Of course you know that Native Americans made arrowheads by knapping them from flint cores. So did the Paleo-Indians – the so-called Folsom and Clovis people hunted long-extinct animals with them. Recent discoveries keep pushing those people farther and farther back in history, way beyond the 12,000 years I learned in college.
And the arrowheads? Some flint cores came from the Alibates Flint Quarry, a National Monument north of Amarillo, Texas in the Lake Meredith area. Quarry sites a few feet wide are scattered along a hillside, along with flint fragments. Flint found on the surface fractured easily and wasn’t suitable for knapping. Sub-surface flint was better. Alibates flint cores were traded among the Paleo-Indian cultures. Some reached here, to the southeastern US.
Years later (around 1200 AD) the Antelope Creek Culture developed around the quarries. Thought to be migrants from eastern woodland tribes, Antelope Creek people build homes and quarried the flint using bison bones. The Indians disappeared about 1400 AD, maybe the victims of a prolonged drought.
The name Alibates? It's not a Spanish term, as you might think. No, "Alibates" is a contraction of "Ally Bates," the name of the old pioneer who attempted to ranch along the nearby Canadian river. Who knew?
I visited the Alibates site one summer a few decades back. There’s not much to see, just some filled-in holes on a hillside. It’s a bleak area, flat dry plains with some cactus hanging on. And it was Hot! Alibates National Monument is administered by the National Park Service. A single-wide house trailer just sitting there, all alone on the prairie, with an air conditioner chugging away in a losing battle.
I recognized the Park Ranger, a nice young man I’d met earlier at the Everglades National Park. I asked him, “Wesley, how come they transferred you from The Everglades to this place?”
“I wish I knew,” he sighed.
Dac Crossley
July 13, 2018.
“Stick a shovel into the ground almost anywhere and some horrible thing or other will come to light.” – Margaret Atwood.