1: already know. Lots of their stuff gets displayed appropriately, which
Speaker 1: is awesome and um, but there's tons of it that
Speaker 1: they're still studying in that the general public will never
Speaker 1: see ever and a lot of these folks won't even
Speaker 1: make it to a museum to see it. So the
Speaker 1: amount of people that have been in this room or
Speaker 1: been to the ranch and and if looked and talked
Speaker 1: about this stuff would never have done it without this
Speaker 1: stuff coming up out of the ground and by me
Speaker 1: getting it out. And um, it's I feel it's so
Speaker 1: important for us to dig this stuff up and to
Speaker 1: share with the world, um, like we're doing now. I've
Speaker 1: never heard a podcast on air heads either. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're out there, maybe not. Maybe we're breaking ground. I'm
Speaker 1: glad if that's the case. But you know, but you
Speaker 1: know they're getting displayed, we're talking about it. We're sharing
Speaker 1: this part of our history, um with with the world.
Speaker 1: Whereas uh, you know, they may again the archaeologists do
Speaker 1: it tremendously great job about you know, I'm putting the
Speaker 1: word out and showing what's going on in museums and all.
Speaker 1: But but it's hard to get to Yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: get to this. I mean the amount of things that
Speaker 1: you have here and some of the great funds you have, UM.
Speaker 1: And that brings that's a good segue. It brings us
Speaker 1: to you know, what you have and what you've learned,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot that you've learned. Um. We got
Speaker 1: a dog visitor here bringing us a ball through. UM,
Speaker 1: what you have and what you've learned, because you've learned
Speaker 1: a lot about these ancient cultures you love, learned a
Speaker 1: lot about these periods and time that are important for
Speaker 1: us all to know about. So the biggest part of
Speaker 1: me wanting to sit out with you was to to
Speaker 1: harvest and get out of you all the things that
Speaker 1: you've learned about not only how to find these things
Speaker 1: and why you might do it, but the people. You know,
Speaker 1: you're sitting and having that beer. That's a good visual
Speaker 1: for everybody looking at these heads and in in your
Speaker 1: own mind, with your own knowledge, trying to understand what
Speaker 1: this connects to, because we all have that connection. So
Speaker 1: take me through the types of people that lived here,
Speaker 1: um how far back you know, let's probably start with
Speaker 1: the the oldest civilizations that lived here that you're a
Speaker 1: are of, and then take me back through kind of
Speaker 1: how how that all steps up and what you've learned
Speaker 1: that could be. So there's there's evidence of certainly evidence
Speaker 1: in this area of the Clovis culture, which was thought
Speaker 1: to be the oldest culture in North America. Um, so
Speaker 1: whether they came across the land bridge or they came
Speaker 1: from from Europe bouncing down through across the ice cap
Speaker 1: too to the east coast. There is a huge area
Speaker 1: on the east coast with tons of of Clovis camps,
Speaker 1: and so some archaeologists I think that they came across
Speaker 1: in in boats to the east coast, and then that's
Speaker 1: why there's so many camps over there. And then from
Speaker 1: there they followed the waterways to west and the other
Speaker 1: the other ones say that they came across the baring
Speaker 1: Land Bridge, came down and followed the rivers and then
Speaker 1: they ended up on the east coast and they and
Speaker 1: go anywhere else, and that's why there's so many camps there.
Speaker 1: But from there um the Clovis culture died out. Okay,
Speaker 1: that the Paleo Indians died out, the Fulsome and all
Speaker 1: that group, and then they repopulated. And there's evidence in
Speaker 1: in this area that after the repopulation in the transitional
Speaker 1: Paleo and all about eight thousand years, they lived here
Speaker 1: all the way up until the Comanches. So the culture
Speaker 1: that we're finding the most of the prehistoric about six
Speaker 1: thousand years until um, all the way up through the
Speaker 1: Comanche points true eraheads. So they were using what we
Speaker 1: call dart points. They were hafted to a long shaft
Speaker 1: and uh hurled with an at ladle and described that
Speaker 1: lattle for those are not aware, So it's like the
Speaker 1: chuck it deal that you throw to your dog. So
Speaker 1: that these Indians made that, they didn't make the billions
Speaker 1: of dollars that this chuck it guy is right? Why
Speaker 1: did not think of that, But so it's a long shaft.
Speaker 1: There at the end, the flint point is on a
Speaker 1: stick about six inches long that goes into the shaft.
Speaker 1: And then the stick that laddel is about a foot long,
Speaker 1: and it has a little hook on the end and
Speaker 1: and it's and that you use it to hurl to
Speaker 1: get more kinetic energy. When the shaft hits the animal,
Speaker 1: this the point stays in the animal. The big shaft
Speaker 1: comes out, and they run grab their shaft, pick up
Speaker 1: another tip and put it in and and just follow
Speaker 1: and track and um. They can be accurate that the
Speaker 1: guys that do it now for fun, can they can
Speaker 1: hit targets at a hundred yards with these things. So
Speaker 1: they figured these hunters that did it every day growing
Speaker 1: up their whole lives, they needed to be good at
Speaker 1: it could be accurate to hunters. You know, how they
Speaker 1: would fashion the shaft or what. Yeah, they would there,
Speaker 1: you know, they'd use a lot of the cane along
Speaker 1: the rivers and creeks, and to straighten them, they'd heat
Speaker 1: him in the fire and then they just bend it
Speaker 1: and then as it cooled they would stay in that shape.
Speaker 1: And then from there they would use asphaltum two connect
Speaker 1: the the flint tip and asphalt them is it's either
Speaker 1: they could use tree sap or um. You can what
Speaker 1: I think of as faltim is when you're on the
Speaker 1: beach and there's those big tar balls that come up,
Speaker 1: and that's natural. I'm sure there's more of it since
Speaker 1: we've been digging or drilling, but they'll use that heat
Speaker 1: it up and then fasten that and there's that cools
Speaker 1: that becomes hard and so that there's no getting it
Speaker 1: off at that point. So if they broke the tip
Speaker 1: of their ahead, they could re sharpen the the arrowhead
Speaker 1: while it's still on that stick, and we we see
Speaker 1: evidence of that and all of these points resharpening UM.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes if that stick broke, then that that points
Speaker 1: useless at that point because they couldn't. They couldn't they
Speaker 1: can repair it. So lots of these points is laying around.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of that had to do with it.
Speaker 1: Why would they just leave these perfect points in camp? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we were talking about it earlier. It's probably
Speaker 1: another rabbit hole. Why why are so many of them
Speaker 1: left behind? Um in the way that they are And
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's lots of reasons. Yeah, and they're perfect. Yeah. Weight.
Speaker 1: I think we talked about one of them. The Fulsome
Speaker 1: people's were some of the most nomadic Paleo folks and
Speaker 1: and because of that there their points were super thin.
Speaker 1: And and they think it's just because of weight. But
Speaker 1: back to where we were going with that is so
Speaker 1: it started of the Paleo Indians. Right here, there's Paleo
Speaker 1: sites all through North America. Paleo, the Clovis, the Fulsome,
Speaker 1: angast Era, they were those all intermingled civilizations or did
Speaker 1: they predate each other? They were, they came. I don't
Speaker 1: think that they were overlapped very much. They were they
Speaker 1: you know, there would be a culture here and and
Speaker 1: then there'd be some overlap and there would be someone
Speaker 1: with a better technique, and they transitioned into that technique
Speaker 1: of of napping, of flint napping um. Which gets us
Speaker 1: to the from the at laddle to the bow and arrow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when did that describe that transition as you know it
Speaker 1: in this country at least, so they're thinking roughly thirtred
Speaker 1: years ago. It is all with the Yes, So the
Speaker 1: majority of the history of of our world is at
Speaker 1: Laddle is guys throwing uh big long um shafts with
Speaker 1: an out ladle. Yeah, if you google at laddle, you
Speaker 1: can get many, many videos of modern guys. Like you said,
Speaker 1: it's pretty impressive to watch. I mean, they're they're killing
Speaker 1: mammoths with these things, which is just amazing to see. Um.
Speaker 1: But then once the bow and arrow took over, there
Speaker 1: was an overlap I'm sure, um of when to use
Speaker 1: an out lad and when to use a bone arrow.
