Piecing Together Shards of History

The colors in the largest jug are those of the sky just after the sun drops behind the mountain--lavender, purple, beige, cream, pink and mauve.

The jug is two feet high and 18 inches in diameter. There are a few chinks where pieces are missing.

The amateur archeologist who has reconstructed this beautiful piece of pottery is Tom Kennedy, a handsome, long-boned man with the kind of even tan that comes from living and working in the desert, not from stretching out beside a pool.

Kennedy is a builder who rediscovered his love for Indian artifacts three years ago.

“I used to look for pottery and arrowheads when I was a kid, but then I got away from it,” he said.

He moved with his family to La Quinta when he was a year old, went to Indio High School and San Diego State College, then married and lives and works near what was the Kennedy Brothers Ranch, more than 2,000 acres of land up against the jagged mountains of La Quinta.

The ranch belonged to Kennedy’s father and uncle and is now occupied by golf courses and condominiums.

Of his rekindled interest in archeology, Kennedy said:

“I was out one day after a high wind and this amulet was lying right on top of the ground. It had been there from 200 to 500 years just waiting for the sand to shift and uncover it.”

The amulet is two inches long, a pointed oval of wafer-thin black stone, carved with a design of tiny dots.

The pieces of pottery Kennedy has painstakingly raked out of the earth were left by the Cahuilla Indians who lived in the Coachella Valley as long as 2,000 years ago.

Kennedy told me they made the jugs to hold water on the long treks to higher country in the heat of summer. The large sky-colored jug has a flowing shape, rounded and widest in the middle, tapering into a narrow neck and pouring edge.

The opening is too small for most men’s hands. Kennedy is sure women smoothed the inside.

I put my hand inside the jug. It was a mystical feeling to touch the surface of the inside of the jug some other woman had worked on centuries ago.

I knew what Kennedy had meant when he told me finding that first amulet had been almost a religious experience, the experience of being a part of the continuum of men and women who have lived in this valley.

The sky-colored jug was in more than 250 pieces when he found it in one of his favorite searching spots.

He showed me another pot, shorter and clay colored. He painstakingly fits the pieces and sticks them together with Elmer’s glue.

“That’s so if I make a mistake, I can soak it in water and the glue will dissolve and I can try again.”

It took him more than a thousand tries to properly fit together the pieces--many tinier than your little fingernail--of the sky-colored jug.

The Cahuillas ate mesquite beans--which are high in protein--gopher and rabbit. Kennedy has found dozens of gopher bones and located campsites.

“I found a circle of charcoal and the longer pieces which held up the living space. Whenever you find charcoal in the desert, you can be sure it’s Indian charcoal,” he says.

The third pot Kennedy showed me was also found in more than 250 pieces. It is the most elaborate he has seen. The jug is covered with designs--thick straight lines, sections of dots and a diamond-patterned section of fine crosshatched lines.

He works in the garage after dinner, saying to his wife, Sharon, “I’ll just be a minute.” She says, “I know, I know.”

Kennedy says that the area is rich with Indian relics. He has an obsidian arrowhead, black and shiny and faceted. Sharon found a perfect grindstone. He has found clamshell buttons and a long narrow implement gracefully carved into gentle curves. He has not been able to determine the material.

Kennedy does not display his collection, although he says he has several examples that are more complete than what he has seen in museums.

Tom Kennedy will keep on searching for relics of the Cahuillas. “I have another place a little farther out where I have found some wonderful stuff.”

I hope the Cahuillas would be pleased to know that someone who treasures their work is now its appreciative caretaker.