 "Photo:")
Mandy Ballentine
April 7, 2006
The woodshop room was full with piles of bark peelings, and a faint smell of wood stain and coffee floated beneath the strong sawdust scent. The air buzzed with the intermittent hum of an electric sander that UNH students, professors and community members were using to sand their walking sticks before carving or wood burning them with designs.
Neptune, a Native American woodcarver, helped more than 50 students carve walking sticks at UNH's Native American Cultural Association (NACA) event last Friday. NACA president Michael Baumbach said that they held the event to bring greater diversity awareness to the UNH community. He said that Native Americans make up the largest minority in New Hampshire, but are highly underrepresented at UNH.
At the event, Neptune weaved in and out of the woodshop tables helping students carve their walking sticks. While guiding students, Neptune explained how he accidentally got into the profession of woodcarving. He was raised in Old Town, Maine, on the Penobscot Nation reservation. During the 1970s Neptune was in the US Army stationed in Germany. The early '70s were a time of conflict back home between the US government and Native American tribes who wanted to return to the their traditional values and culture. While away in the army, the Native American demonstrations happening in the U.S. helped Neptune realize there was something unique and valuable about his culture that was worth saving.
When he returned to the United States, he decided that he would search for more information about Native American culture and traditions and try to keep them alive. During his travels to Native American conferences and spiritual gatherings in the Northeastern states, other tribes asked him why he wasn't seeking cultural information back home in Maine.
After he went back to Maine to find a Penobscot elder, his future profession found him. Neptune learned about the traditions of his people from a medicine man and spiritual elder named Senabeh. They visited in Senebah's home, which he called his "Beaver Hut." The one-room shack was simply furnished with a small wooden stove, a table and a bed. A couple of months later Senebah asked Neptune if he wanted to learn how to carve walking sticks and root clubs-Neptune had just found his calling.
The men spent days outside carving walking sticks and root clubs using only a jackknife to create intricate pieces of art, or in days of bad weather they would carve at the table in the "Beaver Hut" by the window. Root clubs are carved from the root systems of birch saplings.
They were once used by Penobscot and a few other tribes in warfare and ceremonies and are now used as decorative pieces of art. The transition from decorative weapon to piece of art happened when white settlers came to Maine and enforced their money system on the Penobscot. The Native Americans had to sell the clubs to tourists to make money to survive. To increase club sales, the Penobscot made them more ornate and colorful, often times stereotypical of what tourists wanted in their designs, including headdresses, paint and feathers. Neptune said that the art form had to evolve to keep the natives alive, which ultimately worked out well. The art became more complex and ornate as more people begin carving to make money.
Years later, in the woodshop at UNH, Neptune explained to students, "I didn't choose to be a root club carver. It chose me, or I should say that Senebah chose me." He was honored to be chosen because Senebah was the tribe's master carver. Neptune carries on the Penobscot traditions, spending time carving and researching root clubs.
Through his studies, Neptune has discovered that Root clubs were used as early as the 1500s, and continued throughout the 1600s. Neptune has returned to some of the more traditional designs after having done some research. He now carves spirits into the root clubs and uses a chipping technique. He has rediscovered the past of these beautiful pieces of art which history had nearly forgotten.
Neptune has passed his knowledge and talent for carving on to his son, Joe Dana. When Joe Dana was a young man Neptune would sit out on the lawn with him in aluminum and canvas lawn chairs carving while they listened to the sounds of the neighborhood children playing on Indian Island. Sometimes they would drink iced tea or coffee while they worked, Neptune peeling away the wood as easily as slicing the skin off a pear.
Neptune is proud that his son has become a carver. Joe Dana creates clubs with very intricate and fine chip carving which he excels at. Neptune said that it is important that people carry on the traditional craft, and that if people keep teaching their children and others, the art form "will never die out."
Passing on artistic traditions is common among Native American tribes. A NACA member at the event, Matthew Guilmette from Raymond, N.H., has learned a different Penobscot tradition from his grandfather's cousin. By the banks of the Merrimack River in Massachusetts, Guilmette learned how to gather the materials he needed to build his own bow and arrows. On a spring day when he was seventeen, his grandfather's cousin, a tall skinny older man, led him down the river to gather baby red willows, which they would use to make arrow shafts. The older man would explain the Native American traditions while showing Guilmette how to find the straightest willows.
They returned past tall pine trees into the house where they sat at the kitchen table to assemble the rest of the project. Sitting on the white tablecloth was a bowl of water to dip the deer sinews in. Sinews are the ligaments that attach muscle to bone. When the sinews are dipped in water they become soft and pliable-ideal for tying arrowheads and feathers to the arrow shafts. When the ligaments dry they become tight and strong. Each piece of the project was done to resemble a traditional set of bows and arrows.
At the event, Guilmette displayed an artistic set of bow and arrows. His talent was also apparent in the walking stick he made at UNH, which was carved with the slithering body of a snake. Some students placed traditional designs into their sticks, while others burned friends' names and UNH wildcat paw prints into the wood. Baumbach carved a green turtle with "NACA" written in its body.
At the end of the event, all the walking sticks had been carved, rain was pouring outside the windows and the room smelled of orange pumice hand soap. Baumbach deemed the event a success, as it filled the woodshop with people. He said that NACA, a division of the Diversity Support Coalition located on the first floor of the MUB, is always looking for new members.
Be the first to comment on this article!