Speaker 1: But um, and some of the arrows I have in
Speaker 1: the Indian room here are really short. They have trade
Speaker 1: points on them. This is the horse culture. So then
Speaker 1: we we start we transition from the at laddle to
Speaker 1: the bow and arrow about thirteen dred years ago, and
Speaker 1: then we get into the horse culture, which didn't The
Speaker 1: horse culture is very young. It's only a couple hundred
Speaker 1: not even that long. When the when the Spanish came in,
Speaker 1: there were horses and mustangs here well before the Indians
Speaker 1: figured out how to use them. So some of the
Speaker 1: tribes didn't have horses more longer than eighty years before
Speaker 1: we before we came in and you know, wrecked their
Speaker 1: their world. But and I'm very sympathetic to that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that it just is what it is. Progress
Speaker 1: is progress and and uh the Indians did it to themselves,
Speaker 1: and uh, we don't want to rabbit hold down that.
Speaker 1: But from the bow and arrows pre horse culture, which
Speaker 1: was a big long thing, you know, to the horse culture,
Speaker 1: these arrows aren't but about two and a half feet long. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're looking at it a set of eight or
Speaker 1: so arrows from that that time frame, and described you
Speaker 1: know how that sets up. Because this, of all things
Speaker 1: you have hanging here, I believe it. It was the
Speaker 1: most interesting to me how not only the feathers they used,
Speaker 1: how they attached to fix the feathers to the shaft,
Speaker 1: how they fixed the shaft to the point, what the
Speaker 1: point looks like, and why it looks like it does.
Speaker 1: So the French we're making trade points. The arrows that
Speaker 1: we're looking at now have trade metal trade points. And
Speaker 1: there the style. Um, I have a couple of arros
Speaker 1: there from the Sioux culture that are the style of
Speaker 1: a little big horn. Doesn't mean that these were used
Speaker 1: a little big horn, but they were certainly obtained from
Speaker 1: the Indians that fought in and around a little big
Speaker 1: horn right at the same time. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies back in the sun. The French trappers, they
Speaker 1: the French would make these trade points before they'd even
Speaker 1: come over here, and they'd send them with their trappers
Speaker 1: and their their fur companies and they'd trade these point
Speaker 1: the Indians, which were you know, that a lot lighter.
Speaker 1: They were more accurate there as deadly, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to put the time in to make these. Every
Speaker 1: time you throw one of these a break if if
Speaker 1: it hit a rocket break, and that's a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of time that they put into that. Well, these points
Speaker 1: they might bend or they just banging out and straighten
Speaker 1: it out and go on. So um, the points here
Speaker 1: we see are about three inches long and very sharp,
Speaker 1: uh and wicked looking. I mean you walk in the
Speaker 1: room and it you can see these on a on
Speaker 1: the Indians back. Oh yeah, the tip I mean the
Speaker 1: very tip of a knife almost. Yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: probably about what four inches long, would you say? And
Speaker 1: so the shaft, the shafts of these arrows all have
Speaker 1: different designs in them, and and they think that that
Speaker 1: they belonged to the guy who made the shaft ay
Speaker 1: or is it to let the blood out when it
Speaker 1: when it hits sticks in then and while it's hard
Speaker 1: to say, but they have grooves in the shaft. Every
Speaker 1: one of these authentic arrows do. UM. If you guys
Speaker 1: are at the museums and you see these authentic arrows,
Speaker 1: you look for that. But then the feather part is
Speaker 1: about eight inches. Um. Different cultures use three feathers. Um.
Speaker 1: Some cultures just used to um. Most of them have
Speaker 1: three feathers. But the Navajo. I've got three arrows up
Speaker 1: there from the Navajo culture and they're used buzzard m feathers.
Speaker 1: They use buzzard feather there. So UM, they're pretty easy
Speaker 1: to distinguish which tribe by the style. The two would
Speaker 1: you use turkey and eagle, we don't have it. It's
Speaker 1: illegal to have it, any type of eagle feathers. So
Speaker 1: there's no eagle feathers. Um. All the museums and and
Speaker 1: have the eagle stuff. You can't even trade them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's that's one of the more interesting When
Speaker 1: you look at these arrows, you think of our modern
Speaker 1: days in the length and you look at these errors.
Speaker 1: You must think on horseback. You know, once these horse
Speaker 1: cultures became prevalent. They had what do you say, sixty
Speaker 1: pound draw weights up to they're shooting a foot and
Speaker 1: a half long arrow tip to tip um as. I'm
Speaker 1: just guessing at that obviously, but you know, talk about
Speaker 1: that the you know much about the physics of that,
Speaker 1: of how they designed these bows and arrows and what
Speaker 1: they became at this in these early stages. Well that
Speaker 1: they evolved um from the utility of of being on
Speaker 1: the horse shooting under the neck. These guys were warriors.
Speaker 1: The the arraheads that were finding on the ranch they
Speaker 1: were they weren't and there's evidence, I mean, when the
Speaker 1: archaeologists find the skeleton, skeletal remains, there's no evidence of warfare.
Speaker 1: They're just weren't enough of them. They needed each other.
Speaker 1: The Indians that were talking about the horse culture were
Speaker 1: major warriors. There were so many of them at this
Speaker 1: point in history. And to shoot under a horse's neck,
Speaker 1: to hide and to carry a shield and shoot while
Speaker 1: you're running that the bows and the there has had
Speaker 1: to be super short, and you know, they could get
Speaker 1: right up next to bison. They just they just did.
Speaker 1: They'd run in. They think that it average took it
Speaker 1: about four arrows for every bison, they'd come in and
Speaker 1: shoot behind. They'd run in behind and shoot them from
Speaker 1: the flank up through deliver and maybe catch along. And
Speaker 1: then they had the luxury of tracking. They just pull
Speaker 1: up and and uh, you know, track them, and so
Speaker 1: they didn't have to be accurate up to eighty plush hard.
Speaker 1: But if we go back to you know, the archaic
Speaker 1: period and some of these back to away from times
Speaker 1: when when bows became prevalent, what game were they hunting,
Speaker 1: What were there main sources of food, and what were
Speaker 1: the options maybe animals that were here that they were
Speaker 1: unable to hunt um or on you know, on more unsuccessful,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure there were you know, deer and other
Speaker 1: species that were important. Yeah, lots, So we find lots
Speaker 1: of of bones of turkeys, lots of turkey legs. We're
Speaker 1: looking down at a pot from the Okay, yeah, palladeric
Speaker 1: can and that came out of there back in the sixties.
Speaker 1: But lots of turkeys, um armor delos, find a lot
Speaker 1: of armor dealer shells on the bones in them, Um coons, fox, coyoats, um,
Speaker 1: lots of deer and uh, a lot of buffalo. We
Speaker 1: find lots of buffalo teeth and big huge buffalo femers.
Speaker 1: That's some of the more amazing stuff you're showing me too,
Speaker 1: and not this I geek out about it. Almost everything
Speaker 1: you've shown me thus far with buffalo teeth for whatever,
Speaker 1: ancient buffalo teeth. It's so awesome when when that rolls out,
Speaker 1: it's so cool. It's you know, because we think the
Speaker 1: deer and stuff around here, and we just can't picture
Speaker 1: bison here. And you know, if you can imagine this
Speaker 1: country is right now, there's so it's so wooded. Back
Speaker 1: then it was there were very few trees and mainly
Speaker 1: around the springs and the creeks and all because the
Speaker 1: natural fires and the bison herds which come through here.
Speaker 1: And so to to to here that yeah, there used
Speaker 1: to be bison here in the Indians, we'll actually digging
Speaker 1: them and finding the evidence that, yeah, they were cutting
Speaker 1: up bison right here. We'll find parts of the camp
Speaker 1: that that they would probably do be the butchery that bison.
Speaker 1: We find lots of big knives and that's where the
Speaker 1: big bison bones are. The knives I say big, anywhere
Speaker 1: from five to seven inches long. Do you find an
Speaker 1: evidence of how they might have butchered a bison with
Speaker 1: these tools. Yeah, we we see in some of these
Speaker 1: big bones there's chopped marks on them. And then uh,
Speaker 1: like we're there's some of these big chopper rocks. I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine just a big, huge piece of flint that's that's
Speaker 1: napped on one edge so it's very finely worked, and
Speaker 1: then the back end is that explain what napped is
Speaker 1: just kind of so for napping is when they've actually
Speaker 1: take a blank piece of flint and using the hammerstone,
Speaker 1: they chip off the flint and on each side they'll
Speaker 1: turn it back over and chip it make it towards
Speaker 1: sharp and then once it once it has a pretty
Speaker 1: good shape to it, then they that's called percussion flaking.
