Ohio has an official bird (cardinal), a flower (carnation), an insect (ladybug) and even a reptile (black racer snake). Oh, and a fruit (paw paw) too.
Now the state is about to have an official artifact — a 2,000-year-old stone tobacco pipe discovered more than a century ago in an ancient Native American burial ground near Chillicothe.
It’s a seven-inch long pipe carved in the image of a primitive man wearing a decorative loin cloth, large-loop earrings and ceremonial headgear.
The bowl is between his feet and the mouthpiece is on his head, so you would have to puff on the top of his hat to get a hit of tobacco.
The state Senate has adopted a bill designating the pipe as Ohio’s official artifact. This past Tuesday, a House committee approved the Senate’s bill and sent it on to be scheduled for a House vote. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Terrence Blair of Washington Township, said, “I’m sure it will be favorably voted on.”
The pipe was discovered during an excavation in 1901 by the historical society on the Ross County estate of Thomas Worthington, Ohio’s 6th governor, who served from 1814 to 1818, explained Brad Lepper, curator of archeology at the Ohio Historical Society in Columbus, where the pipe is kept on display.
Worthington, who also was one of the first two U.S. senators representing Ohio when it became a state in 1803, named his estate Adena — Hebrew for “delightful place” — which is why the artifact is named the Adena pipe.
The prehistoric culture lived in the Ohio Valley between 800 B.C. and 100 A.D., according to the historical society. The pipe was carved between 20 BC and 40 A.D. The dig also unearthed copper bracelets and flint spear points.
Lepper said the pipe was smoked during religious ceremonies by a shaman or priest who inhaled highly potent tobacco that put him into a trance, hoping to connect to a spiritual world. “It was a special tool for a special person,” said Lepper.
Lepper told the committee that the author of a book, Indian Art in the Americas, known as the definitive reference on Native American art, described the Adena pipe as “the finest known example” of prehistoric stone sculpture north of Mexico.
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