The Bone Hunters

by Marva Dasef

Between 1870 and 1937, the bone business played a major role in the economy of Texas.  In the nineteenth century, the bones were from the millions of buffalo slaughtered for their hides and then left to rot on the plains.  Once the buffalo were depleted, cattle became the primary source of bones.  During the Great Depression, hundreds of families overcame droughts, debts, and famine by picking and selling bones.   Bone buyers made a circuit of the farms and ranches, collecting tons of bones to be ground to meal, leached of calcium phosphate to fire the furnaces of bone china makers, and made into buttons in the garment factories of the big cities.

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"Hey, Sister, you drop that right now!" I yelled when I saw her pickin' up a cowpie.  Cowpies were fine, if they were good and dry, but the one Dorothy picked up looked a mite green.

"Girls, don't have no sense," I muttered under by breath.  I didn't want her to hear me or she'd get all grumpy.

I'd only let her come along 'cause she kept beggin'.  She saw that I was making money from the bones and she thought she'd like to make some, too.  Only trouble was she kept gettin' distracted.  For awhile, all she'd do is pick wildflowers, and now cowpies, for gosh sakes.

The pile of bones we'd collected was gettin' pretty high behind the barn.  I figured that the bone buyer ought to be comin' round again soon.  It'd been near four weeks, and the man drove his route pretty regular.  I reckoned I'd get close to two dollars for that pile.

Me and my sister Dorothy, were spending the summer of 1930 with a cousin of our Pa's down in Bailey County,  just a stone's throw, well, about ten miles, southeast of Clovis, New Mexico.

The family, name of Porter, had a small ranch where they raised some cattle.  I thought it'd be a grand adventure, since I always wished I could be a cowboy.  So, when Pa had said we'd be visiting the Porters, I was pretty happy.  The reality was not so good as the wishin' cause it turned out that the Porter herd counted only five head of cows, and them being milk cows to boot.

Still, me and Sister were tryin' to make the best of it.  When I learned we could make some money collectin' bones, the two of us spent just about every day riding our horses out on the plains.  We'd made up a travois just like the Indians used.   I cut two saplings, after askin' of course, and trimmed all the small twigs off, then tied them together with some rope about a third of the way from one end.  I tied it loose, so the saplings could be spread apart at the long end.  Then, I spread an old blanket across and strapped it down to each sapling.  It was meant to cross over the horse's back at the short end, with the long ends draggin' behind.  When it was all ready it looked kind of like a flat teepee laid over the horse with the small end up over the withers.  With a travois, we could load up a lot more bones than if we tried to carry them atop the horse.  Sister could sit between the saplings where they started to spread, so we could still travel pretty fast.

We headed generally west, crisscrossing up to five miles north and south of the dirt road headin' into Clovis.  We looked in draws, in particular, cause cows tended to take their dyin' steps to get as close to water as they could.  Unfortunate for the cows, cause most often the draw was dry and the poor cow just died of thirst.  Bad for the cow, but good for two kids lookin' to make their fortune collectin' bones.

We'd been at the bone huntin' for several weeks and had pretty much cleared out everything to be had almost into New Mexico.  One morning, we folded up the travois and carried it along, making fast tracks over the New Mexico border.   I wasn't exactly sure when we crossed the state line, since there was no sign or anything, but I could make a pretty good guess at it.

Now that we were in fresh bone pickin' territory, I rigged up the travois again and started searching for the draws that most likely had cow bones.

We'd been at this for a couple of hours, when I spotted a man drivin' a Model T right out in the middle of the plains.  There weren't no road, so he was goin' along pretty slow and I could see him bouncin' around quite a bit.  I thought this was pretty interestin', so we stopped and waited for the man to drive our way.  Dorothy and me waved to get the man's attention and, soon enough, the Model T pulled right up to us.  We had to hold the horses tight since that car was plenty noisy.  The man turned off the ignition, the car coughed and couple of times, then went silent.

"Howdy," I said and  tipped my hat like Ma had taught me.  Sister just raised her hand in a shy wave.

"Howdy, back at ya,'" the man responded.  He wasn't dressed like a town man, but not like a cowboy neither.  He had on tan-colored clothes that looked like they were made for workin'.  His hat was almost, but not quite a cowboy hat.  I thought I'd seen that kind of hat before.  The man wasn't very old, maybe twenty or so, but he looked kind of rough like he spent a lot of time out in the sun.  His clothes were dusty and a wrinkled, but not like a bum.  Besides, a bum wouldn't have a car, now would he?

"I'm Ridge Whiteman," the man said pointing his thumb at his chest.

"I'm Eddie and that's my little sister, Dorothy," I responded.  Now that introductions were done, maybe we could find out what the man was doin' way out here, but he beat me to it.

"What are you kids up to?" the man asked.

"We're huntin' bones," Ireplied.

"Oh?  I hunt bones, too.  What do you do with the bones you find?" he asked.

