All That Glitters Is Not Gold (and Not All Brown Cherts Are Knife River)

All That Glitters is Not Gold

(And Not All Brown Cherts Are Knife River)

by John Bradford Branney

 

Figure One - 3.8-inch-long Besant knife form made from Knife River and surface found
on private land near New Town, North Dakota by Sherry Christianson.
Note color, white/yellow splotches, plant fossils, loose hinges, and patina.
John Bradford Branney Collection. 

I am an artifact hunter and prehistorian who spends much of my spare time hunting rocks on the high plains of Wyoming and Colorado. When I think about the most popular raw materials for toolmaking during high plains prehistory, I think of beautiful Hartville Uplift Jasper or Spanish Diggings Quartzite or Flattop Chalcedony, or the subject of this article: Knife River Chalcedony. I would be remiss if I did not mention that there were literally hundreds of different types of raw materials from Alberta, Canada to the Panhandle of Texas for prehistoric people to choose from. Some of those raw materials have local or regional names such as Big Horn Chert or Pryor Creek Jasper or Black Forest Silicified Wood while other raw materials just go by a generic rock type name such as moss agate, tiger chert, or caramel-colored jasper. Maybe someday I will write an article about the less glamorous high plains raw materials. 

Figure Two - BEYOND the CAMPFIRE, the fifth book in the
SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentology. 

Based on archaeological evidence, it is clear that prehistoric people sought the highest quality raw material that was available to make their tools and projectile points. The ideal raw material fractured conchoidally in a predictable manner and was not too soft or brittle to hold a sharp working edge. Besides availability and quality, a rock type’s flashiness was also a factor for prehistoric people. Knife River Chalcedony checks all the boxes; it was available and of high quality, and it was definitely beautiful. Based on archaeological evidence, prehistoric people went out of their way to scavenge and use Knife River Chalcedony.

You will notice that I called Knife River a chalcedony, but Luedtke (1992:6) would argue with my definition. Luedtke pointed out that chalcedony is the only variety of chert that scientists can identify microscopically by its fibrous form. Those fibers cannot be seen with the naked eye. Luedtke proclaimed that while most cherts made from chalcedony were translucent, not all translucent cherts were chalcedony. She added that Knife River was the perfect example of a translucent chert that was not a chalcedony but a granular quartz, and not a fibrous quartz.

 

Figure Three - Note Knife River translucency on this 2.5-inch-long Middle Archaic Oxbow
Knife Form surface found on private land near Gillette, Wyoming by Chuck Carlson.
John Bradford Branney Collection.   

The most popular name for Knife River Chalcedony by far and used by archaeologists and collectors alike is Knife River Flint which is oftentimes abbreviated as KRF. According to Luedtke (1992:140), the definition of flint is a “homogenous, high quality chert, especially the dark gray or black cherts that form in the Cretaceous chalks of Europe”. That does not fit Knife River any more than the definition of chalcedony does. The most accurate name is probably Knife River Chert because the term chert casts a wide net by including most varieties of microcrystalline quartz.

Since an old habit is hard to break, I will refer to the rock type as either Knife River Chalcedony or just plain Knife River for this article. Secondly, I will refer to Knife River Chalcedony as semi-translucent even though some authors prefer to call it translucent. When I think of something translucent, I think of a clear pane of glass, and Knife River is not as translucent as a clear pane of glass.   

Luedtke (1992:6) described Knife River as a very dark brown, fine-textured, silicified lignite with a medium luster and a depth of translucency from 5 to 11 mm. Bates and Jackson (1984:295) defined lignite as a brownish-black coal that was intermediate in coalification between peat and sub-bituminous coal. The adjective silicified describes a process where organic matter, in this case lignite, became saturated and replaced by silica in the form of quartz, chalcedony, or opal.  

Figure Four - 2.8-inch-long Goshen spear/knife form surface found on private land in the 
Sand Hills of Lincoln County, Nebraska. John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Kristensen et al. (2018:22) analyzed Knife River using macroscopic, microscopic, and geochemical techniques and supported the description that the rock type was silicified lignite. The authors described the color of Knife River as blonde to dark coffee brown and stated that the rock type could possess high translucency, visible bedding planes, plant microfossils, and white splotches. The authors also declared that by just using visual inspection, Knife River could not be discerned from silicified peat or chalcedony.