Speaker 1: Then they'd come back in and do what's called pressure flaking,
Speaker 1: where they're take an antler tip generally and just hold
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure to certain angling that pops off
Speaker 1: little pieces of flint where you can get a piece
Speaker 1: that's as sharp as any knife. So there's evidence of
Speaker 1: them of them, uh you know, butchering bison right there,
Speaker 1: dear and bison. It's amazing teeth, big old bison jaws
Speaker 1: coming out in this country. I mean we are sitting here,
Speaker 1: what half an hour from downtown Austin, and you found
Speaker 1: evidence of thousands and thousands of year olds hunters that
Speaker 1: are butchering bison. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Yeah, so every
Speaker 1: every everything about that. When I have a chance to
Speaker 1: go down to to dig with my family or by
Speaker 1: myself or whatever, it's like, what are we gonna find today? Yeah?
Speaker 1: A piece of al Right. It would be hard to
Speaker 1: describe what you're really finding, because you could say the
Speaker 1: prevailing term might be like, hey man, you find in
Speaker 1: pieces of history. I don't know if it's that it's
Speaker 1: more or less you're finding evidence of who we are
Speaker 1: or evidence. Every little pieces is just another puzzle piece
Speaker 1: of the puzzle. It's you know, I mean, you've killed
Speaker 1: deer on this ranch, and you've butchered deer yet hundreds
Speaker 1: of yards from where ancient hunter, and ancient is the
Speaker 1: term when we're talking. We're looking at a book where
Speaker 1: one of your blaze was featured as the archaic period,
Speaker 1: archaic blade from two thousand BC found here, correct, right
Speaker 1: here on the ranch. Uh. That's that's some gravity to me,
Speaker 1: it's huge gravity. And it's most people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I like to shape of that. That's an
Speaker 1: arrowhead and it does not go beyond that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they walk in this room and and I don't always
Speaker 1: talked about this earlier, for that was our discussion. But
Speaker 1: they would rather know about the furniture. It is nice furniture,
Speaker 1: that it's old stuff. It's yeah, it's really nice. But
Speaker 1: if there's no unless it's belonging to King Arthur, I
Speaker 1: would be looking at these heads. And that's a that's
Speaker 1: an interesting distinction. And more moreover, I mean, we could
Speaker 1: talk about these cultures forever and will continue to do so.
Speaker 1: But what what's that say about our culture? You know?
Speaker 1: What's that say about what we value? And I think
Speaker 1: you and I are both hunters, um, And that's probably I.
Speaker 1: I self identify as like a family man, a lover
Speaker 1: of the natural world, hunter like those are. That That's
Speaker 1: what I would try to describe myself as if if
Speaker 1: anyone asked, yeah, well, I'm sure you would say similar things. Well,
Speaker 1: it's what culture do we have here? Frankly? You know,
Speaker 1: we go hunt in Spain, or we go hunting Russia,
Speaker 1: or or we go hunting Nepal. Um, that's culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're staying in a five hundred year old
Speaker 1: bed and breakfast while we're hunting Greater Cybex or we're
Speaker 1: we're in a village and getting you know, of history
Speaker 1: from these villagers that in in Nepal and the m
Speaker 1: l a s Um that have been there. When wasn't
Speaker 1: that village you all went to. Um, it's like four
Speaker 1: generations or five generations. Yeah, many more than that, even
Speaker 1: I think um. And Yeah, another rabbital to go down
Speaker 1: was how the weight of that that I felt there
Speaker 1: trying to learn. I felt like almost I could have
Speaker 1: stayed there my entire life and not learned everything I
Speaker 1: need to learn from those people, not only about the
Speaker 1: history of their place, but who they were and how
Speaker 1: they live their lives. I'm sure do you feel the
Speaker 1: same way about holding one of these airheads? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's awesome, But and what what's cool about it is
Speaker 1: there is culture. This is culture now our society has
Speaker 1: I feel uh ashamed to the fact that we're losing it.
Speaker 1: We don't care about it all. We care about what's
Speaker 1: on the next iPad video game deal and and you
Speaker 1: know me, I don't. I don't even have a Facebook
Speaker 1: page or Instagram so I don't even know how I'm
Speaker 1: gonna listen to this. I have this, I'll send you,
Speaker 1: I'll drop box you five dropbox. That's another thing I
Speaker 1: don't know. Well, you'd be the first person that on
Speaker 1: this podcast that didn't have one of So that's really nice.
Speaker 1: That's nice for me. But yeah, I mean it just
Speaker 1: goes to show, like he said, what is our current
Speaker 1: hunting culture? And we didn't come here to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But I love doing that anyway, because culture just aired ideas.
Speaker 1: That's what culture is. It's the definition of the damn thing.
Speaker 1: It is a collection of shared ideas that that reverberate
Speaker 1: through people. And this the cultures that we may be
Speaker 1: because they're so far removed from My respect for for
Speaker 1: what you've amassed here is immense, just because of what
Speaker 1: it means to our own culture, but just to to
Speaker 1: what it means our humanity. It's crazy. Thank you. It's
Speaker 1: a it's so awesome to put put this deal together
Speaker 1: and too and to have people that are passionate enough
Speaker 1: about it to come and actually want to talk about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing to get to raise my family on
Speaker 1: the ranch and for them to to have some semblance
Speaker 1: of culture instead of being stuck and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know it doesn't matter. You can live in town
Speaker 1: and have an amazing culture and be more country than
Speaker 1: than someone living out on the ranch. But whatever, it's
Speaker 1: just a neat way to do it. And all there's
Speaker 1: like I said, it's it's there's perspective in these artifacts
Speaker 1: that are that's invaluable that I think every hunter should have. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, there are there places. I'm not gonna have
Speaker 1: everybody come to your house, but are there the places
Speaker 1: around where people can um that you feel like our
Speaker 1: key Yeah? Yeah, you can say Smithsonian do all that,
Speaker 1: but there are they're key places where, Man, if you're
Speaker 1: road tripping through Texas, if you're coming through this country,
Speaker 1: if you want to understand the ancient hunting culture, which
Speaker 1: is which is key to our own you know, hunting
Speaker 1: lives just in this area in Texas and West Texas
Speaker 1: even well, there's one of the biggest paleo um campsites
Speaker 1: ever known in North America, is called the Gault Site.
Speaker 1: And uh it's north of Georgetown, Texas, and U t
Speaker 1: um Can gives tours of the Gult Site and there
Speaker 1: that's where they found lots of club and stuff, and
Speaker 1: that's where they're talking about this. You know fifteen the
Speaker 1: seventeen thousand year old culture that was here before the
Speaker 1: Clovis Clovis was thought to be here to twelve five thirteen.
Speaker 1: But they're this Galt site is somewhere you can take
Speaker 1: the kids um or if you don't have kids, if
Speaker 1: you're passionate about it, go, I mean, just go learn
Speaker 1: about it. It's amazing. It's a it's a one of
Speaker 1: the places you can go. There's also guys that have
Speaker 1: paid digs is what they call them, where you can
Speaker 1: you can go online and find a private leone ranch
Speaker 1: that you know, it caused twenty bucks to go out
Speaker 1: there with a pick, and you can dig around and
Speaker 1: find a point of your own, which if you don't own,
Speaker 1: if you if you don't own a place or have
Speaker 1: friends that own a place, that it's it's the it's awesome,
Speaker 1: it's the next you know, there's people who have huge
Speaker 1: collections that have done this. How would you if if
Speaker 1: say I got a property and I find a beautiful
Speaker 1: point like the one on beautiful flint point like the
Speaker 1: way when I'm holding is this flint? Yeah, yes, sir, Yeah,
Speaker 1: getting good stone out how I find this point and
Speaker 1: I want to know more about how how it came
Speaker 1: to be here and a lot of the information you're saying,
Speaker 1: what what are ways that I could find? There's that book?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there's there's several books. Um yeah, out take
Speaker 1: it off. We're gonna start reading passages from arrowhead books.
