Nebraskaland

64 Nebraskaland • November 2019 MIXED BAG STORIES OF STONE Long ago on the hill behind our home here on the Middle Loup River, I found a "mano" – a perfectly round, abraded, clearly well-used stone for grinding and pounding. It is about the size of a slightly small hamburger bun, a perfect fit for my hand. It's granite, a stone never found around here, except in the form of artifacts like this, identified for me by an archeologist as "pre-Pawnee," a tool from a Plains tribe here before the Pawnee as such. When I handle ancient tools like these I wonder who used them and how they lost them. I imagine that there was some concern when valuable tools and weapons like these were lost, but such losses must have been inevitable. An arrow or spear point carried off by a wounded animal, perhaps, or like blades and scrapers, lost in the messy process of butchering. Tools were lost when lodges caught fire or were perhaps destroyed in storms, floods or enemy raids. Sometimes, I'm sure, items were simply dropped and lost. Items like large mauls or even small grindstones like the one now on our fireplace mantle might have been left at work sites for later use, perhaps at a campsite that was only visited periodically, because it couldn't have been easy hauling around stones and rocks when the only transporting carriers were dogs and humans. While I do wonder who the people were who made, used and somehow lost stone artifacts, the question that really fires my wonder is how the materials came to be where they are not often found as a result of natural occurrences. Especially here where I live, on the Central Plains. How did the granite that was eventually worked into a mano come to be here, far from natural sources of granite? Well, my guess is that the stone might well have come from the outwash or moraines dumped here by Pleistocene glaciers. The great ice sheets did dump piles of rock here, some that originated in far northern Canada, including granite like that in the grindstone, but also fragments of pipestone and flint too. The same minerals and rocks show up in washouts in rivers like the North Loup, also the product of the Ice Age glaciers. But rarely in quantities, qualities, sizes, or predictable locations to make the manufacture of tools, weapons, or ritual items like pipes in the number we still find. So what happened when the best flint knapper in a Pawnee village needed basic materials to make points, blades, awls or scrapers? When an old man of the Omahas made it known that he sure would like to have a good piece of pipestone so he could replace the pipe the band needed for spring ceremonies but that was lost or broken two winters ago? Someone had to go get flint or pipestone. This would be an opportunity for a few young men, perhaps more like boys, to prove themselves, to serve their people and to find adventure. They would need at least one person of experience who knew where such materials could be found ... pipestone at the quarries in what is now Minnesota, flint to the southeast in Kansas or far more distant, and far more dangerous mines to the northwest in what is now Wyoming. The venture would require great courage and strength; the small company would pass through territory other tribes might be guarding zealously, where other young men were eager to make their own names by driving out trespassers. The travelers would have to be resourceful: while they would be sent on their way perhaps with a new pair of moccasins packed with dried meat, tallow and berries tied on a thong around their waists, they would have to find and secure their own for many weeks. Then they would labor at the quarries to find and break loose the best possible materials – laborious and dangerous work. And then, perhaps the most harrowing part of the expedition, the return home, now laden with pounds of stone "blanks," rocks weighing perhaps several pounds, carried hundreds of miles while again moving as quickly as possible through severe and perhaps hostile geography. Think about that a moment: four or five people living off the land, far from home, now laden with dead-weight burdens, on foot, and standing on the banks of one of North America's largest rivers, the one we now call "Missouri." They must now cross that immense river, probably in a clumsy "bullboat," a bowl-like craft quickly crafted from a buffalo hide and willow withes – with rocks. The contingent was surely welcomed home with great celebration. They had accomplished the nearly impossible. The community supply of vital materials was replenished. And oh, there would be many stories told around the lodge fires for moons to come. And that's what I think about when I handle ancient stone tools, weapons or pipes. What stories those things could tell around lodge fires! Lacking that, I hold them in my hands and imagine the stories on my own. Roger Welsch is a folklorist, humorist and author who lives in Dannebrog. By Roger Welsch "MANDAN VILLAGE" KARL BODMER (1809-1893) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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