BRYAN REINHARDT, FLINTKNAPPING HALL OF FAME FLINTKNAPPER; # 11

BRYAN RIENHARDT

gray Edward's Plateau chert Grey Ghosts (Lithic Casting Lab Photo)

The Gray Ghosts of Gustine (Harwood) . It was a warm day in Gustine, Texas, a small town in Comanche County. It was 1949 but in Gustine it could have been 1849, a town know for rodeo and cowboys, a town of only 584 acres and less than a person per acre. It was a quit, sunny, summer day . A slight breeze had come up as Bryan Reinhardt, a large, burly German, clean shaven, World War Two Vet with tattoos on his forearms, was polished up for the day and heading to town. Taking the trash out of the back porch on the way out, he tells his wife he'll be back in an hour or so. He checks his receipt and his wallet as he pulls his keys out of his pocket and climes into his truck. He pulled up in front of the hardware store in a nearby town, excited at what he knew would change his life. As he passed through the front door a tiny bell on the upper frame alerted the proprietor of his entrance. "I know what yer here fer Bryan, It's out back" They two men made small town small talk as they shuffled into to the poorly light musty back room. The proprietor pulled on a tied together string with frayed ends, a hanging light bulb with no shade brightened up the room. Recently swept wooded floor, slatted wooden shelves on either side. There, half cover in the shadow of the shelving resting on an old oak pallet, was a large cardboard box with the image of a lapidary saw. Bryan suppressed the excitement, he was not the kind to express emotion. "Yup, that's the One," said Bryan. The Clerk asked Bryan what he plans on doing with the saw and Bryan replies, `cuttin' some stone". The two men load the saw in the back of the pick up and off he went into the history of modern flintknapping lore. Bryan Reinhardt had developed a method of mass producing large flint spear points, none under nine inches long, (known by collectors as Gray Ghosts, for the color of the flint he used) with the use of a rock saw and complex lever flaker (fulcrum and lever). Reinhardt quarried and processed 100s of tons of gray Edward's Plateau chert. Armed with a crowbar, shovel and wooden creates Bryan would quarry material, drive it back to his home in Gustine, slab it and trim it on his lapidary saw. In the yard of his nicely kept middle class ranch house Reinhardt had an old fashioned trailer, with a wooden addition. In this trailer was his lapidary shop, the place where gray ghost blanks were cut and trimmed. Out behind the house, on the back 1/4 acre were several huge flint piles, a chest high pile of rejected slab cutoffs, a couple truck loads worth, a supply of raw flint, and a giant debitage pile of waste flakes, this testified to by Callahan. Several years later Charlie Shewey flew over that part of Texas in a plane he was piloting and confirmed the flint piles, they were plenty large enough to see from the air. Once he had the slabs cut and trimmed he would heat treat the material to the point that the flakes would remove with less effort but not enough to make them too brittle for the next stage of reduction. For the actual "flintknapping" stages, Bryan removed the first stage of conchoidal flakes, this was done with an elaborate jig set up. The jig was an elaborate set of holes and pins that allowed Bryan to apply fulcrum and lever pressure at any angle and from any direction to any size or shape piece of flint. The edging was done with micro-lever and shearing techniques. This gave the early Gray Ghosts their characteristic steep margin double bevels. Eventually Bryan had several saws buzzing and once, and piles of waste flakes accumulated daily, hence the massive debitage dumps. . His production was so successful he sold his flint work by the gross. Bryan began making good money, in the 1960s he was getting paid 25 cents an inch. According to Dr. John Whittaker (1999) , archaeologist and flintknapping historian, " the lore among Texas knappers is that Reinhardt only sold in orders of 10,000 inches, (to dealers) at a dollar per inch, and demanded payment in gold coins." Ads could be seen in the classified sections of lapidary journals, and The Farmer's Almanac for "ceremonial spear points" and most gift shops along Route 66 were fat with them. It is estimated that Bryan Reinhardt produced nearly one hundred thousand Gray Ghosts from 1950 to 1982. There is a Gray Ghost in nearly every collection of lithic art in the World. Charlie Shewey, world renowned arrowhead collector, collected dozens of Gray Ghosts, and even befriended Bryan Reinhardt and purchased his best work. In the Shewey collection is one Gray Ghost point over 23 inches long. Bryan Reinhardt had been a loner up