Gladsomely Beats the Collector-Heart

GLADSOMELY BEATS THE COLLECTOR-HEART By Frank Beckwith He who gathers is gregarious — he craves company. Just scratch the ground a little by his lair, and surely another will be discovered. Put your ear to the ground and you'll hear each, by turns, impatiently break in with, "Now I've got — •" " 'Now I've got' in my office in Delta an old Indian bow; broken, it's true, but priceless. It was once sinew-wrapped, which was applied wet, very tightly wound, and then allowed to shrink. As it shrunk it cut the form of the windings deeply in the wood. Now that the years have rotted the sinew away, the wood bears the imprint of those wrappings. Once, too, it was notched for the string. I wonder where on its hilt (if hilt it has) it was notched for the men it felled. For the former owner of my bow didn't get the army overcoat he was buried in except with that bow, nor the saddle in his sepulchre, either. "I love that old bow. I found it in an Indian grave, with some of his other possessions. " 'And I've got' an old Indian bowl; shattered to bits by the years; much patched. Old — Oh yes! Three hundred years if it's a day, and maybe three times three hundred! " 'And I've got' a sleigh bell in my show case, a plain, bronze sleigh bell, worth about a tuppence — but money couldn't buy it! Buried with a chief was that old bell; and his horse slain as close beside his grave as the rocks would permit. Imagine that if you will! Buried with a man of importance, a man who commanded and whose commands were bid; buried with such a man, as one of his most prized possessions. A sleigh bell! A tinkling sleigh bell! That priceless object, coveted by many a warrior of that day — that sleigh bell was entombed with my chieftain — a chieftain whose unerring arrow would have silenced the writer of these lines with one TWANG, had we met two generations ago! "Ah, my sleigh bell! the bow (treasured more than Ulysses prized his famous weapon) ! that bowl! What flights do not my priceless treasures induce!" See how glibly my story reels off — and I am only a beginner- collector. Joseph Shuey of Scipio was out roaming around in the hills south of that town this fall, looking for I don't know what, until he became tired. He saw a nice little ledge jutting out from a wall,

266 IMPROVEMENT ERA on which a man might very comfortably stretch himself for a nap — very inviting. So Mr. Shuey went to this ledge and was about to lie down, when his eye caught a something, which at the moment looked suspiciously like a hornet's nest, but upside down. Usually a hornet's nest hangs suspended; but this object lay upon the ledge, under the protection of the overhang, resting on its wide bottom, the conical end uppermost. Mr. Shuey flecked a peb- ble at it. Instead of the dull thud papier mache gives out (for out of that material our first paper-maker builds his house), this object rang with an almost metallic clink. That was greatly unex- pected to Joseph Shuey, so he investigated. "Gladsomely beats the col- lector-heart"— particularly when in the quest of his quarry. With beating heart he prodded the thing with a stick. No hor- nets buzzed from beneath it. He gained courage to pry it loose, and it toppled over; then he saw it was a hollow bowl. Mr. Shuey had found an ancient piece of Indian pottery! A relic from the race of long ago! How long ago, no one knows. And my heart beat gladsomely, as a brother collector, when I saw this bowl that Joseph Shuey had found. It is eleven inches in diameter, with an orifice nine inches across; the contour of the bowl is restricted at the neck, as is the shape and fashion of all well-dressed bowls of that period. In height it is eleven inches. It has a small nub of solid pottery at the bottom, exactly as if the nub once rested in a corresponding hole in a basket. This fact gives rise to the thought that the maker of the bowl first made a basket of twined rushes or twigs, and then took <dabs of mud, and deftly shaped them inside that basket, sticking on until welded, squeezed thin and thinner, adding, pressing, joining coil after coil, cementing bit after bit to the wall that was slowly progressing, guided by eye and hand, and a subtle sixth Photo by Frank Beckivith Joseph Shuey and his bowl that looks as if it was made within a basket, which was later burned away.

GLADSOMELY BEATS THE COLLECTOR-HEART 267 sense known among master artisans as "feel," until she had constructed within that basket this bowl. Many who have studied the bowl think it bears the imprint of the weaving or plaiting of the basket once enclosing it. A smooth rock was held against the outside of the bowl to take up the pressure of her work. Then when fashioned, basket and all were stuck into the fire, and this bowl was fire-baked, the basket being burned away — but its imprint left. Such is the bowl found by Joseph Shuey, of the town of Scipio, county of Millard, in the state once owned by the Yewtahs, whose progenitors made that bowl. Carl O. W. Pierson, now of Sandy, was Cashier of the State Bank of Oasis, Oasis, Utah, in Millard county, from 1910 to 1920. During those ten years he lived on the great alkali flat of the Sevier desert. Around Oasis and Deseret was the home of the nomadic Indian each winter, in the dim and distant past, just as it was in the near-modern epoch. It was mild in climate; snow fell but lightly, and what little did fall soon disappeared; it was dry under foot. When the white man came there in the early '50's, he found wickiups a- plenty dotted over the bottoms, just as it was in the time of many generations ago, when each winter it was inhabited by the race which dwelt here pre- Photo by Frank Beckivith. A pleasant smile overspreads the face of Mr. Pierson as he fondles his Indian treasures. ceding the Ute. For what was adaptable to the present Indian's mode of life was equally favorable to his ancestors. Hence the region around Deseret and Oasis is a veritable treasure- house of things Indian. Mr. Pierson got many. He began gathering. And as he gathered, "gladsomely beat the collector-heart" within him as he saw his prizes gain in number, one by one. Peter Skeem, brother of Bishop Marcus Skeem, was plowing his field one day, when the plow shattered some pottery. He stopped, became interested, and with his hands, loosened the dirt. To his great joy he uncovered another bowl, unbroken, a specimen absolutely perfect.