Geologists know very little about the origin of Knife River Chalcedony because it is only found in secondary deposits and not in its original geological context. Hickey (1966:64-5) suggested that based on its high carbon content, plant fossils, and proximity to unsilicified lignite, Knife River originally formed as a deposit of organic lignite in the Eocene geological period. He surmised that later in the Oligocene geological period, silica-rich groundwater saturated the lignite, creating a hard silicified lignite layer. Kristensen et al. (2018:3) reported that by the time Paleoindians showed up to exploit the rock type in the late Pleistocene geological period, the silicified lignite bed was eroded away and broken up into pebbles, boulders and cobbles of Knife River.  

Figure Five - Knife River nodules found in secondary geological contexts from eroded bedrock outcrops that no longer exist. The images on the left and top right are courtesy
of David McDonald. The bottom image on the right is courtesy 
of the Archaeology and Historic Preservation Division, 
State Historical Society of North Dakota.

Clayton et al. (1970) expanded on that interpretation by postulating that the original Knife River lignite bed was initially surrounded by the clays, silts, and sands of the Golden Valley Formation of Eocene age and underlain by the clays, silts, sands, and lignite beds of the Sentinel Butte Formation. Earlier, Benson (1949, 1952) informally divided the Golden Valley Formation into two members, a brightly colored claystone called the Bear Den Member of Paleocene age, and an overlying unit called the Camels Butte Member of Eocene age. Both members were deposited roughly between 50 and 57 million years ago.

Knife River’s color is often compared to “root beer, coffee, or beer bottle” with a touch of translucency. Many prehistoric artifacts made from Knife River are beautiful and glow in vivid shades of brown when backlit (figure three). I have seen collectors pay a pretty penny for prehistoric artifacts made from a desirable chunk of Knife River raw material. Market demand combined with a plethora of lookalike materials from Texas to Alberta led to the overidentification of Knife River as the raw material. Collectors and archaeologists must be careful when they use visual inspection alone to identify Knife River from other semi-translucent brown cherts or chalcedonies.

Figure Six - Agate Basin spear/knife forms made from semi-translucent to opaque Knife River 
and surface found on private land from North Dakota to northern Colorado. These
examples show color variation, white splotches, hanging hinges, and patina.  
The longest Agate Basin is 4.7-inches-long.
John Bradford Branney Collection.  

I have quite a few prehistoric artifacts in my collection made from Knife River Chalcedony, found from the Dakotas and Montana through Wyoming and south to northern Colorado. The artifacts range in color from very dark brown to honey-colored brown. Most of my Knife River artifacts exhibit a certain degree of translucency, but I have a couple of nice examples that are completely opaque. When I visually inspect an artifact, I use five characteristics to identify Knife River. The first characteristic is its color as described in a few sentences above. The second characteristic is the silicified plant fossils or palm fronds captured in the matrix of the rock. The third characteristic is a distinctive white-to-yellow patina caused by chemical weathering and commonly found on Knife River artifacts. The fourth characteristic is the distinctive white and yellow opaque splotches on the surface of the rock or locked into the matrix. The fifth characteristic that cannot be used as a diagnostic feature for Knife River but is quite common on Knife River artifacts is loose hinge fractures, even when the artifact was found in freeze-thaw country.  I have examples of Knife River artifacts with all five characteristics and I have suspected Knife River artifacts with none of those characteristics. If a person does not notice at least one of those characteristics, they might be looking at a Knife River lookalike.     

A few artifact collectors and authenticators believe that UV irradiation can be effectively used to identify Knife River as the rock type and for authenticating Knife River artifacts. That theory contends that authentic Knife River artifacts fluoresce under either short or long-wave UV light. The assumption is that authentic artifacts are aged and chemically weathered therefore they fluoresce, while the fresh surfaces on artifact reproductions won’t fluoresce. One authenticator even told me that authentic Knife River artifacts emit an orangish color under UV light when they are authentic. To test that theory, I did my own experimentation with a few of my Knife River artifacts. I did not obtain the same results as the authenticator. Of the artifacts that did fluoresce, some appeared slightly orange while others appeared almost white or some shade in between. A few artifacts fluoresced so weakly that I needed my imagination to see any fluorescence, and a few artifacts did not fluoresce at all. To ensure that the Knife River artifacts did not need to be a certain age to fluoresce, I experimented with artifacts ranging from Paleoindian to Late Prehistoric times. I concluded that using UV irradiation as a method for determining rock type or authentication of Knife River artifacts was indefinite at best.