Speaker 1: Now get get really deep, go real deal. So this
Speaker 1: Overstreet book is this weighs about it's the best one.
Speaker 1: It weighs about as much as three thousand arrowheads might wig.
Speaker 1: And then there's there's areas of the book south central
Speaker 1: or wherever part of the United States you live. And
Speaker 1: it's gonna show you what's your point is you you've
Speaker 1: compare the base of it you find it will tell
Speaker 1: you how old it is probably how much it's worth. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is the over the Overstreet Identification and Price
Speaker 1: Guy to Indian Arrowheads, twelfth edition, Robert M. Over Street.
Speaker 1: And it is sixty four pages long. So there's a
Speaker 1: few ads in there, so we'll give it tweages long.
Speaker 1: And it is man, it's detailed. Yeah, that's the dictionary
Speaker 1: of what we do and it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: how that's the first one that I went to, yeah,
Speaker 1: find So if we if I found this head that's
Speaker 1: in my hand, how would I go about looking through here?
Speaker 1: So we live in the south central area right there.
Speaker 1: Let me see what type of point that is. That's
Speaker 1: a bulloverdy just from so if you go to look
Speaker 1: at Bulverdi and then it'll you compare it and uh,
Speaker 1: it's gonna tell you. So it has a thumbnail guide
Speaker 1: of the forms. So you're you're looking at the base
Speaker 1: of the arrowhead hunt. The base is gonna tell you
Speaker 1: what culture it is. Yeah, and then once you find
Speaker 1: the culture, you flip over to it and find a deal.
Speaker 1: But that cool, not that we need to go through
Speaker 1: all this. At this point there it is bolvardy right,
Speaker 1: and so this is described as a G eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. So the one you're holding there is it
Speaker 1: G three or four and it's you know, it's worth
Speaker 1: fifty cents. But to me, it's priceless to what what's
Speaker 1: the g's that's gonna tell you the grade of the point.
Speaker 1: So this point that's in the book, and the book
Speaker 1: we're talking about is the finest artifacts of prehistoric Texas.
Speaker 1: And a couple of friends of mine wrote the book,
Speaker 1: Winston Ellison and Dwayne Rodgers. Um. What they did is
Speaker 1: they had a panel of judges, um about ten judges
Speaker 1: that looked at the best points that they could find,
Speaker 1: and then they voted on them to make the book
Speaker 1: or not. And so that's another book you guys ought
Speaker 1: to look for is The Finest Artifact of Prehistoric Texas
Speaker 1: by Winston Ellison and Dwayne Rogers. So a lot of
Speaker 1: these points. Dwayne Rodgers is the authenticator. There's people that
Speaker 1: we'll fake these and try to sell them, and so
Speaker 1: I know these are real because I found them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if I were to sell them, someone would probably
Speaker 1: want a paper on it, and that would be the
Speaker 1: guy Dwayne Rodgers. But of course I wouldn't sell these things. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the specifics. That's it's it's fun for
Speaker 1: me just to to give people an outlet to what
Speaker 1: do you do if you find one? I'm sure that
Speaker 1: would be a question. But back to to what they mean,
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm generally ideological, philosophical type of guy,
Speaker 1: and as even as a hunter, I've described this podcast
Speaker 1: a lot. I think more about the philosophies of why
Speaker 1: we do the things we do than I do the
Speaker 1: actual doing of them. You know, So how to find
Speaker 1: one of these is relevant to me. But but what
Speaker 1: they you know, what they end up meaning to you,
Speaker 1: is just as as relevant, if not more so. And
Speaker 1: so you have do you have a piece in here
Speaker 1: that you found, like your first arrowhead or your most
Speaker 1: what you think the most prolific one you found that
Speaker 1: means a lot to you, that that will point out
Speaker 1: the folks. This this point down there that my wife
Speaker 1: found when we're looking at the so most of the
Speaker 1: ranch we live and I grew up on, but there's
Speaker 1: another part of it that we bought it. We added too,
Speaker 1: and when we were looking to buy it, before we
Speaker 1: had any money, we're just walking down through the pasture.
Speaker 1: They're near Barton, near the creek, and right in the
Speaker 1: tirade was a perfect point. And to my wife found
Speaker 1: it and she said, yes, we're it's meant to be.
Speaker 1: This is us. I mean, we're gonna live here. This
Speaker 1: is our deal. I thought you're about to say that.
Speaker 1: I dropped down on one knee, dropped down. I was
Speaker 1: still real scared. H I don't think we're married quite yet.
Speaker 1: I thought you had an air head, uh an engagement
Speaker 1: error had Yeah, so but that one and then that
Speaker 1: that point that's seven and a half inches. I was
Speaker 1: by myself hand digging. That was before the machinery. And
Speaker 1: it's paper thin. Beautiful and that's the one that's in
Speaker 1: this in the book here, but beautiful. That's a beautiful
Speaker 1: piece right there. Just the tip was coming sticking out
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, it's just one of these
Speaker 1: dart points and you know, six inches of it hanging
Speaker 1: out and I almost fell over when I pulled it out. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And so your best recollection, there's so many rabbit holes,
Speaker 1: so much stuff. I'm interested to know. Describe kind of
Speaker 1: the different points you found and how you go about
Speaker 1: identifying what it is and what it's used for. I mean,
Speaker 1: are there does each culture? Does each people have a
Speaker 1: different type of signifier? I mean, so they do? You
Speaker 1: explain some of it to me, but try to try
Speaker 1: to take people through everything that's here and how it's identified. Well,
Speaker 1: there's there points that we call drills that are long
Speaker 1: that that would essentially look like a drill. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you have three I'll have some photos of this up
Speaker 1: but you have three displays here. Let's just take you
Speaker 1: through the far left displays. So the drill points, all
Speaker 1: of their base or a lot of the bases, tell
Speaker 1: you what type of point it is, what culture, what
Speaker 1: it what culture it was? How old was that culture? Um,
Speaker 1: that's that's what the base signifies. So it's really easy
Speaker 1: to tell. I know most of them in the area.
Speaker 1: Whenever they come off the table, I grab it. I said,
Speaker 1: there's a part analysis. We talked my digging buddy and
Speaker 1: or family, and I'd say, that's cool. There's a Bolvardi,
Speaker 1: or there's a Castorville or or Lang or lane Tree.
Speaker 1: And so the cultures that were here were the pardon
Speaker 1: Alys culture and the Lane Tree culture. And they really
Speaker 1: they're just giving them names because they were prehistoric. Um,
Speaker 1: so they're they're from tiniest little things called um gravers.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just that have little tiny points on them,
Speaker 1: maybe too to make jewelry with two big knives. That
Speaker 1: were most of these knives. And this is good that
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about this because someone sees the seven
Speaker 1: a half inch knife and the first thing they say
Speaker 1: is spear, and they think of some Indian carrying a
Speaker 1: big spear and stabbing a guy. Well back then these there,
Speaker 1: these cultures weren't at war with each other, so they're
Speaker 1: cutting grass with them in the Archaeologists have studied the
Speaker 1: wear patterns on the edges and found that the majority
Speaker 1: is fiber cutting fiber. So they used a massive amount
Speaker 1: of grass in there to cook and to steam these acorns.
Speaker 1: And that's mainly what they ate is acorns and some meat.
Speaker 1: But then so there's big knives and then the dart
Speaker 1: points that would be used on the at lattle um.
Speaker 1: Some of them are are small because they've been resharpened
Speaker 1: multiple times, and some of them would say small, how
Speaker 1: about how long an inch and a half or an
Speaker 1: inch even? Yeah, you'd be surprised how some of these,
Speaker 1: when you're showing dark points or even arrowheads, how small
Speaker 1: they actually are. You know, yeah, there's some of the
Speaker 1: some of these arrowheads. If you have a dime, you
Speaker 1: can fit three of them without any overlap. And they're
Speaker 1: killing buffalo with him. A lot of people mistake it
Speaker 1: is quote bird points, but these are bison killers. You know,
Speaker 1: Like I said, you've put a few in and you
Speaker 1: have the luxury of tracking them. But so from knives
Speaker 1: to drills, two big choppers, um too, you know, to
Speaker 1: do some major bone breaking, because they would use that
Speaker 1: marrow um two um you know, real serrated edge just
Speaker 1: so they could cut bone with. Or I imagine they've
Speaker 1: cut a lot of stuff. And there's also what we
Speaker 1: found lots of jewelry what we call gorgetts, where they
Speaker 1: make them from slate and they have all kinds of
Speaker 1: awesome designs in them. Then the holes are in set.
