The First Americans

A word should now be said for William McGlone, who controls visits to the ranch areas of interest in southeastern Colorado. Initially, McGlone made a presentation at a meeting of some 50 ranchers in the area. On display were photos of the kind of thing we are looking for. Fifteen of the ranchers said they had similar inscriptions on their property. As a result McGlone was appointed to control visitors to the sites in an orderly way.

Dr J. Huston McCulloch has made important analyses of Hebrew writing on the Bat Creek Tablet found in a Tennessee mound. The site was excavated years ago by professional Smithsonian archaeologists, who published one illustration upside-down. Inverted, the words can be read in a type of Hebrew lettering used about 1800 years ago. The tablet's date has since been confirmed by carbon-14 dating of wooden ear spools and the analysis of metallic composition of brass bracelets found with a skeleton in the mound.

One effort related to the supposed Ogam located in Southeastern Colorado resulted in a series of 180 photographs being published in an album. The best photos were selected from four collections taken by Richard Lynch, Sharon and Robert Wilson and this writer. The idea was that if someone saw these examples, that someone might be able to make translations. (By comparison, translation of the Mayan glyphs took 200 years, because everyone held onto their examples, selfishly). The happy consequence is that Michel-Gerald Boutet, of Quebec, Canada, took only six weeks to translate ten of the Colorado Ogam examples. He writes about it in The Celtic Connection.

The story of how Boutet found out about Colorado Ogam reads like an unbelievable yarn. Boutet, at present an art instructor, was trained in France in Burgundy. While there, he became interested in the rock art of the area, some of which included early Ogam. He learned to make translations. Then back in Quebec, he was viewing a television program by Dr. Gerald Leduc on the subject of rock inscriptions in Quebec. Surprisingly, as the TV images of the inscriptions flashed by, Boutet found he could read them. He wrote to Dr. Leduc, who suggested he obtain a copy of The Colorado Ogam Album. Boutet is now a valued friend of mine, and his work is progressing apace.