January 24, 2018
This is “Our Past Is Present” from the Geary County Historical Society.
In an
article published in the “Junction City Union” newspaper in 1934, the author
stated that a man by the name of Charles Shirley had evidence that a group of
people roamed this area perhaps as much as 20,000 years ago. Mr. Shirley told the reporter that the group
of people lived during the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age – an age of men so
ancient that geologic eras rather than years are used to measure its
duration. In 1924, Mr. Shirley began his
hobby collecting arrowheads and other relics. His collections of hundreds of
pieces were on the walls of his barber shop east of the courthouse. Listed in his collection was a shark’s tooth
found in a sand rock near the Smoky Hill River at Kansas Falls. Its origin, whether brought here by some
migratory people or left by the evaporation of a great salt sea, can only be
guessed. Although the collection
includes relics of the Paleolithic period, it consists mainly of Indian
arrowheads, implements, awls, scrapers, beads, knives and wampum.” Mr. Shirley
went on to state that “these (pointing to a row of shankless arrowheads) were
used on poison arrows. They were dipped
in the decayed livers of buffalo or deer, which had first been saturated with
rattlesnake venom.”
Mr. Shirley
found most of the pieces along the Smoky Hill River, along the McDowell Creek
and other nearby creeks. “Here is some
wampum” said Charles Shirley as he showed two pieces of hollow, carved
bone. “It was used by the Indians for
money.”
That’s the
story written by Eugene Kuhn in the “Junction City Union” newspaper in
1934. Sometimes it is fun to imagine our
area as once being under water with large fish swimming and then imagine early
pioneers and settlers crossing our flint hills on foot, on horseback or in
wagons. How things have changed?
Thanks for reading “Our Past Is Present”. Join us tomorrow for another story
about Geary County History.
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