Indian Artifact Show featured Saturday at WCMS
Warren County native Kirk Wanamaker is a collector. His particular passion is arrowheads. He estimates he has 1,200 to 1,500 in his collection now, and, like many collectors, he loves to share his passion, and his collection, with others.
This has lead him to organize an Indian Artifact Show here in Warren County. The show will be held at Warren County Middle School this Saturday, Aug. 3, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wanamaker invites everyone to attend and see all the wonderful treasures on display, and to display their own Indian artifacts if they are fellow collectors.
An award will be given for the best Warren County artifact, which, as the name implies, requires that the artifact was found somewhere in Warren County. In addition, there will be raffle tickets available for many other prizes.
Collecting things is a uniquely human pastime. Admittedly, there are other creatures on this earth who seem to collect things, squirrels stashing acorns, birds picking up pieces of string and foil, but most of these do so with some sort of functional purpose.
Humans, on the other hand, collect things just because we like them. Whether it’s art, records, Barbie dolls, salt and pepper shakers, knives, guns, or comic books, most of us have had some sort of collection, usually a minor one that doesn’t take up a lot of space, and as such, qualifies us as casual collectors.
On the other end of this spectrum are hard-core collectors. They can have entire rooms filled with whatever oddball or obscure items they have a passion for. And some not so oddball or obscure.
Wanamaker probably falls somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, since he doesn’t have a house full of artifacts, but does have a considerable collection. He has been hunting, finding and collecting arrowheads for around 25 years now, having begun when he was 9 years old or so. He remembers the reason he got started.
“Old stories from my grandpa. They used to live on a farm up in Grundy County, where two creeks met, and when he was a kid, he used to talk about picking them up, and they’re so flat, they would skip good across the water,” said Wanamaker.
“He talked a lot about that. And then we started going up to the old home place, the farm where he was raised, and this is where some of this collection was started.
“And then from other people around the area telling me when they would plow when I was a kid. They’d say, ‘Kirk, we’ve plowed this field up over here the other day. When it rains, you need to come over and look for some arrowheads.’ Well, we’d go look, and there they were, a lot of arrowheads. And it’s just stemmed on from there, over the years, and it’s just kind of like a craving.”
A lot of collectors out there probably have similar stories of an interest passed down through generations. And the same will be true of Kirk’s family.
Daughters Peyton, 8, and Alexis, 4, have already shown an interest and dad takes them along on hunts now.
For more information about tomorrow’s show, call Wanamaker at 934-3233.