Mammoth Hunters in Oklahoma

A few thousand small river rocks were delivered to my yard by my landscaper. I soon discovered there were hundreds of carved and pigmented rocks with mammoth figures, images of some other extinct animals, Sasquatch. Some rocks told a story, some had instructions for killing a mammoth. Also found in my yard was a 12-inch high ancient concrete mammoth sculpture with thousands of tiny carved rocks and scenes. A magnifying lens was necessary to create such small figures, and also a magnifying camera lens. This book has almost 250 pages of photographs and as much information as I can deduce from studying the rocks. I am a writer and a retired book editor, but I quickly became retired no longer when I discovered the story in these rocks.

Christina Vaughan is a writer and retired book editor. She was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. When she was six, the family moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She moved to San Francisco when she was twenty-one. In college she studied foreign languages, creative writing, music, ancient history, and anthropology. She has always been fascinated by ancient cultures and civilizations, as well as the evolution of languages. Her interest began in Pawhuska. Her father's best friends and ranch hands were Osages. The Vaughan family had a long and close relationship with the Osages. Her grandfather, W.W. Vaughan and his wife, Rosa Belle, moved to Pawhuska in 1920. He was an attorney helping Osages get free of their government imposed guardianships, and her grandmother was the town piano teacher. Many of her students were young Osage girls. W.W. Vaughan was murdered for trying to bring killers of Osages to justice, covered by David Grann in his book Killers of the Flower Moon. Christina loved to dance and accompanied her parents to the Osage Dances. The flickering campfire, the colorful blankets, the jingling of the leg bands of bells worn by the men, the fancy dance Ponca Dancers with their feathered headdresses and costumes, the rhythm of the drums and the mysterious chanting, all thrilled her. Even after they moved to Bartlesville, they sometimes attended the dances. While in elementary school Christina discovered her mother's National Geographic magazines dating back to 1922. She looked through them all, as well as newer issues that came in the mail. From Aztec coloring books to library books, Christina investigated Aztec, Greek, and Roman civilizations. She was intensely interested in the cultural growth of our species. In the 1960s there were no archaeology classes at OSU, but she was able to take an ancient history course. She continued delving into ancient history while working in San Francisco. She married, had a son, eventually divorced and went back to college. Later she became Senior Editor at a small publishing company and wrote many books of her own. She married again and in 2020 they moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where the mammoth hunters in Oklahoma were magically revealed.