Figure Seven - Lookalike material or Knife River Chalcedony? Several professionals and 
collectors have looked at this 1.8-inch long Folsom dart point, both macroscopically and 
microscopically and we have a hung jury on whether it is Knife River or not. 
John Bradford Branney Collection.  

Kirchmeir (2011:27) and Kristensen et al. (2018:14) experimented and determined similar results with UV radiation and Knife River. The investigators noted that artifacts made from similar materials, such as brown chalcedony and silicified peat, fluoresced in a similar manner as Knife River. In their studies, Knife River and lookalike materials showed such a wide range of fluorescence to non-fluorescence that the process was not useful for the identification of the raw material. The investigators warned that chemical weathering of the rock could enhance or obscure its fluorescence. Their conclusion was that UV irradiation was not an effective standalone technique for the identification of Knife River and should only be used in concert with other macroscopic, microscopic, and geochemical analyses.

What separated Knife River from most high plains raw materials were its overall abundance and wide distribution. The archaeological evidence that Knife River traveled far from its source during prehistoric times is overwhelming. The rock type originated from a network of rock quarries in North Dakota that supplied a vast amount of tool stone for prehistoric humans for thousands of years. Knife River’s popularity is reflected in the number of prehistoric tools made from it, the quarries’ endurance over prehistoric times, and the rock type’s dispersal across the plains.

Ahler (1986:105) estimated that prehistoric people quarried around 12.5 million kilograms (20,393 tons) of Knife River Chalcedony from roughly thirty quarry sites in a primary source area of approximately 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) in Dunn and Mercer Counties in North Dakota. From his estimates, Ahler calculated that prehistoric people made around 640 million tools and cores from Knife River and spread those tools and cores over an area of approximately 3.7 million square kilometers (1.4 million square miles). Whether Ahler’s estimations were accurate or not we will never know for sure, but even if we divide Ahler’s estimates by a factor of twenty, the numbers remain staggering. Knife River Chalcedony was quite popular with the prehistoric folks!

 

Figure Eight - Lookalike material or Knife River? This root-beer colored Scottsbluff point was 
surface found on private land near Green River, Wyoming. Artifact authenticator Greg Perino
identified the material as Knife River, but it could be one of the local brown chalcedonies
found in that region. The point is 2.5-inches-long. John Bradford Branney Collection.       

Steuber (2018) addressed the wide distribution of Knife River by determining whether or not archaeologists and collectors were overidentifying Knife River on the high plains. She challenged the entrenched professional view that Knife River was the dominant material in Besant/Sonota prehistoric cultural sites on the Northern Plains. Steuber chemically analyzed twelve brown chalcedony sources across three Canadian Provinces and three American States. She then compared her chemical analysis with material labeled as Knife River at archaeological sites. She concluded that Knife River was not the dominant lithic raw material at those archaeological sites after all and that the prehistoric inhabitants were exploiting local varieties of brown chalcedonies and not as much Knife River as previously reported. Steuber concluded her analysis by quoting, “All artifacts made from brown chalcedony should be referred to as such and not as KRF unless they have been previously geochemically characterized”.  

I have discovered several prehistoric rock quarries and mining operations in my search for prehistoric artifacts on the high plains and I can conclude that while the raw materials at those quarries met the knapping and durability requirements for toolmaking, the distribution never came close to the Knife River supply chain. Knife River Chalcedony was one of the kings of high plains raw material for thousands of years.      

References Cited

Ahler, S.A. 1986. Knife River Flint Quarries: Excavations at Site 32DU508. State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck, North Dakota.

Bates, Robert L. and Julia A. Jackson. 1984. Dictionary of Geological Terms. Third Edition. Anchor Press/Doubleday. New York.

Benson, W.E. and Laird, W.M., 1947, Eocene of North Dakota: abstract, Geological Society of America Bulletin, v 58, p. 1166-1167.

Benson, W.E., 1952, Geology of the Knife River area, North Dakota: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report, 276 p.

Clayton, L., W.B. Bickley, Jr., and W.J. Stone. 1970. Knife River Flint. Plains Anthropologist 15:282-290.