Speaker 1: They'd wear them around their neck or um, you know,
Speaker 1: pieces of jewelry that were sewn into to close um,
Speaker 1: all all sorts of things that the little round balls
Speaker 1: game pieces were calm there and all the mounds around here.
Speaker 1: They're like marble, but they're made from limestone, perfectly round
Speaker 1: little balls just the size of a marble. That uh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you know we're used for game pieces.
Speaker 1: What does that tell you about how they live their lives?
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you how do you imagine they
Speaker 1: gathered in a place, what that they're what did these
Speaker 1: ancient hunters? What do they prioritize? What do they look
Speaker 1: for and gathering? And then you know you said there
Speaker 1: are small bands of people seven eight blessed and ten people.
Speaker 1: That's what they think. And I can imagine tons of
Speaker 1: of time for the men to tow to being hanging
Speaker 1: out in camp and or on the hill making these pieces,
Speaker 1: making their artifacts, making them. It took a lot of
Speaker 1: effort to make these shafts. On the at laddles Um.
Speaker 1: They'd kill a deer and they'd dry the meat and
Speaker 1: that would get them through for quite a while. You know.
Speaker 1: The ladies I'm sure would be out gathering firewood and
Speaker 1: and uh acorns and so lots of community time, but
Speaker 1: no probably no sense of time. And so they had
Speaker 1: a lot of time on their hands. And my I'm
Speaker 1: sure they did. And so if you could see, I
Speaker 1: used to think of these archaic folkses um, you know,
Speaker 1: just looking kind of drab and um. But some of
Speaker 1: the pieces that we found in these caves that have
Speaker 1: been per erved, the colors of their clothing, the jewelry
Speaker 1: they wore, I'm sure we'd be stunned at what we
Speaker 1: would say if we walked into the village of these guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty some pretty ornate stuff. You know, some of
Speaker 1: the jewelery you have here, You think, what, well, there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of even the knives and the cutlery and
Speaker 1: things that they is what we call it. It's they'd
Speaker 1: get they'd get limestone and they they die and pack
Speaker 1: it together and then um, you know they can be
Speaker 1: you know, yellows and reds and we find it all
Speaker 1: the time. And so they had a lot of color too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was interesting how you talked about, you know, how
Speaker 1: they eight and how they you know, gather around these
Speaker 1: places and what really have through finding their artifacts of
Speaker 1: artifacts from their way of life, how you can really
Speaker 1: map out how they lived, you know in the micro
Speaker 1: sense and the macro sense, the sense then yeah, you
Speaker 1: know how they traveled and how thematic they really were. Well,
Speaker 1: if he hadn't seen the when um, when shock, he's
Speaker 1: over there and with the mass I yeah, sitting around
Speaker 1: that campfire and and they're just talking about the ancient
Speaker 1: stories and they're hey, they're talking to each other and
Speaker 1: they're not texting each other or they're not you know,
Speaker 1: they don't have a TV tray sitting there staring at
Speaker 1: some senseless show. I mean, they're actually learning their culture.
Speaker 1: And I can see him just gathering around talking about
Speaker 1: laughing and talking about the day's hunt and when so
Speaker 1: and so was about to shoot the deer and tripped,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they were laughing and and uh,
Speaker 1: in a sense, uh, the biggest worry was eating. But
Speaker 1: it was plentiful around there, and you can always you
Speaker 1: can survive on grasshoppers, I mean, and they did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's funny. You said acorns. That was not something that
Speaker 1: I would have guessed. Yeah, lots of lots of acorn ash.
Speaker 1: I mean they find they've studied, of course, the archaeologists
Speaker 1: have studied the the hearth and it's just acorns, lots
Speaker 1: of grass seed. So they take the seeds and they
Speaker 1: they grind him. Another deal that we hadn't talked about,
Speaker 1: as they used grinding stones, these limestone grinding stones, and
Speaker 1: the grit that comes off of them and the teeth
Speaker 1: that we find in these Wow that you know, these uh,
Speaker 1: skeletal remains that archaeologists have come acrost. Their teeth are
Speaker 1: worn down to the bone and so lots of of abscess,
Speaker 1: lots of death by their teethings. It's funny. That's my
Speaker 1: that's my professional oral and maxil face of surgery. So
Speaker 1: it's it's intriguing to me. The culture that now that
Speaker 1: we're on teeth real quick, the culture, the castel culture
Speaker 1: out there that in West Texas they would to let
Speaker 1: you guia, they cook it and then chew the pulp
Speaker 1: out of it and spit those quids out. And that's
Speaker 1: what I was. Yeah, you're showing me that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of that here. But that had a lot
Speaker 1: of carbohydrate in it, and they skeletal remains, lots of decay,
Speaker 1: big evidence of big abscesses. Oh wow. And so I
Speaker 1: imagine it was a terrible what you're saying. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of you know, a lot of bowel problems, gut problems,
Speaker 1: a lot of teeth problems, just unhealthy living. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that we can't imagine. There's no way we I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any way that we can't imagine that.
Speaker 1: And in the previous podcast, I can't remember which conversation
Speaker 1: it was, I talked about wanting to find in the
Speaker 1: modern sense of the word, you and I both traveled
Speaker 1: to Nepal, and there's some similarities there, but in the
Speaker 1: modern sense of the world, someone that has to kill
Speaker 1: to live. You know, the Discovery Channel loves to put
Speaker 1: on there, you know, the killed your family lives in
Speaker 1: Alaska and lives off the land and they choose to
Speaker 1: live that way. Well, the rub theres they choose to
Speaker 1: live that way. If they wanted to get into plane,
Speaker 1: fly into town and have a Hamburger, they could. They
Speaker 1: just choose to live off the land, which is admirable,
Speaker 1: but they still have a choice. And I know there,
Speaker 1: I know in this world there are many indigital the
Speaker 1: Chimane people that Steve Ronella has traveled and been around
Speaker 1: in South America. Um, there's that are still living life
Speaker 1: with thinking about food as the necessity. They have to
Speaker 1: find that, they have to forge for it. They have
Speaker 1: to find it. They have to live off what's there.
Speaker 1: They have to They don't choose to. There's no there's
Speaker 1: no other way to do it. They have to harvest
Speaker 1: and kill everything that's to sustain their cultures. Saying their
Speaker 1: people stay in their own lives, and that mindset to
Speaker 1: me is one I would love to sit and explore
Speaker 1: as long as I could know It's that is something
Speaker 1: that's I can't imagine. Um. When I was in the
Speaker 1: Arctic hunting, uh muscos My one of my guys was
Speaker 1: born in an Igloo. So we're not far removed from
Speaker 1: some of the people to actually get to talk about
Speaker 1: how it how that really is, I mean, the gravity
Speaker 1: that they feel that they have to kill. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then again, what was it a huge deal to them?
Speaker 1: Or or would they be like, well, we're just not
Speaker 1: gonna eat meat for a month, but we're gonna be
Speaker 1: fine on acorns. Yeah? Yeah, how how that sets up?
Speaker 1: You know? I was you know, you can read about
Speaker 1: this and study about this. Um. I hope to do more,
Speaker 1: of course, but how Yeah, the spiritual nature of hunting,
Speaker 1: worshiping the animal, worshipping the ground, worshiping the place you lived,
Speaker 1: and how that man if itself is an interesting concept
Speaker 1: in and of that. Why was that happening? Was it
Speaker 1: happening because they felt that if they did that that
Speaker 1: the natural world would then present them the opportunity to
Speaker 1: eat meat. Or did did they do that because their
Speaker 1: world's revolved around that animal so much so that it
Speaker 1: became a deity or he spoke to them in such
Speaker 1: a way. So it's interesting to think about someone who's
Speaker 1: never known anything other than waking up and looking at
Speaker 1: the world around them and thinking about how they were
Speaker 1: going to sustain themselves. And we don't. We have no
Speaker 1: idea how that things are feelings. As much as you
Speaker 1: and I have traveled at the end of the world
Speaker 1: to try to at some to find that feeling, will
Speaker 1: never know what the guy that made that air point
Speaker 1: in your hand felt like when he killed an animal.
