Hale, Duane. Cyrus N. Ray: The Abilene Man
Cyrus Newton Ray was a man who found his sole purpose of fulfillment by finding evidences of artifacts from the past. His original studies were focused on the medical field: osteopathy, which he received a degree for in June 2, 1909. It is bizarre to know that archaeology was not Cyrus N. Ray’s field of study. He has found a society called “Texas Archeological and Paleontological Society (Texas Archeological Society) in 1928. Because he was an amateur at archaeology, his name is well known in the Texas archaeological world.
Osteopathy and the finding of human skulls have one thing in common: the relevance to the bones. The huge field difference between osteopathy and archaeology is very different, but this only concludes one thing. History has intrigued Cyrus N. Ray so much that it has caused him to switch his professions from the medical field to archaeology. He feels content when he is slowly discovering a little bit of history every time he finds an artifact. Content: Cyrus Newton Ray was an amateur at archaeology because that field of study was not even his original profession.
His original profession was osteopathy but because he got drawn in one day by reading an article by Dr. Harold J. Cook, “which described the finding of arrowheads embedded in gravel with the skeleton of a buffalo of an extinct Pleistocene species at Colorado City, Texas” Ever since then, he has discovered many different artifacts that made him well known in the Texas world of archaeology due to the fact that Texas was one of the only state where archaeology was not at importance.
His determination for archaeology was full of willpower that even through the Great Depression, Ray still used his own money to publish articles about his current findings. Cyrus N. Ray wanted everyone to know about his findings because he wanted everyone to be fascinated by the history tied to the artifacts. Critique: From reading this article, I felt as though the author, Duane Kendall Hale, did have a noticeable biasness. It was a little misleading because the author gives two points of view on Cyrus N. Ray.
Most of the time, the author continuously says throughout the article, that some of Ray’s discoveries were credited to others. And many of the other archaeologists would completely not mention Ray’s name when reporting their findings. For the author, he feels as though this isn’t fair for Cyrus N. Ray. But then, the author mentions that Ray kept his location secretive, and because of that, future chances of discoveries were lowered because he kept his locations confidential. Also, the author concludes that Ray was difficult to work with, and his personality was not very compatible with others.
I was convinced by the author’s thesis because history is so important to our society right now. Presently, we just can’t focus on the present and disregard the past forever. The past happened for a reason and it is there for us to acknowledge it. So for someone with a completely different profession like Cyrus N. Ray, it was a great thing for him to go into archaeology to figure out the past even more. This passage was relatively easy to read because it was a biography, but with the biased voice of the author thrown in, it made it a little harder to comprehend.