Hickey, L.J. 1966. The Paleobotany and Stratigraphy of the Golden Valley Formation in Western North Dakota. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.

Kirchmeir, P.F.R. 2011. A Knife River Flint Identification Model and its Application to Three Alberta Ecozone Archaeological Assemblages. M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta

Kristensen, Todd, Emily Moffat, M. John, M. Duke, Andrew J. Locock, Cody Sharphead, and John W. Ives. 2018. Identifying Knife River Flint in Alberta: A silicified lignite toolstone from North Dakota. Occasional Paper No. 38. Archaeological Survey of Alberta.  

Luedtke, Barbara E. 1992. An Archaeologist’s Guide to Chert and Flint. Archaeological Research Tools 7. Institute of Archaeology. University of California, Los Angeles. 

Steuber, Karin Ingrid. 2018. Geochemical Characterization of Brown Chalcedony during the Besant/Sonota Period. Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.

About the Author

John Bradford Branney has hunted and collected artifacts for six decades and he has written about his adventures for around three decades. Join Author Branney for his high plains saga about the lives of Paleoindians some twelve thousand years ago in the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy. His books are available on Amazon.com or wherever fine books are sold.     

Agate Basin to Scottsbluff Along the SHADOWS on the TRAIL

Figure One - Development continuum of Paleoindian projectile point types. From left to right, 

oldest to youngest, Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Alberta, and Scottsbluff. All surface finds are from 

private land in Colorado. For scale, the Agate Basin point on the far left is 4.6 inches long. 

John Bradford Branney Collection.  

In my prehistoric adventure series the SHADOWS on the TRAIL PENTALOGY, three Paleoindian tribes clash on the high plains of Colorado. All three Paleoindian tribes lived similar lifestyles as hunters and gatherers but what differentiated them was their stone weapon tips. While the three tribes all used ‘old world’ spearthrower or atlatl technology, their stone projectile points varied in style and technology. Let me guide you on a short journey into the past. Everyone climb aboard my Delorean time machine. Our destination is southern Colorado about 12,600 years ago.  

Figure Two - Delorean time machine from Back to the Future.  

In the first book of the PENTALOGY titled SHADOWS on the TRAIL, warriors from a tribe of people I called the Mountain People brutally attack the village of a peaceful tribe called the River People. When the attack occurred, most River People men were not in the village, but on a hunting expedition. There were not enough spears to defend the village from the brutal onslaught of the Mountain People. The hunters returned and found the complete destruction of their village and the murder of friends and loved ones. The hunters wanted their revenge but they did not know who inflicted that deplorable act upon their people. The only evidence was a spear in the brush left behind by a warrior from the Mountain People. The spear's owner carved a clue for the hunters on the wooden shaft of the spear, and the stone projectile point at its tip was a different kind. The hunter who discovered the spear brought it to his leader, a man named Avonaco and this was what happened; Lights, camera, action:   

Avonaco held the spear in his hands. The spear shaft was the same wood that the River People used, but the stone spear point was different. The stone spear point was thinner and longer than any Avonaco had ever seen and made from a shiny, black rock material. Avonaco ran his thumb down the sharp edge of the spear point and quickly pulled his thumb away.

“Éŝkos!–Sharp!” Avonaco exclaimed, looking down at his bleeding thumb.

He continued to examine the spear point, “I have only seen a spear point like this once made from this black rock. When I was a boy, I found a spear point much like this deep in the mountains. My father told me the black rock comes from the mountains.”

Avonaco then inspected the sinew wrap that connected the stone spear point to the wooden spear shaft. The River People used sinew from deer or bison to attach their spear points.

Avonaco pointed to the sinew and said, “This is too thin, it is not from bison or deer.”

Avonaco ran his fingers down the smooth wood of the spear and noticed it had carvings in it. To see better, Avonaco moved the spear shaft closer to the light of the campfire. Carved into the wood were five green-painted peaks next to two orange-painted suns,   ҉   Ʌ Ʌ Ʌ Ʌ Ʌ   ҉. , Waquini and Vipponah leaned over Avonaco’s shoulders to take a better look.

I wonder if the River People ever got their revenge? If you want to find out, you are going to have to read the second edition of SHADOWS on the TRAIL. CLICK IMAGE BELOW for info on the BOOK. 

