Chapter 6

Bob Grinder patented land on the banks of the beautiful Buffalo River, about three-fourths of a mile down river from the bridge that now crosses U.S. Highway 65.  He built a log house high on a hill overlooking the river.  This was one of the locations where the Spanish had found silver.  There was a mineshaft here and Bob chose to place a large flat rock over it and build the fireplace here.  He built three rooms with logs he cut with an axe and notched the ends so that the logs laid one on the other and the space between was filled with clay.  This was shortly after he and Flurry arrived in this area.  One of the bedrooms was for Flurry, his sister, who had come with him from their home in Tennesee.  They came with a wagon train that followed a military road to Batesville, Arkansas.  This movement became known as the “Trail of Tears.”  Many Cherokee people died on this cold harsh road after they wre forced to move from the place of their birth.

Flurry and David Barnett, who had traveled the long road with Bob, were married at Lebron.  David was Bob’s friend and now his brother-in-law.  Bob was at Flurry and David house when John Reeves came by with the news that some Indians were gathering on the river for a powwow.  Bob had been alone since Flurry married and welcomed the though of seeing the campgrounds.  Reeves said that the Shawnee and Osage had arrived early because the Osage were trying to persuade the Shawnee to stay neutral in the simmering trouble between the Osage and the Cherokee.  The U.S. Government had moved the Cherokee into the Osage hunting grounds.

Bob put in his deer skin canoe at a gravel bar below his house and planned to see his friend, William Delk, along the way to the powwow.  His canoe moved around the bend above the place where Dry Creek runs into the Buffalo River.  He paddled around the sweeping HorseShoe Bend and faced the short, swift rapids called white water.  This water was like riding a bucking bronc.  Ina second, he plunged into a narrow place, then passed by a picturesgue bluff topped with pines.  After hitting more of the high waves, he was pushed down and around a bend by the water.  He paddled through the last rippling shoal, down the stretch of quiet water tot he long gravel bar below his friend’s house.  There was a clear, cold, spring near where Bob pulled his canoe on land.  He stopped here for a refreshing drink of water.  To Bob’s surprise, the settlers here had built a springhouse over the spring.  Inside this house, milk and butter were kept.

William Delk was of German ancestry.  His people had migrated from the Black Forest and were good hunters.  It was men like William who provided meat for the wagon train Bob had travelled with, beginning about ten miled northeast of Lebanon, Tenessee.

Elizabeth (King) Delk was busy cooking cornbread and frying meat.  The smell overwhelmed Bob.  He could see the Delk children playing and hear the barking of dogs and wished he, too, had a family.  Bob saw William Delk walk into the yard and command the dogs to stop barking.  William reached out his hand to greet Bob.  Bob was invited to eat the mid-day meal with the Delks.

After finishing his meal.  Bob walked down the path to where his canoe was waiting.  He pulled it into the river and drifted over a deep blue hole of water.  For about forty feet he drifted, then he headed straight toward a high irregular wall of red rock.  Below the red bluff, the river swung to the right.  Directly away from the bluff, the canoe turned into a long pool.  Here Bob took his fishing hook and dropped in into the clear water.  Before Bob had time to relax, he was pulling a fish over the side of the canoe.  He was delighted with the thoughts of smoked fish.  This he did when he reached a shady little gravel bar.  Over low, burning embers, he placed strips of fish hanging between two poles.  Beside the warm fire, Bob lay on a bearskin and put another over him for protection from the cold moist air.  Here he fell asleep.