by Richard Seifried
Signal Hill Musings
February, 2004
I’m sitting on a bench at the rock overhang, here at the Blue Spring National Heritage Center, just a few miles west of Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Above me, a jet intrudes upon my contemplations. Now it is gone. Only the splashing of water, flowing from the great spring to the White River, assails my ears. Thirty-eight million gallons of clear, cold water flow from the spring every day.
Heat from the slanted late autumn sun strikes my bare head and naked arms. The experience, so unusual for November, makes me aware of the reason why the shallow cave was so often used as a campsite. Even in winter, if the sky is clear, there is warmth. Too, the rock wall behind me absorbs heat and will radiate it outward deep into the night. When the heat of summer comes, the sun is further north and shadows keep the shelter cool, as does coolness emanating from the stone wall.
This past summer, John Two-Hawks, Bill Two-Horses, the owners of The Cherokee Store, and many others held a spiritual healing ceremony, right here where I sit. Flute music. Chanting. Drumming. Rattles. John honored me by having me carry an eagle wing down the hill to this sacred place. Of course, my Jean was with us.
The ceremony was a spiritual healing one. Some of the Cherokee who suffered the Trail of Tears march, that awful journey from Tennessee to Eastern Oklahoma, came to this very spot.
The great Blue Spring emitted curative waters, as many other area springs once did. It has always been a very special place, a holy one, sacred for thousands of years.
Archaeologists have determined that where I now sit was occupied sporadically between 8,000 B.C. and A.D. 1500. Very possibly, unknown to us, my place for contemplation had also been visited by the Little People of not-so-long-ago. Too, it seems certain that the giant ones, those that we jokingly ridicule and call Bigfoot or Sasquatch, came here and perhaps still do. Sightings by very credible people persist in this part of the Ozarks.
Between 500 B.C. and A.D. 900, the culture we call Woodland inhabited this region. We do know a little about them. Much of their time was spent tending small gardens, learning how to harvest seeds for flour and other food items. Locally, here in the Ozarks, the Woodland people domesticated barley, maygrass, lamb’s quarter, knotweed, swampweed, sunflowers, and squash. All were developed by local people living in the Ozarks during the Archaic Period.
Corn, such an essential crop, came from Mexico, but was also raised here that far back in time.
During the Mississippi Era, A.D. 900 to A.D. 1500, most inhabitants were agricultural people. They grew the Three Sisters: corn, squash, and beans. As always, an abundance of wild animals made up a major portion of their diet.
After A.D. 1500, this stone shelter became just a temporary campsite, used by hunters and people traveling through the area.
Being here reminds me of my boyhood days. I spent many days walking along the Great Miami River in Ohio. Like now, here, only natural sounds could be heard.
Sometimes I would stare in wonder at the rotting, log-stockade that was then sliding downhill into the remnants of what was once the important Miami-Erie Canal. The stockade was called Fort Piqua. Settlers, at least once, sought protection from Indians within its tiny fortification.
There I was, watching history rotting away, possibly the only person who knew that the ruins still remained. Could be that no one else cared.
I also knew where the much older Fort Pickawillany once stood, an imposing bastion against the enemy during what we know as the French and Indian War. I believe that the modern archaeologists are incorrect. They put the site in an adjacent field to where I thought it had been located.
Across Ohio State Highway 66, to the west, up on a high field, I used to walk amid a huge pre-historic fortification. Rocks marked where palisades stood. The fortified city had been closed on three sides. On the north it was secured, not by a gate but by staggered log walls, thus enabling occupants to easily enter and leave but preventing spears and darts from being hurtled into the town proper.
Now, that is gone, too. The rocks have been collected and hauled away. The land has been plowed sixty times since I was last there. Numerous artifacts have been broken or turned beneath the black soil.
Just south of the old fortress one can still see a cut, a tiny lane blasted out of the hillside, going uphill to the same field where the town once stood. General Harmar’s engineers did that, just before the Indians drove them back to Kentucky. The lane is the only remnant of what was known as Harmar’s Trace.
All of the above was, and still is, exciting to me, possibly the only person still alive who knows that history.
So, I sit here at Blue Spring. A fox squirrel chucks away in some distant tree. A crow calls. Just one crow. Then, silence. Blue sky. Cirrus clouds and the great Blue Spring’s lovely pool, lying in a man-made circle, just a few yards away.
I wish that you could be here. Alone. Absorbing such a beautiful experience, engrossed in your own special personal contemplation.
Perhaps some day—-