CLICK for the BOOK

Now, the rest of the story!

In figure one above, I photographed four different Paleoindian projectile point types, from left to right, the oldest to the youngest; Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Alberta, and Scottsbluff. The cultural adoption of these four projectile point types was widespread from Canada to Texas through much of the Great Plains and the southwestern United States.

We know from archaeological evidence that different Paleoindian cultures used different projectile point types. We know through investigations at single-episode bison kill sites that Paleoindian hunters often used the same projectile point styles. That suggests to me that the specific tribe or culture involved in each bison kill determined the projectile point style and technology used by the hunters who participated in the bison kills. A few examples of High Plains Paleoindian bison kill sites and the respective projectile point types in parentheses are Casper (Hell Gap), Olsen-Chubbuck (Firstview), Hudson-Meng (Alberta), Jimmy Allen (Jimmy Allen), and the Horner Site (Cody Complex). Either that means that everyone in the tribe was flintknapping to the same style of projectile points or perhaps, there were one or two expert flintknappers within the tribe making all the projectile points. 

Figure Three - Agate Basin projectile points and one drill. On some Agate Basin projectile points
the "Hell Gap shoulder" was already developing. For scale, the far left point is 2.2 inches long.
John Bradford Branney Collection.

Based on radiocarbon dating and geologic studies, Agate Basin is the oldest projectile point out of the four artifacts in figure one. Current archaeological evidence proposes that Agate Basin projectile points and knife forms showed up on the high plains around 10,400 years BP, or north of 12,000 years ago in calendar years. Based on radiocarbon dates and geologic studies, the Agate Basin projectile point could have overlapped in time with at least three other projectile point types; Folsom, Hell Gap, and Alberta. We know it overlapped in geographical space! 

Based on stratigraphic evidence at the multicultural Hell Gap site in Wyoming, investigators determined that the Hell Gap culture was younger than the Agate Basin culture, at least at the Hell Gap site. The age most often assigned to the Hell Gap prehistoric culture is around 10,000 years BP or around 11,500 years ago in calendar years. Based on projectile point technology, many investigators believe that Hell Gap projectile points evolved from Agate Basin projectile points. 

In experimental archaeology hunting exercises, Agate Basin proved to be a very effective piece of weaponry, so why did Paleoindians move from Agate Basin to Hell Gap projectile points? One possible explanation could be less time and effort exerted on making Hell Gap versus Agate Basin. If you have ever examined a well-made Agate Basin projectile point, it is obvious that a great amount of time and effort went into its making. In Agate Basin projectile points, fine pressure flaking was used to achieve exceptional point symmetry. Did that extra effort deliver incremental hunting performance? We will never know the answer to that question for sure. Some might call Agate Basin points "flint knapping overkill". The Hell Gap flint knapper usually terminated the finishing process of a projectile point much earlier than an Agate Basin flint knapper (figure four). The Hell Gap flint knapper oftentimes used only pressure flaking on the stems and tips, leaving a rougher and less symmetrical projectile point. And it appears that the Hell Gap shoulders that they introduced made for a better hafting arrangement.  

Figure Four - Hell Gap Projectile Points. The Hell Gap shoulder is fully developed 
on these examples. For scale, the far left point is 2.5 inches long. 
John Bradford Branney Collection. 

Over 11,000 calendar years ago near Casper, Wyoming, Paleoindian hunters used Hell Gap projectile points to kill bison that they stampeded and trapped in sand dunes at what we now call the Casper site. During a similar timeframe in Nebraska, a different group of Paleoindian hunters used what we call Alberta projectile points to dispatch bison they trapped in an ancient arroyo at the Hudson-Meng site. Dr. H. M. Wormington identified and named Alberta projectile points from surface recovered examples found during the dust bowl years of the 1930s in Alberta, Canada. The long stem and abrupt shoulders differentiated Alberta projectile points from both Agate Basin and Hell Gap. We assume that at least some Paleoindians felt the Alberta projectile point design was an advancement in weapon technology over Agate Basin and Hell Gap projectile point designs. When spearing a bison or other game animal, the shoulders and long base of the Alberta projectile point handled much more stress and impact, probably creating a more efficient weapon tip.    

