WEEMEYAKWE (WHERE WE COME FROM)

By A. Gwynn Henderson and David Pollack

“Two heads are better than one,” the old saying goes. With twice the brainpower and two times the life experiences to draw from, we are twice as likely to solve a puzzle, make sense of an enigma, or figure out a mystery. 

The decades-long mystery in this case? The identity of five, marble-sized, black stone spheres discovered during excavations at the 89-acre Seip Earthworks Complex. This complex is an important Hopewell Culture (circa 1 to 400 CE) ceremonial site located next to Paint Creek in Ross County, Ohio. 

Spheres (top) and the engraved designs (bottom). Spheres photograph used courtesy of the Ohio History Connection. Line drawing of engraved designs by HRG in H.C. Shetrone and E. Greenman, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, volume 40, figure 45, page 426, 1931.

And the two heads? One belongs to a Shawnee man steeped in Shawnee traditions: Chief Ben Barnes of The Shawnee Tribe. The other belongs to Dr. Brad Lepper, an archaeologist steeped in Ohio Valley archaeology who works for the Ohio History Connection. 

The Discovery

In 1926, the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society investigated the loaf-shaped Seip-Pricer Mound, one element of the Seip Earthworks Complex. This mound, one of the largest Ohio earthen mounds, stands near the center of the complex’s large circular enclosure. 

At the base of the mound, investigators found a massive, clay-lined oval basin. It measured 30 feet long by 10 feet wide and was nine inches deep. Intense heat had turned the clay lining the color and hardness of soft brick. 

Map of the Seip Earthworks by Ephraim Squire and Edwin Davis in Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, Plate 21, Number 2, 1848. VIEW this image at the National Park Service.

This basin was not filled with everyday trash. It held over 5,000 objects of “exceptional artistry.” Thousands of shell beads. Copper breastplates. Bear and mountain lion canine teeth. Alligator and shark teeth. Chipped stone tools. Fragments of ceramic vessels. Fragments of a large wooden bowl or plate. Charred fabric and leather fragments. 

These materials likely represent ritual regalia used during a major ceremony. At the end of the ceremony, religious leaders placed these items in the clay-lined basin. And then, they set them on fire. This event likely took place around 300 CE.

The Spheres

According to H. C. Shetrone, the archaeologist who directed the site investigations, the most interesting objects recovered from the basin were five engraved black steatite spheres. These spheres are very nearly the same size: about two inches in diameter, only slightly larger than the official size of today’s shooter marble. They weigh around 0.4 ounces each. 

Steatite, or soapstone, is a soft, carveable rock made mainly of talc. Indigenous artists were no strangers to this material, for they carved other items, like stone bowls and smoking pipes, out of it. It would have taken serious skill to carve the raw stone in such a way as to be sure that the spheres were the same size. Engraving each with a unique design also took skill. A craftsperson likely used a sharp pointed object harder than the stone – perhaps a chipped stone drill – to do this.

Steatite outcrops along the eastern edge of the Appalachian Mountains, from northern New England south to eastern Alabama. Local artists would have either traded for the stone or traveled to the ancient steatite quarries to get it. It is also possible that outsiders brought the finished stones to the site as offerings.

Previous Interpretations

In the years since their discovery, archaeologists have offered two different interpretations for these enigmatic stone spheres. The first is that they were marbles or gaming pieces. They certainly do look like marbles, but Native peoples did not play that game in ancient times. Traditional Native gaming pieces are not round, they are two-sided.

The second is that religious leaders used the spheres in divination activities (in other words, to predict the future). But traditional divination objects are usually single pebbles, not sets of carefully rounded marble-sized stones.

A Native-Informed Interpretation

Here is where two heads, informed by a Native perspective, come together to offer a third, and entirely different, interpretation. Perhaps the five black steatite spheres from the Seip-Pricer Mound are the non-perishable parts of a water drum! 

Spherical black stones measuring .79 inches in diameter are a common component of Shawnee water drums. An odd number of these stones is needed to securely tie a water-soaked, brain-tanned leather hide (the drumhead) to the drum shell (body) with cordage.

(Pictured left to right) Joel Barnes (Director of Shawnee Language Immersion Program), Brett Barnes (Eastern Shawnee) and Trenton Stand (Shawnee), record a song, using a water drum, in the Shawnee Tribe conference room. Shawnee Tribe 2024. 

Does This New Interpretation Make Sense?

Archaeologists are fairly certain that the Ohio Valley’s Indigenous peoples used drums, and that they likely used them during ceremonies. But archaeologists have rarely identified ancient Native drums.  

One reason is that, once disassembled into its parts, a drum is not easy to recognize in the archaeological record. For example, at the Seip-Pricer Mound, fragments of a wooden bowl recovered from the clay-lined basin might have been the shell of a water drum. But in the fire, the drum would have fallen apart as the drum shell, the leather drumhead, and the cordage fastening burned. In this way, the stones would have separated from the drum. The same would be true had the drum been a ceramic vessel that was broken when placed in the clay-lined basin. Thus, after centuries, all that was left of the drum were the stones and perhaps fragments of a wooden or ceramic vessel. 

A footed Shawnee water drum assembled by Chief Ben Barnes. Notice how the cordage wraps around, above, and below each spherical drum stone placed a few inches below the lip of the drum shell. This creates a circular bulge beneath portions of the leather drumhead that extend down the sides of the drum shell. Photograph courtesy of the Ohio History Connection.

Another reason archaeologists rarely identify ancient drums is because most of a water drum is made from perishable materials: wood, leather, and cordage.  Thus, after centuries in most instances, all would have decayed away except the stones. 

Barnes and Lepper’s interpretation is important. If they are right, the five engraved spheres from the Seip-Pricer Mound are the earliest direct evidence for a drum in eastern North America. This new interpretation also suggests that there is cultural continuity between those who built the mound and tribal peoples of today. Researchers need to re-examine existing site collections to look for small, spherical stones that may once have been part of a water drum.

Two heads are, indeed, better than one. And in this case, they have offered us new insights into the past.

READ Barnes and Lepper’s article about their interpretation of the five spheres.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

A. Gwynn Henderson (Education Director) and David Pollack (Director) work for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey, Department of Society, Culture, Crime & Justice Studies at Western Kentucky University. They received their PhDs in Anthropology from the University of Kentucky in 1998. Their involvement in Fort Ancient/ Shawnee archaeological research began in the early 1980s, when they analyzed and reported on archaeological materials recovered from the lower Shawnee Town. One of their ongoing research projects focuses on the lifeways of ancient Native farming cultures of the middle Ohio Valley.