"We sell ‘em to the bone buyer.  What do you do with your bones?"

"I hope they'll be put in a museum." the man replied.

I took a squint at the few bones in our travois. "What bones are you findin'?"

"Mammoth bones."

I couldn't help but laugh.

The man laughed, too.  "Eddie," he said, " I'm serious.  Just last year I found some and, the most exciting thing is that I found some arrowheads stuck in them."

"Just where was this?"  I was suspicious that the man was just making fun of me.

"Blackwater Draw.  It's just a couple of miles that way," the man replied pointing toward the west.

"Look, I can see maybe you're not believing me," he continued, "so I'd like to prove it.  You two just stake out your horses here. We'll take a quick drive over and I'll show you."

This was an offer that got my attention.  I looked at Sister and she shrugged.  Whatever I wanted, she was tellin' me.

"Well, if it's only a couple of miles, we can just ride over," I said eying the beat up Model T.  Much as we loved to go with Pa and Ma in the truck, this car didn't look none too safe to me.

"Suit yourself.  I don't drive too fast out here anyway, so it won't be hard to keep up."  The man hopped out and gave the crank a couple of turns, carefully pulling down so it wouldn't kick back, and the motor started right up.  He jumped fast to get back into the car and ground the gears into drive.

While Mr. Whiteman was starting the car, me and Sister took the travois off her horse and stuck the poles into a couple of prairie dog holes so it'd stand up.  It'd be easier to find when we came back this way.  I boosted Sister up on her horse, then jumped up on my own and we took out after the Model T.

Moving along at an easy lope, we fast caught up with Mr. Whiteman and just rode alongside the car as it bounced over the sage scattered flat lands.  It wasn't too long before we came up to the edge of a deep draw and Mr. Whiteman pulled right up to the rim where he stopped and let the Model T die again.

We got down off the horses, and dropped the reins to ground tie them.   The horses knew what was expected and immediately started nosing around for any grass to graze on.  They wouldn't go far with the reins on the ground.

"Come along down here," Mr. Whiteman started down a goat trail leading down the rocky side of the draw.  As we scooted and slipped down the trail, I could see that the walls were layered rock.  This was pretty normal for a draw.  As the water washed down them, the walls were dug away and you could see where layers of dirt had formed up and turned to rock over the years; thousands of years.  I did recall a lesson at school on the geology of Texas and learned about some of this.

Soon, we reached the bottom and Mr. Whiteman led us a few dozen feet along the wall.  I could see that some of the rock wall had been chipped away and pieces were laying on the floor of the draw.

"Here," Mr. Whiteman pointed and I was amazed to see the shape of a leg bone, but it was bigger'n any bone I'd ever seen.  I figured that the man wasn't puttin' me on now that a real mammoth bone was right in front of my own two eyes.  I looked at Sister, but she was busy picking wildflowers again and didn't pay any mind.

The man pulled a small hammer from his belt and started tapping around the mammoth bone.

"Look, here," he pointed and, sure enough, I could make out an arrow head.  It had little chips taken out along the edge to make it sharp.

"That's called fluting," Mr. Whiteman explained when he saw me runnin' my finger along the chipped edge of the arrowhead.

"This is really sumthin'," I said quietly.  I hardly knew what to say, I was so flabbergasted that I actually got to touch real mammoth bones.

"These bones, and that arrowhead, are thousands of years old.  I found them last year and I sent pictures and some of the material to a professor at the Smithsonian.  He thought what I sent was good enough that they'll come out soon for a real archeology dig." Mr. Whiteman stood back up straight and looked mighty proud of himself.

I thought he should be proud.  It was really special to find mammoth bones, but the fact that an arrowhead was stuck into the bone was even better.  Mr. Whiteman explained how mammoth remains had been found before so the scientists knew that they'd ranged around here about eleven thousand years before.  What had never been found before was proof that humans were here at the same time as the mammoths.

"It's not for sure yet.  I'll have to wait for the Smithsonian dig to make sure, but I'm thinking I've got really good proof."

"Yessir," I looked up at the young man with some respect.  I was only a kid, but even I could figure out that this was pretty exciting stuff.  Maybe I'd like to be an archeologist instead of a cowboy.After all, archeologists got to collect bigger bones.

Finally, we climbed back up the goat path.  Me and Sister mounted up and waved goodbye as we rode back to where we'd left the travois. When I decided we'd go bone hunting, I never expected to find mammoth bones.  But now I'd seen ‘em, so I could truthfully say that we had hunted for a mammoth and actually caught up with one in Blackwater Draw.

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In 1929, at the age of nineteen, James Ridgley Whiteman discovered the existence of Clovis Man, believed to be the earliest human being to live on the North American continent.

Marva Dasef is a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with ties to the West Texas region through her father.  This story is based on a tale told by her father about his boyhood in West Texas. Contact Marva.