Speaker 1: Whether he felt pure joy because he knew that his
Speaker 1: people would be fed, or well, he felt some sort
Speaker 1: of sadness, or well, what connection he has the animal. Well,
Speaker 1: it's in your hunt in Nepal, you guys are telling
Speaker 1: about if you if you can kill an animal and
Speaker 1: not have any sense of remorse at all, then you
Speaker 1: might you want to sit it, sit in the trade
Speaker 1: a little bit longer and do a little bit of
Speaker 1: reflecting of some sort. But you know, and again, is
Speaker 1: it killing or harvesting? You know, we kill the animals
Speaker 1: and I have a great time doing that. I love
Speaker 1: to to kill. It is and it but it's the
Speaker 1: DNA that we share with these guys. And I respect
Speaker 1: the animals too. Sense that you can see how I
Speaker 1: respect these animals out here. What I've provided these animals
Speaker 1: on this ranch. And we kill one, we hardly kill
Speaker 1: one buck year and three does. And it's just an
Speaker 1: amazing place for these animals to live respect some level
Speaker 1: of just understanding this, this kind of tapestry of human
Speaker 1: life that we'll never know how they felt. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: it is impossible to understand how they felt. And you
Speaker 1: have a this is a buffalo hide on your wall
Speaker 1: behind you. That's a buffalo calf, a buffalo calf high
Speaker 1: that is it's just a tanned you know, poorly tanned
Speaker 1: hide or an ancient it's from pre reservation. You made it.
Speaker 1: Talk about it, please do, because I was I'm now
Speaker 1: I'm looking at him, like, let's talk about this thing.
Speaker 1: So this, this hide was found an upstate New York
Speaker 1: seven home built back in the seventeen hundreds that they
Speaker 1: were remodeling. And in the attic there's an old military
Speaker 1: home and in the attic bawled up in the corner
Speaker 1: they found this. They rolled it out and it's a
Speaker 1: war trophy from the Indian Wars right before a little
Speaker 1: Big Horn when they'd ran, you know, the government would
Speaker 1: come in and they'd uh essentially destroy these villages trying
Speaker 1: to wipe the Indians out. I mean, there's no other
Speaker 1: way you know about it. That's what they're doing. They
Speaker 1: take the loot. They take all this stuff that's cool
Speaker 1: to them. It's just as cool of those guys as
Speaker 1: just us. They send it back east and they would
Speaker 1: uh use you know, they call war trophies. So anyway,
Speaker 1: this and survived and it has about fifteen different scenes
Speaker 1: of it's one battle depicted here of the Sioux fighting
Speaker 1: the Pawnee, and the brilliant colors and the the artistry.
Speaker 1: It's these Indians riding in the horses, most of the
Speaker 1: Pawneer on foot, and the Sioux warriors with their brilliant
Speaker 1: head dresses. Some of them were had more feathers than others,
Speaker 1: and that depicted their social class there and in the tribe.
Speaker 1: But they're they're having a fallen battle, no guns, all
Speaker 1: own arrow and lances and uh, it's just a piece
Speaker 1: of art that is extremely rare. That uh by getting
Speaker 1: to know the people in the subculture world of artifacts
Speaker 1: that I was fortunate enough to come across and uh
Speaker 1: now it's displayed in the Indian room. Yeah, that's just amazing.
Speaker 1: I was looking at the deal. I guess you call
Speaker 1: an illustrations pictions of what those look like, and that's
Speaker 1: such a striking Yeah, it gives color to to there.
Speaker 1: It's hard to look back in time and see it
Speaker 1: in color. Um. It's like that country song Jamie Johnson sings.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's hard to see that in color. You
Speaker 1: go back that was a couple of hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: you go back eight six, eight thousand, you or you
Speaker 1: go back to the clubs culture. And it's not just buckskin,
Speaker 1: just one other. I mean, these guys had these brilliant
Speaker 1: shells from that they were trading from the West coast
Speaker 1: with inset uh stone, different types of turquoise and all
Speaker 1: inset um. Just some amazingly ornate um dresses and with
Speaker 1: elk teeth, with a hundred sets of bugle and teeth
Speaker 1: on one elk skirt the ladies wore. Well, well, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple of see how I pull them up
Speaker 1: here the first time I've ever kind of asked for
Speaker 1: some questions from past listeners about the topic. There's a
Speaker 1: few good ones here. We'll go. We'll just do two
Speaker 1: of them. Chase Rutherford, it asked, h Well, you already
Speaker 1: kind of covered this, but to be interesting to get
Speaker 1: back over, do you have any Clovis points and what
Speaker 1: were they used for? Specifically? Do you you know, let's
Speaker 1: talk about it. You said you not found clothes here,
Speaker 1: and I hadn't found clothes here, but but I believe
Speaker 1: they're to be. Absolutely there's I've have some of my
Speaker 1: uh digging buddies um have found Clovis and uh the
Speaker 1: last one buddy have found one in Johnson City, which
Speaker 1: from the back road here is about fifteen minutes. So
Speaker 1: absolutely there's Clovis sites. But the Clovis sites are so
Speaker 1: much harder to find because they didn't they didn't cook
Speaker 1: in this midden style camp um, and then they were
Speaker 1: just so nomadic. They may have been there for three
Speaker 1: nights and maybe left two piece to Clovis points are
Speaker 1: none and so a lot of the Clovis pickups are
Speaker 1: missed shots or they shoot at something they can't find
Speaker 1: their their shaft and then we find them. It may
Speaker 1: not necessary, that's just a random fine. And so the
Speaker 1: closes there they hunted, uh mammoth um. That's what the
Speaker 1: clothes you know, Clovis in New Mexico where they found
Speaker 1: that carcass. That mammoth carcass were five closed points in
Speaker 1: it um. But I'm sure they're their clubs cultures hunting
Speaker 1: armadals with them and deer and and whatever else that
Speaker 1: they can throw at. Yeah, what's the importance of that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've I've heard and read a little about
Speaker 1: the clubs culture. It seems like a of those that
Speaker 1: know a little bit about Asian hunters an important culture
Speaker 1: to know. Could you like place that of the sense
Speaker 1: of time? There there thought to be the first peoples
Speaker 1: of North America to inhabit North America and that's why
Speaker 1: they're so, that's why they're so important. And and um,
Speaker 1: so they date back to twelve five twelve thousand five
Speaker 1: years ago and they went extinct about ten thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: They went extinct with the bison. And take us here
Speaker 1: and um which is a skull on pointing out of um,
Speaker 1: Buddy Mine has a big bison jump on his ranch
Speaker 1: in Wyoming. Yeah, Frank Neville. Ridiculous, ridiculous artifacts there. But yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's so that's what they're hunting. They're hunting whatever they
Speaker 1: can eat. They're shooting them at turkeys, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: just surviving, I mean big time surviving. And uh, that's good.
Speaker 1: Look up the clothes culture. If you don't know much
Speaker 1: about it, there's a lot of interesting books and things
Speaker 1: out there, all to try to throw some links to
Speaker 1: some of my flute in the club in the point
Speaker 1: is what's yeah that specific about about that? It has
Speaker 1: a big flute that runs up the middle of it
Speaker 1: where they would have to where the the stick would go.
Speaker 1: It's like a almost like an indentation. Yeah, they're being
Speaker 1: a big channel of flint out of the middle of it,
Speaker 1: you know, and then make it thinner so they could
Speaker 1: put it down the shaft easier and then they could
Speaker 1: use their sin you to tie it on in the
Speaker 1: asphaltum or the book. Here we're looking at the paleo
Speaker 1: the paleo period of the Clovis ten thousand BC two
Speaker 1: nine thousand BC. Some of these points that are channeled
Speaker 1: out in the center interesting looking. But that's why he's
Speaker 1: asking about. That's the fine. I mean, you find the Clovis,
Speaker 1: whether it's broken or just the base or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you're that's been on this continent. Yeah, that's the oldest,
Speaker 1: oldest people that were. I think we're all collectively rooting
Speaker 1: for you to get the ball close. We just got
Speaker 1: a big deeper Uh well, we got tools to do it, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: Chris I don't know how to say your last name. Sorry,
Speaker 1: Chris Gleam g l e I g l E I am.
