A Trip to the Holy Land, Part II, Piketon and Cincinnati

Hopewell Mounds near Chillicothe, Ohio.

Wednesday Cindy and I left Columbus bright and early for a trip south to Piketon, Ohio to meet Geoffrey Sea. Geoffrey has spent years studying passenger pigeons and the Hopewell Mounds, that occur in several places in Ohio. To familiarize ourselves with the mounds we stopped at Chillicothe to visit the   National Historic Park which features some of the best preserved examples. Finding it was a bit of a challenge as none of the locals knew of it. (Particularly sad since the mounds are probably the only thing of enduring importance that exists in Chillicothe) The mounds have intrigued archeologists because their functions are not readily discernable. For example they are not burial grounds, but they are astronomically aligned. Many now believe they provided places for people to gather to observe celestial phenomenon.

Geoffrey lives in a remarkable house built in 1833 and then added onto in the 1870s. It is just down the road from where young Press Southworth shot the passenger pigeon that would become Buttons. It is also notable for having hosted Abraham Lincoln for a night in the 1840s. Geoffrey is still in the process of completing his vision for the house- a room to memorialize each of its important aspects. So there is a Lincoln room and there is a passenger pigeon room. He actually possesses a beautiful mounted pair of ppigeons. (He would like to see the Sargent’s pigeon housed here.)

Passenger pigeon room in Geoffrey Sea's historical house in Piketon, Ohio.

His house is also full of books on a wide variety of subjects. His theory is that this part of Ohio attracted huge numbers of the pigeons and that the mound builders saw the birds as the repository of human souls. Marking this importance of the bird to their spiritual life, the humans built the mounds for the pigeons. There are mounds to the north in perfect geographic alignment to the mounds of Piketon, and he thinks they follow the migration route of the birds. He has also collected a wonderful quantity of ppigeon lore for a book he is writing on the pigeons, the mounds, and the nuclear facility nearby that brought him to south-central Ohio. His paper published in the American Scholar is online and worth reading.  We spent a thoroughly enjoyable day with him as he explained his work and showed us local landmarks.

Blanche Barnes, the taxidermist who stuffed the last wild passenger pigeon for whom there is an extatnt speciemen. She replaced her eyes with buttons, thereby providing the bird with its well-known sobriquet.

Our final day started again in Columbus. We were aiming for the Cincinnati Zoo and a meeting with several people at 10am. When we completed out stay, we were going to go directly back to Chicago. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the zoo, we discovered we left several things behind in Columbus, including a camera and bra. The former was important enough to warrant changing our route home to include Columbus.

The Cincinnati Zoo, as surely everyone knows, is the place that housed Martha, the last surviving ppigeon, whose death on September 1, 1914 brought the bird to extinction. The zoo has a wonderful memorial to her. Some years ago the building was threatened with destruction, when it came to the attention of  John Ruthven, an internationally acclaimed wildlife painter and ppigeon aficionado of the first order. John painted a gorgeous portrait of the species from which prints were made. The selling of those prints raised enough money to enable the zoo to move the memorial fifty feet to its current location. John also donated an antique shotgun to the exhibit, never dreaming that someone would break in, steal the weapon, saw off most of the barrel, load it with modern shells, and attempt a robbery. Fortunately for the assailant, he never squeezed the trigger for the shell would likely have exploded. The guy was caught and at his trial John had to testify that it was indeed his gun and explain how it wound up as the weapon. The gun was returned and John filled the barrel with lead so it could never be used again, except possibly as a club. And that is the gun that you see today.

The meeting at the zoo could not have gone better. My friend Stan Hedeen, a native of Evanston, IL and long-time participant on the Evanston North Shore Christmas Bird Count, has been on the faculty of Xavier University for decades and gave me the name of Dan Marsh, education director of the zoo. I had called him months ago and we talked about the need to mark the anniversary of Martha’s passing. It would not only bring attention to the story of the bird and its extinction (a story unlike any other in human history: how human activities reduced a bird with a population in the billions in 1800 to zero by 1914) but would provide a portal to current issues related to the preservation of biodiversity.

Dan and his colleague Deb Zurieck, with whom I had also talked, set up the meeting and had invited Stan, Gary Denzler (wildlife sculptor),  Thane Maynard (zoo director), and John Ruthven (who told me the story related earlier). It was truly thrilling. John started by saying how excited he was with the prospect of a major effort to mark the anniversary. He had already conceived of a painting which he was prepared to draw for the zoo’s activities. He showed us a sketch which depicted a large flight of the birds and it was lovely. I have been working to get institutions involved (see the blog post on my trip to the Field Museum) and the enthusiasm expressed by everyone gives me hope that the unique opportunity to spread the conservation message presented by September 1, 1914 will not be squandered.

Inside the memorial to Martha, the last passenger pigeon, at the Cincinnati Zoo where she spent most of her life. Photo by Deb Zurieck.

Deb, Dan, Cindy, Blogger, Stan, John, and Gary in front of the Martha Memorial. Photo by anonymous visitor.

          

Tags: Cincinnati Zoo, Hopewell Mounds, Martha, Piketon OH