Swift Silver??

boomer said:
Brushy B: glad you brought up the mud and getting down and dirty and dam cold. some times so cold you shack better then a rock star. has for the tug. the Spanish would take silver shaped like a cake slice and butt them side by side on a mule so they could carry them easier. myself a small 3 or 4" by 8" by 2" bar would do the same thing. why? I don't know. the franch that mined smokey creek at carter caves state park and carter city did this. rick highs from Ashland was with us just past the lid gap on the caney side, the small mine opening there. he went down inside and found a leather type bag with the bottom of wood, it was more rot than bag. that photo kind of reminds me of that.
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What is that photo of your avatar? Is it silver in a vein?
 

EC.Mason said:
Thats an older type shoe for sure. Very nice. Supposed to be good luck finding these!
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Not good luck for me.. my old one was found on an old path along a steep hillside. Lost it somewhere along the way back.. go figure..
 

Brushy Bandit said:
View attachment 1413238 Anyone have any ideas what this has been? I have no clue, but it came from that area down the creek a ways under a cliff , I also found quite a few old nails with it the square kind, not modern nails.
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Put a magnet to it, it has the color of rusted cast iron. My guess is someone's broken cookware? Part of it looks like a grate off an old hibachi grill.
 

E C: at the line of rock. the rock that sits by itself on the east near the bank. its about 25 feet high. has small ledge on west side that you can park a boat and climb on. there is a split that you can shimmy up to the top. there are three hands carved, palms facing up pointing toward fork of caney, just above the caney fork the little sandy has five sharp bends that look like a hand. on one carved hand at line of rock there is a circle carved in middle of hand. at five fingers of sandy, look to the west and you will see a hill that would be about where a palm would be. when I was there I saw an opening vary close to the top of this hill it looked kind of sunk in. there was a lot of Brush around it. behind me just to the north is the rich mine on caney. if you take the road from mouth of caney toward the boat ramp on caney just before the road dips down toward the boat ramp look south and you will see the hill. I can only guess? is it a mine opening or is it a storage for something. one of the other hands shows a square carved in the center. does the one hand say go to circle of
a hill, there you will find a square hole going down?
 

Thank ya Boomer, are the hands clear, I guess I mean like no missing Them? I am feeling I'm gonna check this out in the very near future, very near.
Is it possible the circle in the hand is an Eye? That would be interesting.

Also I believe Native Americans have been known to use variations of the circle to mean earth, water, fire, and wind. If it could be an eye , seems like I remember the eye in the hand meaning a portal to a magical place, or happy place.
 

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franklin if you mean me. what it shows is a silver vain that miners worked around 1730's the group found the mine also gold in a near by creek. south part of Utah on the virgin river. now those are cliffs WOW. that was some bad hiking. one guy had all kinds of photos and got one to bring back with me.
 

brushy b. the top of the rocks are flat. over the years they have been worn down by rain and wind, but are vary clear still. has for Indian signs, it depends on which family group was making a statement. has for the hands and other carvings around the county, you will find simple carvings like the hands because it was a safe place. this looks French because its simple. other carvings are vary cryptic in the spinach style. in some places around this area, I wonder a lot about this one thing? where the Spanish and French working together with the Indians. I can see the French and Indians working this place. but not Spanish. need to find more clues to figure this out. some of those Spanish carvings vary hard to understand.
 

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BB I posted this a few years ago on one of the Waybill threads. These are the hands Boomer is talking about. I outlined it in soapstone which I later learned is not good for carvings. The picture is kind of small but you may be able to blow it up. There are many other carvings on this rock. Whether they are extremely old or have anything to do with the Waybill or Swift, I have no idea. However they are interesting.
 

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I was at Caney yesterday, the water is very low, 20-25 feet wide in places. With the weather the way it's been, combined with the low water it makes for the perfect time to be up there.
 

This is a great find! I see both sides..we may never know..The Indians were very capable of smelting the silver in later years as they had learned the betterways from the white man. Until then a lot of their silver would have been less pure. There is a way to find out, but it costs some big bucks, have it tested with a mass spectrometer it will give you all of the minerals and metals associated with the sample. Then we could compare that with some of the coins and bars found throughout KY and even from the Pigeon water cave find…some might match. We could also take some samples from the six WAY BILL mines upCaney Creek (now that we know where they are) and compare them, even though thepieces found may be more pure they would have some of the same trace elements. Anyone have the connection to the MS equipment? Keep in mind allof the info they got from Hijacker Cooper's tie..hundreds of pieces of info.

By the way this looks nothing like the silver found in Ohio where the Shawnee were finding it not far from Xenia. I have seen one guys find of about 10 pounds ofit..that silver looks like it was spattered by hitting rocks or something. It has been Mass Spectrometer analyzed and contains not only silver, but a large percent of Platinum. There is a ledge of silver that goes several miles 10? Not far from Carter KY and has outcrops that the Indians may have got pieces of. It has some gold in it at places. There is a vein that goes under the Grayson Reservoir Dam — starts near the overflowsection and goes into the hill close by (left if you are facing the dam from down river).
I think boomer mentioned something about other silver possibilities near the Dam.
 

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I've been around a ms gun, a couple years ago in a power plant. They had specialty company come in and identify some old structural steel, so they could document a welding procedure. I remember all the talk bout how expensive the equipment was, it told down to decimals the % of each element present. I don't have access to it now. It was a wicked piece and very simple to use. Not sure if ms gun is proper name for it now that I think bout it but we called it "The Gun". They didn't like Boiler makers "playin" with it, I know that For Sure.
Curtis do you have access to the results of tests done on other pieces, or pictures of other finds in the area that you can share?
 

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I have an acid kit, it contains different acids for 4kts of gold, platinum, and silver. Both pieces show a reaction that means silver. This has been my only experience with the acid and I don't know anything other than what the paper that came with the kit tells, which I would consider very minimal and basic. Also Boomer gave a little info on it. Seems like the acid is more for determining plated or solid jewelry. When you see the pieces in person, I believe it is obvious that they contain silver and are more than slag, so the acid really aint much help.
 

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That equipment sounds like something a University would have. You could try calling U.K. geology dept.
If its used to check the integrity of welds in steel structures then maybe a state bridge inspector would point you in the right direction?
 

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