When Cornell College graduate Natalie Zenk embarked on her senior thesis for her archeology and art history majors last year, not much information was available about the subject of her project: a 21-inch-tall statue that stood out among the artifacts in the college's Native American art collection.
"We knew nothing about it, other than the fact that Joseph Campbell wrote about it in one of his books that was published in 1974," said Art History Professor Chris Penn-Goetsch, who had encouraged Zenk to study the piece.
What Zenk uncovered quickly reshaped her project. Not only had the soapstone statue sat, largely unresearched, at Cornell for more than a century — it had originally been taken from the Etowah Indian Mounds, a Mississippian burial site in Georgia, hundreds of miles from Mount Vernon.
“As I was delving into the historical background, I started to realize that it was more significant than I had previously realized," Zenk said. "I ended up having to completely change my thesis.”
Through documents, essays and conversations with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, direct descendants of the Mississippian peoples, Zenk learned that the statue had been transferred among several hands and institutions after being removed from the burial site by an amateur archeologist in 1886. A cast of the statue at the Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology at Phillips Academy indicates that it had spent a period of time there before it was donated, along with a large collection of other Native American artifacts, to Cornell College by Mount Vernon resident AJ Powers.
Zenk’s research connected her to archeologists in Georgia, who affirmed the statue's origins and encouraged initiating its return.
On Tuesday, a few months following Zenk's graduation, Cornell College returned the statue to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Representatives joined the art and art history department on campus to receive the soapstone statue, which is believed to be more than 1,000 years old. It will eventually be reburied along with other recovered artifacts found scattered in museums and institutions across the nation.
The statue, which weighs just over 56 pounds, depicts a cross-legged male figure who sits with one palm facing up and the other down. RaeLynn Butler, who serves as the secretary of culture and humanities for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, said such statues were created by Mississippians and buried with them. They typically were created with female counterparts, suggesting the Cornell statue's pairing may still be lost.
For the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, which now resides in Oklahoma, the return is part of a larger, decades-long effort to return sacred items to their ancestors.
Butler explained that mound-building culture and religion was at its height during the Mississippian time period. The Etowah Indian Mounds were excavated in the early 1900s by archeologists, and as graves and sacred items were unearthed, many were transported away from the site. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is currently working with around 15 different museums and institutions to return artifacts for reburial.
“Because so many of our ancestors were buried there, and most of these items ... were for burial, we want them to go back at rest and finish their journey," she said. "They don’t need to be on a shelf anymore. They don’t need to be in these facilities and all over the country.”
Repatriation, Butler said, is an act of healing.
“We respectfully put them back at rest, because what happened to them was wrong. Nobody’s ancestors, nobody’s relatives, should be treated like that or be disturbed after they’ve been buried," she said. "For us, the best thing we can do is to put them back safely and to apologize that this happened to them, and to try to make it right. There’s a lot of healing that needs to be done, and part of the repatriation helps our nation honor our ancestors.”
While the process of recovering all the Etowah artifacts could take years, Butler said Cornell’s decision is an important step.
“We’re thankful to Cornell College for taking care of the statue all these years, and for their willingness to return and repatriate the item back to our nation," she said. "We’re thankful for everyone’s help in trying to right a historic wrong.”
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