through the 1960s, until he met three other knappers that had sought him out. It was the late 1960s when Errett Callahan, (a young graduate student from Virginia at the time) J.B. Sollberger (the father of Texas flintknapping), and Norman Jefferson (then a student of Callahan) ventured into Gustine to meet Reinhardt. At first Reinhardt denied being a flintknapper, and told the three men that he was simple a rock collector. The three wise men went into Reinhardt's living room and he was quit pleasant. On the walls in his home Reinhardt had dozens of magazine photos, each with images of artifacts, the articles claimed the items were authentic, but Reinhardt's, after finely admitting he was a knapper, insisted he had made them all. Even though he admitted that he was a knapper he never divulged his methodologies. Reinhardt had moved, and his old house was down street and around the block, Callahan and Sollberger, went and explored Reinhardt's previous dwelling and found massive amounts of debitage there. Sollberger, having experimented with fulcrum and lever methods, new immediately upon inspecting the debitage how the Gray Ghosts had been made, fulcrum and lever. Slab cut-offs were a dead giveaway as to lap-knapping (Callahan 2000). Callahan and Sollberger were very interested in Reinhardt's knapping as they could relate it to possible applications into prehistoric knapping technologies. Also, Reinhardt took an interest in the knapping styles of Sollberger and Callahan and after there acquaintance Reinhardt's knapping products had a more traditional look. True Gray Ghost collectors can see 3 distinct phases of Reinhardt's work: 1. His early years are very angular. 2. After meeting Sollberger and Callahan, a more traditional look. 3. After meeting two later knappers, Nelson and Warren, a more patterned and eccentric phase. Callahan and Sollberger met with Reinhardt off and on for several years and kept in touch by mail. Then Reinhardt, perhaps in fear of being arrested, became reclusive to the point of chasing Sollberger and Callahan off with a shot gun. The two men waited around and on Sunday morning Reinhardt went off to church, while he was gone the two men got a good look around the Reinhardt place, this when the first site of the "new home" debitage and cut off plies. Callahan was even able to secure some photos of this (Callahan 2000). On an earlier visit Callahan was out in the front yard with Reinhardt and the sheriff pulled up in his jeep, Callahan was sure that this was the end for the Gray Ghost, when the officer opened the tail gate and dumped a load of flint in Reinhardt's front yard. "Those German's stuck together" said Callahan of the occurrence. Callahan and Sollberger had traveled 142.7 miles from Dallas to Gustine several times, but this was the last trip. A few years later Callahan received a Christmas card from Reinhardt stating he had been reborn, and he was sorry for his behavior, Callahan phoned Reinhardt and told him he never understood why he did that, Callahan had been Reinhardt's only advocate. In the mid to late 1970s Bryan befriended two other "lapidary- flintknappers", Larry Nelson of Ironton, Missouri and Richard Warren of Llano, Texas. Warren, was inspired by Reinhardt, and later would produce a great many Gray Ghost type points himself. Warren's Ghosts were of black novaculite. According to Charlie Shewey, Warren's father-in-law was a wet stone miner and was able to provide him with perfect slabs for knapping. Warren learned the basics of knapping years earlier by Larry Nelson, a world class traditional knapper whom had a graduate degree in engineering from the University of Denver. 0rginally Warren would make the blanks and Nelson would finish them, much like a micro-factory or cottage industry, similar to what is speculated to have transpired by prehistoric Danish Dagger knappers. Warren was latter known as the founder of "teliolithics" or art knapping. Art knapping involves not only slabbing the flint and heating, as Reinhardt did, but taking the next step of power diamond grinding the shape and contour of the point. The only thing left to do is a final series of pattern flakes. Warren, an ex -Navy man, was going to be a doctor like his brother but dropped out in his final year to pursue knapping (Shewey 1999). According to Dr. John Whittaker (1999) Jim Hopper, who was largely responsible for spreading "lap-knapping" (short for lapidary knapping) among the early Fort Osage knappers, Hopper was inspired by Richard Warren. Warren also inspired two traditional Virginian knappers; Errett Callahan (considered the father of modern stone knife making) and Scott Silsby whom were responsible for the popularity of early pattern flaked knifes, they were the