Walter Guinn Cooper
You’re probably not reading this, if your name happens to be Walter Guinn Cooper … why?
Because Mr. Cooper is dead.
(Okay, that’s conjecture – but it seems only likely that a guy whose various safe deposit box contents would happen to be found buried in a creekbed in Arkansas wouldn’t be around to enjoy the aforementioned safe deposit box contents any longer)
“It’s just kind of strange that we find it buried in a creek bed here,” Mikles said. “We had to use a back hoe to move it. It’s not something one or even two are going to be able to pick up.”
Mikles said many of the legal documents have deteriorated but considers the findings a part of history.
“I can find where it says warranty deed up there was stamped in March of 1892,” Mikles said.
The last name Castleberry is on one of the tattered papers. A stamp shows that it was filed in neighboring Logan County.
- Police Work To Solve Bank Vault Mystery
4029TV.com 2009-11-03
What does the almighty internet have to say about Mr. Cooper? The most likely reference I found was (oddly enough) a deleted reference at SpiroMound.com (a site about some various ancient relics buried in Oklahoma by the Arkansas River).
Fortuitously preserved in the Google Cache (must’ve been deleted recently?):
Cherry, James
1985 Transcript of an interview with Walter Guinn Cooper, April 3.- The Spiro Mound: A Photo Essay (References)
Deleted page pulled from Google Cache 2009-11-05
If, by some chance, I am horribly mistaken, my apologies to you Mr. Cooper… perhaps you could explain the mystery of your buried belongings and deleted citation?
Spiro was a ceremonial center and mortuary location. The complex was in use from approximately 950 A.D. until 1450 A.D. The Brown mound and the Plaza were the location of the ceremonial activities, at least for the first phases of the site’s life. The ceremonies were connected with the celebration of the lives of the dead elite and their ultimate interment in The Spiro Mound mortuary area. In the later stages of its life, the site became a vacant ceremonial center with few or no permanent living facilities. It should be noted that the Spiro people did not depend on agriculture and that maize was a minor part of their diet.
Apropos.
T+00:20:00 Update:
Found some more material recently pulled from spiromound.com:
Photograph 7 shows them digging in the third cone from the north. W. Guinn Cooper is shown in this picture. In his interview with Dr. James Cherry, Cooper discusses the discovery of what probably is this blade: “and there was a fellow, I was trying to think of his name. I had his picture…he was a professor…He used to come down here all the time…He’s interested in this stuff and he bought one of those long thin, well you’d call it a knife probably…Yeh, it wasn’t flint, I don’t know what it was…but anyhow the old preacher broke it, I remember when he broke it and I pulled it out.” This would account for the fact the piece was broken. Although Dr. Bell said the diggers wouldn’t let outsiders know exactly where items were found, it is safe to assume that this piece came from the third cone from the north in the area shown in Photographs 7 and 11.
- Spiro Mound Artifact Database: Blades / Knives
Deleted page pulled from Google Cache 2009-11-05
T+00:33:00 Update:
Confirmed dead:
50. Guinn Cooper obituary, n.d., unknown newspaper, clipping in Correspondence, Inquiries and Appreciative Letters Folder, RKSM; Walter Guinn Cooper to Joy, November 13, 1974, Spiro Folder, RKSM.
- Looting Spiro Mounds: an
American King Tut’s tomb
by David La Vere
2007
T+01:00:02 Update:
So why the buried safe deposit boxes? Apparently Mr. Cooper had a collection of his own…
In 1967, Guinn Cooper donated his entire collection of Spiro artifacts to the Poteau Chamber of Commerce. The chamber was not really sure what to do with these hundreds of extremely valuable points, engraved shell cups, copper pieces, pottery, beads, and such.
. . .
As the value of Spiro goods skyrocketed, larger museums increased their security and tracking measures. Now, smaller museums became targets. And often the thefts were not by bands of high-tech thieves but were inside jobs done by people who just coveted the artifacts or the money they could bring.
In September or October 1991, officials at the Robert S. Kerr Museum in Poteau noticed several Spiro pieces donated by Guinn Cooper missing from their collection. These included almost ninety arrow points and knives; a large number of beads, as well as a complete necklace of stone beads; a stone ornamental pipe; a couple of engraved conch shells; a shell breastplate; and a by-then-famous “long-nosed God maskette.”
- Looting Spiro Mounds: an
American King Tut’s tomb
by David La Vere
2007
… a collection he elected to give away. The man was a member of a team of belated grave-robbers; granted, they were struggling to make ends meet during the Great Depression, but they were also clued in to a profitable scheme and I would be surprised if they’d stopped at the Spiro Mounds.
Is it possible that he had staked a claim to land he believed to contain more of the same?
What did the Arkansas safe deposit boxes contain before they were buried?
Apparently the Masonic Order and Egyptian mythology are involved, as well.
Is this some horrible manifestation of history-as-rewritten by Dan Brown ..?
Try to ignore the obvious plot holes – it’ll all make sense in the end…
