A Tale of Two Horses

Regular readers of the OHS Archaeology Blog certainly will be aware of how archaeology can make important contributions to our understanding of historic events. Our investigations at Pickawillany, for example, are fleshing out a number of remarkable details about a site of great importance to our history, but for which there is very little conventional "history" – that is, contemporary written records or accounts describing it. Another example of archaeology adding intimacy to the written accounts of an important historical event is the discovery of two forgotten casualties of the War of 1812 during excavations at Fort Meigs State Memorial in Wood County.

In the summer of 2001, OHS archaeologists directed by Bill Pickard uncovered the remains of two horses, a large draft horse and a smaller cavalry horse that had been buried together in a shallow hole about 250 feet from the walls of the fort.

The OHS archaeologists were investigating the area to be disturbed by the planned construction of the museum at the site when the horse bones were first uncovered. After several weeks of careful excavation, assisted by several local volunteers, the OHS team was able to begin their forensic examination and learn the stories of these "prince and pauper" horses.

The large draft horse was wearing rough horseshoes, two of which were mismatched. It appeared to have a broken front leg. We do not know how the leg came to be injured, but it would have meant the horse had to be put down.

The smaller horse had only one horseshoe remaining and it was finer and smooth-bottomed. The other horseshoes apparently had been salvaged before the horse was buried for several bent horseshoe nails were found around its feet. This was probably a horse ridden by one of the dragoons stationed at the fort. This horse appears to have been severely wounded in battle. The archaeologists found a load of buckshot in the horse's chest and abdomen and a .45 caliber musketball lodged along the side of its head. Neither wound would have been immediately lethal, but if it survived its wounds, this horse also would have had to be put down. Perhaps the musketball found resting along the head represents the shot intended to put the horse out of its misery.

The horses were buried facing each other. Their legs were intermingled and their necks were crossed, almost as if they were embracing. Were they posed this way intentionally? We don't know. They lived very different lives. One probably pulled a wagon and the other carried a soldier into battle. But both horses died in the service of our country.

Many horses died during the seiges of Fort Meigs. William Henry Harrison issued a General Order in 1813 directing the Quarter Master to immediately remove and bury "all the dead animals" adjacent to the fort. The OHS excavations revealed only one episode in a prolonged and bloody conflict, but it is a part of the story that is seldom told.

Information about this horse burial is featured in the exhibits of the Fort Meigs Museum and education center. For information about how to get there and the hours of operation, call 1-800-283-8916, or visit the site's webpage: http://www.ohiohistory.org/places/ftmeigs/.

For more information about the Seiges of Fort Meigs and the War of 1812, see the articles on Ohio History Central: http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=553.

Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms

Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: interpretations of Mississippian Iconography is a new book edited by Kent Reilly and James Garber and published by the University of Texas Press. It includes some remarkable new insights on the cultures of the Mississippian period, which we refer to as the Late Prehistoric period here in Ohio. Much of the book is about using historic and recent American Indian stories as guides to understanding the symbolism of what the authors refer to as the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere (what scholars used to call the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, or "Southern Cult"). Although most of the book focuses on the art of the great Mississippian centers of the southeastern United States, such as Moundville, Etowah, and Spiro, some of the conclusions relate directly to Ohio's ancient cultures. For example, there is a chapter by George Lankford on the Great Serpent in Eastern North America that includes a discussion of Ohio's Serpent Mound.

It is interesting that many of the artistic motifs used in the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere seem to have precursors in the art of Ohio's Adena and Hopewell cultures. This isn't a terribly new observation. William Webb and Ray Baby devoted a chapter of their book The Adena People, No. 2, to a consideration of relationships between the "Adena-Hopewell" and the "Southern Cult."

A new example that occurred to me while reading Reilly and Garber's book is the fan-tail of a bird depicted on a particular style of shell gorget from the Hixon site in Tennessee. Traditionally, the bird has been interpreted as a turkey because of this flaring tail. George Lankford, however, argues that the feather fan is not meant to be a naturalistic representation of a particular bird's tail. Instead, he argues that it is an "iconographic pun," or a symbol, that was meant to convey some special meaning about the nature of the bird as well as human dancers who are shown holding similarly shaped feather fans in other Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere designs.



I think an earlier version of this same feather fan is depicted on birds carved onto some Adena tablets, such as the Berlin Tablet. Moreover, a very similar feather fan is worn by the human figure on the famous Adena Pipe. In wearing this feather bustle, he may have been taking on the powers associated with this feathered spirit of the Above World. The visual metaphor must have been as obvious to ancient American Indians as an image of a woman wearing only a fig leaf and holding an apple would be today to those of us steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition.



Although Lankford acknowledges the iconographic "subtext" of this feather fan "cannot at present be read," it is an important advance in our understanding of this ancient art to recognize it as a symbol with a special and particular significance. It's also interesting to see the presence of this symbol in art ranging in age from as long ago as 800 BC to as recent as AD 1500.

An interactive 3-D image of the Adena Man pipe can be viewed at http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1278.