Mysterious prehistoric discs go on exhibit

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One of the most unusual holdings in the Besser Museum's collections goes on permanent exhibit next week for the first time.

Dozens of what are called "Naub-cow-zo-win" discs after the Ojibwa-Ottawa word for charms of personal significance will be on display in the museum's Native American Gallery. The small, shale discs most likely were made in the 11th and 12th centuries by pre-tribal peoples in the Thunder Bay River region, according to Besser Museum Curator Dr. Richard Clute. Some are plain, while others are inscribed with Algonquian symbols.

"They are probably the product of a fraternal order within the Native American population, Mide-wi-win society members, part of the Chippewas who were in the region at the time," Clute said.

The museum is teaming up with Public Broadcasting station WCMU to host an open house for the disc exhibit Nov. 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Besides the discs, the event will feature Native American arts and craft projects for children, a short talk by Clute, refreshments and back-to-back screenings of the American Experience film, "We Shall Remain: After the Mayflower."

The film is the first in a series of recently-released films depicting 300 years of Native American history. It begins in March 1621, in what is now southestern Massachusetts, where Native Americans sat down to negotiate with a ragged group of English colonists.

Hungry, dirty and sick, the pale-skinned foreigners were struggling to stay alive and in desperate need of Native help. A half-century later, as a brutal war flared between the English colonists and a confederation of New England Indians, the wisdom of that diplomatic gamble by the Native people seemed less clear.

Showings of the American Experience film are planned at 10:30 a.m., noon and 1:30 p.m. in the museum's planetarium. Because of themes of graphic violence, the film may not be suitable for young children.

The museum holds nearly 200 of the shale discs in its collections. They were unearthed by Gerald Haltiner and his son, Robert Haltiner, in the 1940s from four excavation sites located along the mouth of the Thunder Bay River. Another 200 discs were recovered in the 1980s by Clute and are currently in the possession of the University of Michigan's Museum of Natural History.

Clute has spent a great deal of time studying the discs and a number of years ago co-authored a paper on them with Charles Cleland and Robert Haltiner for the MidContinental Journal of Archeology.

"The discs are the most unique thing we hold to the museum and to the culture of the area," said Besser Museum Director Janet Smoak. "There was a single disc found in Canada. Other than that, they were just found here."

Both Clute and Smoak said the symbols inscribed on the discs were of well-known personal spiritual symbols associated with ancient Mide-wi-win society even though the context of their use remains a mystery.

After the Haltiners found the unusual discs, they sent some of them off to U of M for archaeological evaluation. Initially, officials there believed the discs were "fakes" even as the Haltiners knew otherwise. The discs then sat in storage for many years.

While excavating, father and son had also removed an intact section of soil from an excavation site with both discs and shards of pottery present. Clute, who knew that the particular type of pottery shards had been previously substantiated as having come from the 11th and 12th centuries, was then able to help authenticate the discs and excavate an additional number of them.

The discs are now held in extremely high regard by scholars and archaeologists because of their prehistoric context, their symbology and their uniqueness to a single region, that of Thunder Bay.