The Alberta projectile point technology and style then gave birth to another projectile point type. The point to the far right in figure one is a Scottsbluff point, a continuation of Cody Complex weaponry and a point design originating from the earlier Alberta projectile points. 

Figure Four - Examples of Cody Complex artifacts, including  Alberta (far left) and 

Scottsbluff (third from left). For scale, the far left point is 2.5 inches long. 

John Bradford Branney Collection. 

The stem and shoulders found on Alberta points existed on Scottsbluff points but what returned was the fine pressure flaking and symmetry of the earlier Agate Basin projectile point.

So, what do you think drove the development continuum of Paleoindian projectile points from Agate Basin to Scottsbluff? Was it technological innovation or were different prehistoric cultures putting their own stamp on weaponry design? Why did Paleoindian cultures adapt the same projectile point type across a wide geographical area? Why did Paleoindians use a specific projectile point type at one bison kill while at a similar timeframe other Paleoindians used a different projectile point type at a different bison kill? Were different people making specific projectile point types? 

Food for thought! 

We can only hypothesize, but isn’t that fun to do?

CLICK for the Journey - SHADOWS on the TRAIL PENTALOGY

The historical fiction novels written by John Bradford Branney are known for their impeccable research and biting realism. In his latest blockbuster novel BEYOND the CAMPFIRE, Branney catapults his readers back into Prehistoric America where they reunite with some familiar faces from Branney’s best-selling prehistoric adventure series the SHADOWS on the TRAIL Pentalogy.

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree from the University of Wyoming and an MBA from the University of Colorado. John lives in the Colorado mountains with his wife, Theresa. BEYOND the CAMPFIRE is the eleventh published book by Branney.

WINDS OF EDEN - Prehistoric American Book Review



Click to Order John Bradford Branney Books

Fans of the SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL series from bestselling author John Bradford Branney are already ordering copies of the final book in the trilogy in droves.

What happens when the hunters become the hunted? That is what readers have been eagerly waiting to find out in WINDS OF EDEN, the thrilling finale to John Bradford Branney’s series of books about a Paleo-Indian tribe in prehistoric America.

In the conclusion of this highly acclaimed historical series of novels, the Folsom People return to the plains and mountains of Texas and Colorado at the end of the last Ice Age, a time of dramatic climate change, rising temperatures and melting glaciers. This was a time when several large mammal species went extinct and when small bands of humans roamed the mountains and plains attempting to survive in an unforgiving and violent world. WINDS OF EDEN quickly propels readers into the story where the first two novels of the trilogy left off. Chayton and the Folsom People are continuing their fight of survival in a violent and unpredictable prehistoric world with little more than their spears and wits.

“We are thrilled to be bringing out this latest installment,” said Sarah Luddington, Mirador Publishing’s Commissioning Editor. “John has a knack for bringing this era to life and combines this with an incredible eye for detail in a thoroughly engaging story. John’s attention to historical accuracy is extraordinary and he even includes three genuine indigenous languages within the narrative.”

Hailed for its accurate depiction of life on the prairies and mountains of prehistoric Texas and Colorado, WINDS OF EDEN is a fast-paced read that accurately builds on clues from the archaeological record and traditions practiced by the first Americans.

“In the first two books of the SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL TRILOGY my emphasis has been on the dynamics of survival for these early explorers of prehistoric America,” the author stated. “In WINDS OF EDEN, I took a slightly different direction from the first two books of the trilogy. Yes, the book is still a high-intensity adventure, but I have added another twist. In WINDS OF EDEN, the main characters must face the reality of their own finite mortalities. I am hoping that readers take away much more than just reading a fun adventure story. This book is my most fulfilling work that I have written so far and I hope readers feel the same way.”

John Bradford Branney holds a geology degree and MBA from the University of Wyoming and the University of Colorado, respectively. John currently lives in Texas and Colorado with his wife, Theresa. WINDS OF EDEN is the fifth published book by Author Branney.

  

SHADOWS ON THE TRAIL, GHOSTS OF THE HEART and WINDS OF EDEN are available in all good bookshops and online retailers both in paperback and eBook formats. 

Below is the latest book review of WINDS OF EDEN by the Prehistoric American Journal. 



Click to Order Winds of Eden

Shadows on the Trail Trilogy - Healing Practices for Paleoindians

Figure 1 - A depiction of a prehistoric hunter using an atlatl or spear thrower.