Speaker 1: So I'm really interested in the skills of our ancient
Speaker 1: hunting ancestors that they acquired and how those are passed
Speaker 1: on us today and how the use or misuse of
Speaker 1: them effects are everyday lives, specifically the skills. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I can just picture these guys and a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: um who has this amazing collection of cave stuff, has
Speaker 1: a whole collection of little kids toys and doll bow
Speaker 1: and arrows made for little dolls that are like this
Speaker 1: that are about three inches tied perfectly with all the
Speaker 1: to scale everything. And so while our kids are playing,
Speaker 1: you know, playing video games or jumping rope or whatever
Speaker 1: they're they're playing shooting games with their at lattles to learn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there, you know, I'm sure I can We're picture
Speaker 1: in them sitting up over a great water source or
Speaker 1: or a big of the few trees, the oak tree
Speaker 1: that's dropping the acorns and the deer they're they're up
Speaker 1: in the top and there waiting on that deer to
Speaker 1: come in. And the um, you know, they're a lot
Speaker 1: more silent and they had to be. Their stocking abilities
Speaker 1: and their tracking abilities were if you've if you've been
Speaker 1: to Africa and seeing the trackers there, it's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: What they can look out across a hundred yards and
Speaker 1: see one blade of grass it's been over and know
Speaker 1: what direction where and see these are things that they read,
Speaker 1: like the oxidation in the stand how many hours? And
Speaker 1: so these are things that we um with our awesome
Speaker 1: bows don't need to learn, and so we don't. Most
Speaker 1: of us don't learn that. Even the most skilled hunters
Speaker 1: um bow hunters and the guys that are doing long
Speaker 1: bows and all that are amazing, But but we're missing
Speaker 1: such a big piece of the Yeah, I think about
Speaker 1: even your passion, like if your passion was a river.
Speaker 1: The bigger this river gets, the more tributaries it has,
Speaker 1: you know, so as you find more heads and get
Speaker 1: more passion and dig deeper, you you have to almost
Speaker 1: by proxy, learn about the natural world. Here, the trees,
Speaker 1: the rock, what type of rocks are in the ground,
Speaker 1: what type of soil um what to look for you
Speaker 1: know in that soil. So you, like you said, become
Speaker 1: an amateur archaeologist just by your own the passion where
Speaker 1: it leads you. As that you know, the river of
Speaker 1: your passion gets bigger, it's gonna branch off into other
Speaker 1: knowledge bases you might not have if you didn't love
Speaker 1: hiding arrowheads, right, I totally agree. And and you know,
Speaker 1: and back to his point on on the skills and
Speaker 1: all it's it takes it just a few moved ten
Speaker 1: percent of of the knowledge that if the hunter has
Speaker 1: to kill a big elk, you just you if you
Speaker 1: were willing to get off the couch and go find
Speaker 1: one and look at shoot through your scope and he's dead,
Speaker 1: but you missed where was that elk last night? And
Speaker 1: what path was he on? And what was he eating?
Speaker 1: And where do I need to set up? And where
Speaker 1: do I need to set my next camp for my
Speaker 1: family to live three more months? Knowing the the way
Speaker 1: that the elk travel this certain time of year, and
Speaker 1: there's so much stuff that we're missing that that we
Speaker 1: don't need but but would be awesome to know. And
Speaker 1: that's an awesome question. It's just that really that question
Speaker 1: right there is you could sit around here and have
Speaker 1: a have a drink and talk for hours about Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many When I was an editor
Speaker 1: of Petersons Hunting Magazine or one of the editors. Um,
Speaker 1: we always every year did like an old school issue
Speaker 1: where we would celebrate some sort of old school things.
Speaker 1: But our old school was like, oh the eighties, in
Speaker 1: the seventies, what did they do? We never thought too
Speaker 1: or I haven't seen anybody think too. Really look hard
Speaker 1: at how these ancient hunters lived their lives, and why
Speaker 1: they lived the way they did, and how they you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking thousands of thousands of years here where you've
Speaker 1: got from the Clovis people to the Falsome people. Such
Speaker 1: an evolution in the human body, the human brain, the
Speaker 1: human the human ability that we can't conceive of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so just now a thousand years later, we're looking at
Speaker 1: in the Paleo period Falsome points, which are much more
Speaker 1: diminut if still still ornate almost in the way that
Speaker 1: they were incredible they were made. So even the older
Speaker 1: the you know, you've there're so old times around here
Speaker 1: that you find a crude air and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's old, that's all. No. Really old stuff is the
Speaker 1: stuff that is truly a work of art and and
Speaker 1: and it seems like you're looking at the fulsome people
Speaker 1: here in nine thousand BC, or even back over to
Speaker 1: the Clovis people then they're the first few people in
Speaker 1: seven thousand. These are if somebody handed that to you today,
Speaker 1: you would say you would want to put it in
Speaker 1: a case. Know what it was? That's such a beautiful
Speaker 1: piece of stone. I did find a plane view which
Speaker 1: is eight thousand BC, when I was hunting up an
Speaker 1: lope with with Phil out in the Mexican But yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's in it. I left it on the ranch.
Speaker 1: You know. It's beautiful. It's beautiful pieces. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't as rudimentary as it is. It just
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem that way to look at that. These photos,
Speaker 1: the beautiful photos in this book. You can't hardly machine these, no,
Speaker 1: no any better. I mean, it's just amazing. And so
Speaker 1: the credit that that I give these ancient people now
Speaker 1: as to where you know, seeing them in black and white.
Speaker 1: Back when I was growing up, these people were amazing
Speaker 1: people and I'd love to hang out with them. I
Speaker 1: love them, I do. I mean, I love their culture.
Speaker 1: I just that that's what's the driving force in all this. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and it's I've come to depreciate perspectives of all kinds,
Speaker 1: and the reason why we record these conversations to try
Speaker 1: to let have introduce your perspective to other people, right,
Speaker 1: and then maybe it's something you've said during this conversation
Speaker 1: can help change the way that they think about our
Speaker 1: history as hunters or why hunting might be important to them,
Speaker 1: and they're not even really sure about how to break
Speaker 1: that down their own minds, Like your love for these
Speaker 1: ancient people, UM goes way beyond just possessing the things
Speaker 1: that they made one time. You know what's what's crazy
Speaker 1: about it is the schools don't don't even teach this
Speaker 1: thing at all. They're like, yeah, some of the more
Speaker 1: interesting being in discussion now. When we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: I'm getting ready to leave Texas probably for good and
Speaker 1: move to Montana set up home up there. And then
Speaker 1: part of thinking about my leaving here because my son
Speaker 1: was born here, you know, so it's an important place
Speaker 1: for me, and uh, part of my leaving here was
Speaker 1: trying to have trying to figure out how to have
Speaker 1: conversation with people like yourself that born race, grew up
Speaker 1: and have this intense appreciation for the natural world here. UM,
Speaker 1: because as as different as Montan and Texas are, they
Speaker 1: both have their own stories. If you live in a place,
Speaker 1: uh and don't know the story of the history of
Speaker 1: the place that you live, start reading because that's I
Speaker 1: mean having like connection, family connection you have to this ground.
Speaker 1: But then also the connection to the ancient humans. That's
Speaker 1: pretty unique. Yeah, it's interesome and something that you can't
Speaker 1: nobody can duplicate that. You know, you can't duplicate that
Speaker 1: by going to the Smithsonian and looking around the connection
Speaker 1: you have to these heads in this place. Yeah, it's great,
Speaker 1: it's great. Well, we love it, man, we love it.
Speaker 1: And it's comes across. Your kids are awesome. So your daughter,
Speaker 1: your oldest daughter, is going with you to the Brooks Range?
