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Beads and Bones
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE GATHERED BY LARRY RHODES.
ORBIT MAGAZINE, APRIL 23, 1972.
Beads and Bones
They tell the story of an Oklahoma businessman back in the 1300s.
By Ken Anderson.
Oil.
Cattle.
Computer parts, jewelry, potteryware, paper, ditchdigging machines.
Oklahoma.
Oklahoma, modern, bustling center of trade and commerce.
Modern?
Oklahoma was an important crossroads of a far-flung trading empire centuries ago, long before the white man, long before the tribes that came from the east.
Recent evidence uncovered near the Major County town of Fairview reveals that long before Columbus set sail to the New World, Oklahoma was a crossing point of a commercial network that spanned the continent.
Shells from the Gulf of Mexico, turquoise from New Mexico, copper from the Great Lakes, bear claws and obsidian from the Rockies all met and crossed in a fantastic system of trading that reached from the Gulf of California into what are now the eastern states.
Son Lets Out a Yell.
The most recent link came to light last autumn when Albert Martens, a Fairview resident, donated some sand from a dune on his property for use in road construction. On the day the heavy machinery began removing the sand, his son crossed the dune on his way to go hunting.
As the blade bit into the crest of the sand, a rounded object rolled out of the gash; the son let out a yell that stopped the machinery. He and the operator looked down at the skull of what was later to be described as a “wealthy and important gentleman.”
It was feared the remains were those of a recent crime victim so the sheriff was called. He recognized the antiquity of the find and summoned John Sellars, a science teacher from the local high school, who in turn called for assistance from Oklahoma State University.
Detectives State Work.
With the skull had been some shell and turquoise beads. The news of these finds brought Professors Donald N. Brown and James Howard to the site and off on a detective hunt that was to lead to Kansas, Harvard University, and finally back to the Federal Aviation Administration laboratories at Oklahoma City.
Brown first found what anthropologists and archeologists fear most—a large group of local residents and children happily digging away.
Vital bits of information can be easily scattered and lost forever when well-meaning but unskilled hands begin delving in historical sites. Carbon-dating, the technique used by scientists in recent years to determine the exact age of prehistoric objects, is not possible if the objects have become contaminated by coming in contact with more modern substances. In fact, the “reading” can be thrown off if the object in question has been touched.
Brown and Howard laid out a grid work so they could determine exactly what was found where. Then they began to dig, sifting each shovelful through a wire mesh. They soon uncovered the rest of the skeleton.
Experts Study Remains.
“They had assumed,” Brown says, “that he had been buried in a conventional fashion—laid straight out, and had dug down directly behind the skull. But this man had been buried in a fetal position—curled up on his left side—so the hole the children had dug had gone down past his shoulder and missed the rest of the body.”
There may have been psychological reasons for the flexed position, but Brown says it is just as likely that burial was made in this fashion because it required digging a smaller hole. The body and the cultural artifacts, the shells and beads, were taken to OSU and the detective work began.
Brown, an anthropologist who has spent most of his career working with the Indians of the Southwest, examined the skeleton with Howard. Then they called on Dr. Clyde Snow, a physical anthropologist with the FAA to help verify their findings.
Using a formula developed for Mongoloid peoples, they measured the arm bones and learned their trader was right-handed, 5 feet 6 inches tall, and was an adult male. He had suffered no broken bones. Up until the time of his death, he had been in good health. His teeth were sound, but worn, indicating his diet consisted of ground corn. The back of his cranium was flattened, suggesting he had been raised on a cradle board. His features were not typical of the Indians of Oklahoma, but indicated he belonged to one of the Puebloid tribes.
Finest and Smallest.
They learned almost everything about him but his name.
His wealth and importance were attested to by the large number of shells and turquoise beads buried with him—items of value in his day.
“How they made those beads without breaking them, I don’t know,” Brown says. “They are some of the finest and smallest I have ever seen.” The closest source of turquoise is in the foothills of New Mexico, 500 miles away.
Howard called in paleontologist John Naff, who identified the shells as having a salt water origin. His identification was borne out by Dr. A. Byron Leonard of Kansas University, who passed some of them along to Dr. Ruth Tucker of Harvard University. She pinpointed them as Olivela shells, species Dama woods, a shell very common in the Gulf of Mexico, which led the researchers to believe they were a trade item headed north.
Other finds in recent years have been similar to the one at Fairview and have helped the researchers piece together the trading pattern. At a site in Woodward County, Puebloid bones similar to the Fairview trader were found together with a large turquoise pendant and several beads. Similar shells and beads also turned up at the Spiro or Mississippian site near Fort Smith. However, the Fairview site is the most important uncovered so far. At Woodward several burial places revealed a total of only seven beads, while more than 300 were recovered with the Fairview trader.
Religious System Falter.
Carbon dating of the remains and artifacts has not been completed, but Brown says he estimates the burial took place between 1300 A. D. and 1400 A. D. The trading empire flourished between 800 and 1000 A. D., but began to decline after the arrival of the Europeans. This breakdown, researchers feel, coincides with a possible breakdown in the Indian’s religious systems.
Perhaps the first record of such a trading network was that made by the Spanish explorer, Cabeza de Vaca in his “Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America,” written in 1542.