first to perfect the Warren style on hafted blades. Jack Cresson a traditional knapper from Moorestown, New Jersey credits Silsby for spreading art- knapping through the eastern United States, and notes that Silsby refereed to lap-knapping as "cheat and chip". But Callahan's Piltdown Productions catalog gave pattern flaked knives a world wide exposure. Callahan went on to show that pattern flaked knives could be accomplished without modern tools and later began a traditional knapping movement. While Silsby and Callahan turned Warren style points into knives, a southern knapper was fluting the Warren style points. Steve Behrnes, an acquaintance of J.B. Sollberger, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana had created a steel jig that could flute the wafer thin Warrens without breaking them. Steve eaked out a fair living knapping at his old style Cajun home. Jim Hopper, Steve Behrnes and Richard Warren met at Warren's place in 1992, within two weeks of the meeting Warren reportedly shot himself to death, however there were rumors that he moved to a ranch his wife inherited in Calgary, Canada. A few rumors of Warren and his wife sightings in Winnipeg have also been noted (Did they see Elvis there too?). According to John Whittaker, he met a man named Charles McGee, McGee had an "arrowhead making jig", McGee told John that before W.W.II McGee had been friends with another lever jig knapper, it turned out to be Bryan Rhinehardt. The Jig is quite elaborate and has a hinged lever and movable holding pins. It is obvious a lot of thinking went into these machines. Robert Blue of Studio City, California was inspired by a collection of Reinhardt's points , Reinhardt had been long dead but Blue did find fellow Gray Ghost collector, Charlie Shewey in Missouri. Robert offered to buy all of Shewey's Gray Ghosts and Richard Warren points and that money was no object. Charlie refused Blue's offer, but directed Robert to Richard Warren. After Robert bought a fair number of points, Warren shared some of his secrets with Robert Blue and introduced him to Jim Hopper, whom Warren had taught. Jim Hopper and Robert Blue became good friends and Robert became very good at art knapping. Barney DeSimone, couched Robert through his early years of knapping. Later Robert inspired Barney to return somewhat to lapidary knapping. It was Robert Blue that taught Ray Harwood to knap in the lever style of Reinhardt, Ray produced dozens of "Raynish Daggers" with the lever flaker. The Raynish Daggers were simply slab points in the form of 10 inch Danish Daggers ("2-D daggers" -not 3 dimensional). These were what Callahan called the ugliest Danish Daggers he had ever seen. After Robert's death and some prompting from DeSimone and Callahan, Harwood returned to traditional flintknapping. One interesting bit of knapping lore I overheard at a knap in goes like this:" Steve Behenes had invented this steel fluting jig that could flute supper this preforms. Steve was close to Robert Blue at the time and he sent Robert a thin Folsom and the detatched flutes, Robery returned the detached flute -and he had fluted them ! Knapper, Billy Joe Sheldon a slab knapper from Folsom, New Mexico has produced a video on the lapidary method of flintknapping and he is really good. Many California knappers that I know have adapted his methods. Sheldon's methods intail using the Ishi stick as a lever on one's leg and slab knapping on a bench. Back in the 1970s Reinhardt, Warren and Nelson shared ideas and Bryan's work showed some change, some fancy pieces and a bit more of a traditional looking work product. But even then when a man commented to Bryan that his work did not look like "Indian points" , Bryan Replied; " I'm note trying to make Indian points, I make Reinhardt points!" It was true, Bryan, in inventing and producing the Edward's Plateau Gray Ghosts had not only invented a new point type and a new craft style, he would change the face of flintknapping forever. Bryan Reinhardt passed away in 1982 from either emphysema or cancer, but the legendary flintworker of Gustine and his Gray Ghosts will live on forever. The International Flintknappers ‘ Hall of Fame and Museum is encouraging individuals of all ages to “Be A Superior Example,” through a new education program as part of a new curriculum to promote healthy habits, while encouraging everyone to live free of drugs and other such substances or vices. It serves as the central point for the study of the history of flintknapping in the United States and beyond, displays flintknapping-related artifacts and exhibits, and honors those who have excelled in the craft, research/ writing, promoting events, and serving the knapping community in an ethical and wilderness loving manner.