      As I sit and write my latest posting for the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy blog, I am fighting a severe cold. My head is congested and my throat is scratchy. My nose is running like a faucet and I am coughing constantly, trying to clear my lungs. In the bathroom, I have my over-the-counter medications lined up, everything from vitamins to severe cold medicine to cough drops. If my over-the-counter medications do not work on this cold, I can always be at my doctor’s office at a drop of a hat.   

     In our society, we are accustomed to going to the drugstore when we are sick or going to the doctor if our illness or ailment is serious. But, what did prehistoric people do some 10,700 years ago when the Shadows of the Trail Trilogy took place? What illnesses and injuries were common at the end of the Ice Age and how did they treat them?     

Figure 2 - Click to Order Ghosts of the Heart

    While writing all three prehistoric novels in the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy - Shadows on the Trail, Ghosts of the Heart, and Winds of Eden I researched Native American healing practices and medicines because I knew that several of my characters in the books would require healing practices and medicines. I had to make the assumption that the documented healing practices and medicines of the historical Native American Indian tribes were handed down to them by their prehistoric ancestors over thousands of years earlier. What surprised me the most during my research was the lack of medicines and herbs for treating serious ailments and sicknesses, even during historical Native American Indian times.         

     Below is a short segment from my prehistoric novel Ghosts of the Heart where our hero Chayton survived a serious shoulder wound and made it back to his tribe, the Folsom People. His wound was highly infected and the only healer the tribe happened to be Tarca Sapa’s granddaughter, Tonkala.       

     Tonkala walked over to the [bison] paunch and threw a small piece of deer hide into the boiling water. She stirred the deer hide around in the boiling water with a stick and then plucked it out of the water. She grabbed the deer hide and walked over to Chayton where she washed and scrubbed the wound with the deer hide. Chayton grimaced in pain, but did not utter a word. Kangi rotated more broiling rocks into the paunch, keeping the water steamy hot. Tonkala took the hide back to the paunch and dropped it into the boiling water.

     Chayton glanced up and met the eyes of Tonkala’s young daughter, Lupan. She smiled at Chayton and he gave her a combination grimace-smile back. Tonkala returned with the deer hide and vigorously scrubbed the wound, turning Chayton’s entire shoulder a bright red.

     “Wa nee yea due ne doe na hey, Lupan? – How many winters are you, Lupan?” Chayton asked the small girl, attempting to take his mind elsewhere.

     “Tópa, – Four,” Lupan answered and then instantly looked at her mother who returned a frown to her daughter.

     “Hee ya, yámni, – No, three,” Lupan corrected herself.

     “She is always trying to be older than she actually is,” Tonkala noted to Chayton.

     Tonkala then turned to the hunters and said, “Bring him water to drink.”

     Tonkala then began assembling the herbs and special tree bark she required for making a healing poultice. Out of a large satchel, Tonkala retrieved witch hazel, white poplar bark, and juniper berries. Tonkala laid the mixture onto a sandstone grinding stone and added a small amount of the boiling water. She then pulverized the ingredients with a round rock until the mixture became a paste. She then spread the paste over the wound and then sealed the wound with a clean piece of deer hide. She held the deer hide to the wound with her fingers until the paste congealed and glued the deer hide to Chayton’s skin. A hunter finally returned with drinking water and handed it to Tonkala.

 Figure 3 - We know how large and dangerous modern

bison are (to the left). Bison antiquus was the bison species that

the Folsom People hunted in the Shadows on the Trail Trilogy. 

Bison antiquus was much larger and more dangerous than

even the modern bison species. Note the size comparison.

     There is no way for any of us to know what sicknesses and diseases the Folsom People had to face during the Pleistocene. However, evidence from prehistoric human skeletons demonstrates that prehistoric people suffered from bad teeth, broken bones, osteoporosis, arthritis, wounds from various causes, and many other maladies. Prehistoric people lived extremely harsh lives where their subsistence strategy consisted of hunting large and dangerous mammals. If prehistoric people became severely hurt or sick, they could not just go to a doctor or dentist. They had to rely on natural medicines and endure the pain.

     Read Shadows on the Trail, Ghosts of the Heart, and Winds of Eden. Take a trip back to the Pleistocene! You will appreciate the modern conveniences we have even more!!  

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