Speaker 1: Are you telling me going to the northern part of
Speaker 1: the Brooks Trains just recently apart that just recently opened
Speaker 1: um to hunting. Our guide has that big new concession
Speaker 1: up there and lots of sheep. She'll be ten next
Speaker 1: uh August. And my dad took me, took my brother
Speaker 1: and me when we were when I was ten and
Speaker 1: here he was twelve, to the Brooks Rains and we
Speaker 1: broaly got caribou and doll sheep and it's uh so
Speaker 1: my daughters. She's like, all right, well when I'm ten,
Speaker 1: we're going on And I was like, you bet you
Speaker 1: your daughters ago. Yeah, he's raised them to be brave,
Speaker 1: brave young ladies. Um, and that's awesome. Going as I
Speaker 1: started hunt when I was eleven. I think maybe I
Speaker 1: was just shooting spikes on the in Maryland. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've traveled the world. Yeah, made it to Nepal. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many of us the Paul hunters
Speaker 1: there there are. I guess the Paul well they only
Speaker 1: have what twenty tags a year and it was closed
Speaker 1: for how a decade? Not longer? With their silver war
Speaker 1: you got. Really that Nepaul deal is pretty special. I
Speaker 1: mean you have to really want to challenge yourself and
Speaker 1: to to get out and yeah, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: you went last year, well not last year, just got back,
Speaker 1: just got back from April April, um, a year after
Speaker 1: I went. Well, if you not heard the podcast that
Speaker 1: it David Cole Cramer on the subject, you should listen
Speaker 1: to it. Um. So I won't tell retail my story anymore.
Speaker 1: But how do you find going to Nepal? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like I said that there's a rare group until
Speaker 1: now that have gone on that can tell stories. But
Speaker 1: I'm sure more people will go in there. So it
Speaker 1: was amazing to get to be in the Himalayas, to
Speaker 1: be it eighteen thousand feet. So we when we went,
Speaker 1: we thought that the snowpack was gonna be heavy and
Speaker 1: we'd be hunting sheep at twelve to fourteen thousand. And
Speaker 1: we show up and and I could tell the guide
Speaker 1: was dodging the question off that when we got off
Speaker 1: the airplane, and finally he's like, look, guys, no snow,
Speaker 1: not much snow this year. You're gonna be hunting at
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand feet every day. And uh, the worst part
Speaker 1: about it was cat mean do flu Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: it to ben at it pretty bad. Yeah, at least
Speaker 1: we can we can sit and have a whisky talk
Speaker 1: about catman do flu man? This means like that, but
Speaker 1: that we were talking about that that place. Um, I'll
Speaker 1: stop inter up in your story. But the place, it's
Speaker 1: just a a and the Western sense of the feeling
Speaker 1: an assault on all on your body, the air quality,
Speaker 1: the food quality, just everything is assaulted. Then when you
Speaker 1: get the eighteen towns of feet, your entire you know,
Speaker 1: your circadian rhythms that are being assaulted by the way
Speaker 1: you wait you sleep. Well, we were, you know, we
Speaker 1: get up to sixteen thousand and the guys are like, here,
Speaker 1: some sheep just's and I'm like, well, where's the rock.
Speaker 1: I gotta you know, diarrhea bad and so man, it was.
Speaker 1: It was three days eating rice and uh, thank god,
Speaker 1: I brought some heater meals. I've read an article and
Speaker 1: said bring something I brought so we could have some
Speaker 1: spaghetti or something or whatever, just enough to survive. But
Speaker 1: we were going along there. At one point my hunting
Speaker 1: buddy looked at him and he looked like hell, And
Speaker 1: I said, Kurt, you all right man? He goes l
Speaker 1: So I'm just trying to survive, and and I could
Speaker 1: see that he was not joking, and He's like, we
Speaker 1: made it to that day. And then in camp that
Speaker 1: night he goes, I swear to god, I thought we
Speaker 1: were I have to call in dang helicopter or something
Speaker 1: to save me. It's good to hear that a huge sheep,
Speaker 1: I know, it like the biggest sheep I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Although you know, we went there, we didn't see that
Speaker 1: many because we were struggling to get close to him.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's that's a probably a whole another podcast
Speaker 1: about a journey like that, but it's it's cool to
Speaker 1: see somebody like yourself that is able to do this
Speaker 1: at home and still travel and do those things that
Speaker 1: bring your kids along. I mean, well in the you know,
Speaker 1: I was bringing their head with me when I go
Speaker 1: um that when I was at the Hickoria. Yeah that
Speaker 1: the grind inch down there, you know that. The cool
Speaker 1: deal about that was talking to and a true apache
Speaker 1: my good buddy now Bernard I nz uh Man, just
Speaker 1: getting to hear that side of things. But anyway we
Speaker 1: can go, you know, all kinds of different deals. But
Speaker 1: talking to to our guide in Nepal around camp about
Speaker 1: his culture and what artifacts are they finding in on
Speaker 1: I brought home a sixty year fifty year old knife
Speaker 1: that was used in their camp. That's just archaic and
Speaker 1: just total badass. Chopped up Shocky Sheep chopped up a
Speaker 1: fifty year old knife that chocked the Jim Shocky's Yeah,
Speaker 1: Blue Sheep, I got it. I asked him for it,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know you you're gonna respect it
Speaker 1: and and your passion for it, dude, to take it
Speaker 1: home and display it and tell people about Nepal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's it too. I mean people, we get caught
Speaker 1: up in this idea that you know, going over to
Speaker 1: Nepal might be some truffy hunt where you're just looking
Speaker 1: to bring back the handlers or the anilers to the
Speaker 1: horns in this case, and tell everybody how great you
Speaker 1: are if by doing it. But it means so much
Speaker 1: more as a person to venture over there and do that,
Speaker 1: and to know in the going that the animal will
Speaker 1: be consumed and it's totality. Um, that's a huge part
Speaker 1: of it, of course, but but to see the artifacts
Speaker 1: you brought back, and we were comparing stories about what
Speaker 1: I'm up brought back, what you brought back, and the
Speaker 1: respect we have for those people and the culture and
Speaker 1: the and the chance to go and do that. I
Speaker 1: mean there, you know, any pushback someone might give you,
Speaker 1: especially the way that you've displayed your hunting life and
Speaker 1: artifact life here in this room, it is preposterous. Um.
Speaker 1: Not that they're there's anybody that ever has challenged my
Speaker 1: going to Nepal or yours, but just to say, like
Speaker 1: for proof, positive of respect for culture, respect for animals,
Speaker 1: respect people. Um, it's here, man, it's it's it's in
Speaker 1: the walls. Yeah it is. It's cool. We love it.
Speaker 1: We do. Well. That's a that's a good, good hour
Speaker 1: and a half. It's good to end on the fact
Speaker 1: that you take these arrowheads to the places you go
Speaker 1: and give them to the people that you meet. I
Speaker 1: think that's a damn good way to bring Texas to Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be fun for me because you gave me a
Speaker 1: nice display of arrowheads from from your ranch here, So
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take those Montana display the office. Real cool,
Speaker 1: real cool. Well, thank you, Russell. All right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's all episode number in the books. Russell Cunningham,
Speaker 1: thank you for letting us into your home and letting
Speaker 1: us into your life to hear about you in your
Speaker 1: family and what you do. Russell did ask me after
Speaker 1: the fact to explain to everybody that, uh, in Texas,
Speaker 1: on your own private property you can dig and keep
Speaker 1: is artifacts that we spoke up in the podcast. So
Speaker 1: a lot of other states that is not the case, um,
Speaker 1: but here in Texas that is. So I just want
Speaker 1: to make Scheck make that clear that Russell is respectful
Speaker 1: of the land and of the history of the place
Speaker 1: and understands what he's doing here in Texas finding artifacts,
Speaker 1: and so hopefully you learned a little bit about the
Speaker 1: history of this place and some of the hunting cultures
Speaker 1: that called this place home. So that's it for number.
Speaker 1: Number is coming up next twenty is going to be
Speaker 1: with a with a fairly special man. That man is
Speaker 1: Eddie Reese. Coach. Eddie Reese. Eddie Reese is the winning
Speaker 1: ist n C double A coach of all time. He
Speaker 1: is the head swimming coach for the last oh Man
Speaker 1: since nine at least that's why I remember years. That
Speaker 1: is the head swimming coach of the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: And he's a hunter. Eddie is used hunting in his
Speaker 1: past to help train Olympic athletes who gold medals. And
Speaker 1: there's somebody who values his time outside. So he's another
Speaker 1: extraordinary man, seventy seven years old. We're gonna hear from
Speaker 1: him next time. I'm hunting Collective. Until then, go to
Speaker 1: the website, hit us up and tell us how we did,
Speaker 1: and keep listening, keep enjoying the conversation, keep praising, keep
Speaker 1: telling us how we get back see you M in
Speaker 1: a m