Call It Glendo or Pelican Lake, It Doesn't Matter a Hill of Beans

By John Bradford Branney

Figure 1 – One of the finest Glendo, a.k.a. Pelican Lake spear points ever found in Wyoming. It is 4.2 inches long and made from Big Horn Chert. The author did not find this point, but he is more than happy to curate it for the rest of his life. This point was surface recovered on a private ranch in the early 1950s in Johnson County, Wyoming along the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. 

John Bradford Branney Collection.

I took an interest in prehistoric artifacts at a very young age sometime around five years old. I remember that moment of inspiration vividly because of the memory of our home in Casper, Wyoming where we lived in the early 1960s. Based on the timing, I was just about ready to start kindergarten at the local Catholic school. For the first time, my mother showed me my grandfather’s prehistoric artifact collection in the unfinished basement of that home. I remember a feeling of joy and wonder as my mother unwrapped each spear point, arrow point, and knife form from its cotton shroud. At the age of five, I already had a hankering for cowboys and Indians as most boys did, so the artifacts were right up my alley. 

Of course, I did not know what any of them were at the time, but it was still the most interesting thing I had run across in my five years on the planet. I had never met my grandfather, but my mother told me he found most of the artifacts around our homestead north of Moneta, Wyoming in the 1930s. She said that when she was a girl, her family would head out to the homestead on weekends and one of the things my grandfather did was hunt artifacts with my mom’s brothers. There was little else to do at a ranch without electricity or running water. Back in those days, that area of Wyoming was prime artifact hunting, as was most of Wyoming. 

It wasn’t too much longer after seeing the artifacts for the first time that I convinced my older sister (she was pushing eleven years old) to show me the artifacts again. Unbeknownst to our parents, we went to the basement and she maneuvered a chair under the shelf. The shoebox with the artifacts was on the very top shelf (to keep us, kids, out of them). I remember my sister standing on that chair, reaching for the shoebox. She held that heavy shoebox out in front of her, but she hadn’t thought through how she was going to get off the chair. The chair wobbled and she let go of the shoebox. The shoebox plummeted like the safe in a Roadrunner cartoon. Down it fell from about six feet off the ground and smashed into the concrete floor, breaking many of the priceless artifacts. My sister received most of my parents' wrath. I got off easy since I was a tiny tyke.   

Our family moved to eastern Wyoming when I was in the second grade. I found my first prehistoric

Figure 2 - 1.35-inch-long arrow or dart point found near 

third base in my youth. As far as a projectile 

point type, this one is a strange duck.

 arrow point when I was around nine years old. I was playing third base for my little league team and I happened to look down at the ground and there was an arrow point made from a caramel-colored jasper (figure 2). Nine years old and my parents had already drilled into me ‘what is right’ and ‘what is wrong’. An angel on one shoulder told me I had to ask my fellow players if they had lost an arrowhead while the devil on my other shoulder told me to “stuff the arrowhead into my pocket and don't say a word.” The angel won that battle. I held my breath and asked (slightly above a mumble) if anyone had lost an arrowhead and my teammates were honest and said no. Fantastic! To this day, I am still not sure what projectile point type that artifact is. After finding that first artifact in such a peculiar place, it became 'Katy bar the door' as far as hunting artifacts. Everywhere I went, my eyes were glued to the ground. Over the years, I have found some artifacts in some pretty strange places. Artifact hunting became a family hobby since there was not a lot to do in the outback of Wyoming.

Growing up, I owned three books on artifacts, all gifts from my mother. Back then, there were no Amazon or Barnes and Noble or internet or anywhere else to find out what kind of books existed on

Figure 3 - My childhood artifact library. 

the planet, especially living in the outback of Wyoming. In my neck of the woods, anyone who owned three books on any one subject was most likely a ‘local expert'. The first book my mother bought me was Virgil Russell’s book Indian Artifacts. My mom and dad grew up in Casper and Virgil taught school there. Virgil was well known around small-town Casper as “that guy who was crazy about arrowheads”. Over the years, I have read different parts of that book hundreds of times. The book has photos of some of the most beautiful artifacts and collections ever found or assembled. It also has good information for the beginning collector. If you have a chance to ever pick up a used copy of this book, it might be well worth it just for nostalgia sake.

Another book I had in my library was H. M. Wormington’s classic book titled Ancient Man in North America. That was more of a scholarly book and it covered much of North America. When I read it, I was mostly interested in my region, so I read about Lindenmeier, Finley, Horner, Agate Basin, and other high plains archaeological sites. Marie Wormington was one of the first archaeologists to push the effort to break the catchall projectile point type called Yuma into specific projectile point types such as Plainview, Allen, Agate Basin, Angostura, Cody Complex, etc. She also did an excellent job describing these different Paleoindian projectile point types. Several books have replaced her Ancient Man in North America since 1957, but even today Wormington’s book might be outdated but is still a relevant classic.

My third book was Stone Artifacts of the Northwestern Plains by amateur archaeologists Louis C. Steege and Warren W. Welsh. In my early years, I wore out three of these books. Luckily, they were only $3.95 each. The book taught me high plains projectile point typology and how to catalog my finds. This book is still a classic. This is where my story begins.

Figure 4 - “Glendo” point surface finds from my youth. All found in Niobrara and 

Goshen Counties, Wyoming. John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Growing up, I found quite a few barbed corner-notched points like the ones in figure 4. In their book, Steege and Welsh called these barbed corner-notched points Glendo points after examples found by archaeologist William Mulloy around Glendo, Wyoming in the mid-1950s when he and others were doing archaeological work prior to the construction of Glendo Reservoir. It wasn’t until 1983 when I read George Frison’s influential work titled Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains that I discovered archaeologists were not calling these barbed corner notched points Glendo. They were referring to them as Pelican Lake after examples originally identified by B. Wettlaufer in 1955 at the lower level of the Mortlach site in southern Saskatchewan, Canada. I am not sure whether Mulloy and Wettlaufer were communicating at the time since their discoveries probably represent the same projectile point type. Communication in the 1950s was a lot more primitive than it is today, need I say more.  

Back in 1961 when Steege and Welsh published their book, they described Glendo; “The distinguishing feature of this type is the corner notching, which varies from quite shallow and broad to form a slightly expanded stem and hooked shoulder, to a fine deep notch which forms an expanded stem with pronounced barbs.” That description describes Pelican Lake just as well. Even today, some of us ‘old timers’ might refer to a Pelican Lake point as a Glendo point, especially if the point was found along the Hartville Uplift of Wyoming. Old habits are hard to break. Call ‘em Glendo, call ‘em Pelican Lake, it really doesn’t matter a hill of beans! 

Figure 5 - Need a fun diversion from the troubles of the world? 

Read one of my latest books titled SAND and SAGE for a jolly good time. 

Available at Amazon.com in paperback and e book.