Our Early Everyman, like the Antlered Underwater Panther we use for the Clarion Friends banner, is an early resident taken from among many prehistoric petroglyphs at Parkers Landing on the Allegheny River in Clarion County. When low water made fishing easy, area residents gathered at Parkers Landing for a summer chautauqua. They fished, feasted, socialized, governed, provisioned, and educated. The flat rocks were cleaned, the art outlined with red ocher, and the storyteller/carver used the Early Everyman , for example, to teach traditions, values, behavior, skills, identity, and certainly not least to entertain.
To our modern sensibilities the Early Everyman has a Charlie Chaplin quality about him. He seems to need a good neighbor, maybe a helping hand bringing food home, or someone to be friendly company. History and our own experience affirms, we all need someone at some time. It is also true that every community needs a friend now and then. To know that help is there gives strength to our claim on home. Clarion County Community Foundation locates its efforts in Clarion County as did these early artists and storytellers.
For a scholarly article on Parkers Landing rock art, see Kenneth Burkett and Edward Kaufman, “On The Rocks at Parkers Landing”, Pennsylvania Archaeologist 75(1):29-48.
