Sticking a Thumb in the Eye of Anti-Christ Archies

What did the archies do when they stumbled on the Ark, they tried to burn it. What did these do when tens of thousands of slate tablets and other artifacts were discovered by farmers plowing their fields, digging cellars, etc at the turn of the century, they cry "forgery" to murder against the light, of course.

THE CONTROVERSY

Chapter II

One crisp Spring morning in 1874, a farmer newly arrived from the East, clearing timber nearby the village of Crystal, in central Michigan northwest of Detroit, unearthed a beautifully worked piece of black slate in the form of a shuttle covered with curious markings adjacent to a drawing of a man's head wearing queerly fashioned head gear (Fig. 1). Within the course of the next few months, additional unexplainable pieces came to light in an area between the villages of Crystal, St. Louis and Edmore-a copper stiletto, a small clay box and a large slate tablet-each bearing undecipherable markings-together with some strange looking cryptic characters.

Wonderment stirred the community. Never suspecting that any large group, other than Indians, had preceded them on this land tucked away in the heart of Michigan, farmers in Montcalm and Gratiot Counties stood in profound amazement at this assortment of copper tools, pictured tablets, spear-points and bracelets now spread before them. How could such unrecognizable material come to have been buried in this sparsely populated farming community? Who, they asked, might have buried them? Were they remains of a race long since wiped out? Certain it was that human beings once occupied this land-here was tangible evi­dence made by human hands. Markings unmistakably bespoke a writing. No one could read it. Wonderment spread as a bewildered country-side found itself the center of nation-wide attention. Curi­osity-seekers flocked to the tiny village.

Everyone offered suggestions. The Mystic Symbol by Henrietta Mertz; 1933.