268 IMPROVEMENT ERA Carl O. W. Pierson now owns that bowl. See the happy smile on his face! See with what fondness he stoop9 to take that treasure lovingly upon his knee! How fondly do the eyes of a collector dwell upon his heart's desire! This bowl is perfect as a specimen of ancient pottery. Thin, well executed, it is a piece of plain (undecorated) workmanship ranking with the best of that period. It has seen fire service, for it is burned black with many fires. The neck orifice is eight and a half inches in diameter; the full swell of the bowl at its greatest girth is thirteen inches across, and the height a trifle more than twelve inches. To the left of the bowl which is shown in the photo on Mr. Pierson's knee, is his big metate (corn-grinding stone) — a huge slab, rounded out in a hollow scoop, worn that way because of the hundreds and hundreds of corn-grinding operations conducted upon it. For a woman sat before that stone, poured into the hollow some corn, and with a mano (the upper, small handstone used for grinding) in her hands, crushed the corn into a meal, from which she was shortly to make a cake. And from long-continued eating of the meal so highly impregnated with stone dust as were those cakes (which the modern Pueblo and the present-day Mexican call a "tortilla") the teeth of all who partook of them were ground down. "Yes, yes," I hasten to interject; " 'now I've got' a skull in my office, in which every tooth is ground down just like that, showing the dark rings of the underbone, because all the enamel is worn off the grinding surfaces." In the photo of Mr. Pierson, next to the larger metate, and showing as a stick standing on the ground before the white and smaller grinding stone, is an ancient Indian bow. It rests against a crotch above at one end, and the other rests upon the ground. That bow is of two pieces of wood, adroitly fastened together, back to back, and showing the sinew marks of the former wrapping. The white slab of stone to the left is one of the nicest metates 1 have ever seen. It is made of a close-grained, white rock, thin, grace- ful, and beautiful. It is worn as nicely as hundreds of years of use of such a stone could fashion it. For I firmly believe that many of these portable metates outlived several generations, and that a use extending over a period of one hundred years or even more is not excessive. I think they were kept in use until broken and thus rendered unfit for further service. Lastly, the hobby to which Mr. Pierson has given full bent, has added to his collection a book of which he is very proud. It is "A Herbarium." His father-in-law, Erick Gillen, filled a mission in Sweden in 1894 and 1895. In his peregrination over that land, back and forth, 'round and about, he gathered one of every grass, herb, root, vine, and flower, and put each into a large volume, delicately

GLADSOMELY BEATS THE COLLECTOR-HEART 269 held in place by ingeniously gummed wafers. He put the book under pressure in a warm and dry place, and now, after thirty-two years, the delicate leaves1, the tiny tendrils, each form and contour, every dainty color and tint, is as perfectly preserved as if done yester- day. And to the names of each in Swedish, he added its technical Latin name. It is a work of love. It speaks the work of two years of a collector's time and toil, devotedly given to that task. Of it Mr. Pierson is justly proud. It is all the more valuable to him for the fact that when he was twenty-two he himself went on a mission to the same land, went over much of the same territory and now has delightful reminiscences to entertain his listener as he turns the pages of that precious book. When among his treasuretrove, surely Mr. Pierson must take great satisfaction in his collection which the years and his inclination have brought him. Should you come into my office some time when gloom hangs heavy, when Old Man Grouch sits enthroned, just slip up and murmur, "Now I've got — " Immediately will the magic words unleash a glib tongue; vigor- ously will I snatch the bait and run with the line, spinning off the full reel of my own story. For each precious object in my tiny collection has an episode connected with it that to me is enthralling. Each has its own bit of personal history. "As I was busied in taking the photo of this hieroglyphic, a rattler buzzed at me, and I deliberately insulted him by going on with the work — and added coals of fire on his head by sparing his life. In fact, when I met him a week later, I met him as an old friend and took his picture." Or, "I slept in Clear Creek Canyon eleven nights in the summer of '26 to get the psychic hang of the thing. That photo there of a hieroglyph discovered in the canyon, I consider rather expensive, for I lost a pair of toric-lens spectacles in the rocks there, and never could find them. Cost me $18." And thus does a bit of history cling around each object. If you can only induce me to begin, I must then tell my story. "Gladsomely beats the collector-heart," whether viewing his own, or seeing what his brother has gathered about him. Any of us may become "The Keeper of a Wonder House;" and as curator of that priceless collection, any of us will become a fluent speaker if you'll only say, "Now I've got — ." Delta, Utah.