Artifacts given to Mohawks
HOGANSBURG — There are some new, yet not so new, pieces of Iroquois culture in the tribal administration building.
Some of them are 6,000 years old, according to unofficial estimates.
An anonymous donor from the Ogdensburg area recently gave the St. Regis Mohawk tribe several pieces of pottery, pipes and several stone tools. Though the artifacts are now Mohawk property, there's no knowing which tribe within the Iroquois Confederacy created them.
"We're all related. A lot of tribes would intermarry," tribal historian Arnold L. Printup said. "You can't say it's specifically Mohawk, but the people who made this here are definitely our antecedents."
On the large pieces of pottery, there are hash marks that show the influence of the Huron Indians, who settled between lakes Huron and Ontario. There also are signs of other St. Lawrence Iroquois nations, Mr. Printup said. Another figurine, likely from a pipe, bears markings typical of the Oneidas.
The shards of pottery come from at least three different bowls. Several of the larger ones fit together to form about half of a rim of a bowl that measured about a foot in diameter and more than a foot tall. It may have held five gallons of food, Mr. Printup said. The pottery dates back about 1,000 years.
Several black basalt stone tools are also now part of the tribe's collection. They were used to gouge out canoes, strip small branches off tree trunks or serve as ax heads.
All of the items were found lying on the ground; there was no digging or excavation work done to get them, according to tribal officials.
"Typically people find this stuff in the spring when there are no crops or in the fall when the crops are gone," said David T. Staddon, tribal public information officer.
The tools were found by an amateur, who glued the pottery shards together with a hot glue gun. The shards, as well as one of the pipes and the figurine, are glued to a plastic foam display. The glue will be dissolved with a solvent and the pieces will be displayed at the Akwesasne Museum, according to program coordinator Sue Ellen Herne.
"Right now, all of our stone tools are off exhibit, so when these come to us, we may bring them back and use them to tell a different story, maybe even to tell the story of how they came to us," Ms. Herne said.
The pieces are old, but the Mohawks have not abandoned the skills used to make them. There are at least two people at Akwesasne who still make traditional pots, and the stone tools used to butcher and skin animals work faster and more efficiently than steel, Ms. Herne said.
Shards and stone tools like these are fairly common in the region, which supported many tribes and people before contact was made with European explorers. However, each piece is valuable to the tribe and its history, Mr. Printup said.
"Culturally, it's the ability to see and have continuity with the past," he said. "It's something you can pick up and see how our ancestors worked and lived."
