Buffalo find on the Arkansas

[piebiter]

A good buddy of mine has been pulling these buffalo skulls and various buffalo bones out of the Arkansas for several years now. This one just this past weekend. Its the third complete skull he's dug out so far. In addition he's found numerous Indian tools as well. He figures that he's stumbled upon an old crossing on the Arkansas.

[Ozark Tracker]

In about 1972 an Uncle and I were fishing just North and West of Muskogee on the Arkansas River and found a horn sticking out of the river bank, we dug it out and it was a buffalo skull, we found a lot of the bones after further digging,  my uncle took it over to Tahlequah, to the College and had it checked out,  the Professor said it was a Prarie Bison,  he estimated the age of the skull at approximately 600 years old, said it was in what he called a semi pettrified state,  he  said he had seen a few out the Arkansas river, he felt like the Buffalo had been drinking down at the river and become mired in the quick sand and died and sank,  he said he felt this way because of the number of bones we found,  he said he felt like more bones would be gone and scattered if he had died out where animals could have got at the carcus and carried off some more of it.
They displayed it over at the College for a coupla of years, I think my Cousin has it now.

[piebiter]

Ozark, if you noticed the horns on this skull sweep back instead of standing more straight up like more modern day buffalo. This one's very old as well. There's one on display in Sand Springs that looks very similar to this one and they claim its around 2000 yrs. old. All I've got so far is a nice jaw bone with teeth, a real nice rib bone and a large tooth. My friend dug out a real nice shoulder bone the same day as well.

[Ozark Tracker]

Yes that's the way  the horns were on my Uncles skull,  the man that examined it said that was the reason he classified it as a Prarie Bison as compared to a Buffalo,  we found the leg bones and shoulders, some of the spine and some of the rib bones.

we lived 10 miles south of Coweta, Ok, right where the rivers goes back East toward Muskogee,  My Uncle found several items in his lifetime,  he had a lot of arrowheads, several stonetools and  implements, a stone grain grinding rock it was almost 3 feet long and about 15 inches wide and probably 6 or 8 inches deep, it had a groove worn about 3 inches deep at the deepest point.  he had even found the stone used to do the grinding, it fit the groove perfectly. he had found an old open top revolver, but it was just a hunk of rust.  and he had several other things he had found through the years. he was a lot of fun growing up around as he was always on the outlook for a new place to explore 

[piebiter]

Appreciate the info Ozark, I'll pass it along to my friend.

[St. George]

Excellent post!

I've got one, myself - it came from an old kill site where they'd run the bison off the edge of a cliff and processed the carcasses.

Thanks.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Howdy!

If ya find any more, may I have one?



I'll pay postage.