Kanawha Madonna

The Kanawha Madonna is a wood carving of a person holding an eastern forest buffalo calf or goat. It is one of few better examples of Native American statuette-like wood carvings of North American wooden artifacts associated with prehistoric Native Americans in West Virginia. It was discovered in the cliff-heights above the lower New River (Kanawha River) in 1897. The statuette was reportedly found in a rock shelter in Kanawha County.

The Native Americans of West Virginia were known by early colonists to build stone walled enclosed villages on these ridges, perhaps an element of Fort Ancient culture. Recent sites and studies have shown this culture to keep domesticated turkeys and pet dogs. ["The Kanawha Valley and its Prehistoric People" by Dr. Robert F. Maslowski
http://cwva.org/area_prehistories/kvprehistory-maslowski.html] A historical Native American tribe has not been associated with these cultures in West Virginia. Eventually, some Native Americans began raising goats in the Appalachian Mountains region. It is not clear when the "Kanawhans" began milking their unique goat, thought to have been brought to them by the Spanish Basque colony of 500 at the Carolinas in the early 1500s. The 16th century Conquistador are known to have explored for copper and gold along the Appalachian Mountains during the 16th century. A Spanish fort is documented along the New York and Pennsylvania border west of the upper Allegheny Mountains by 1588 and can be found placed on early maps. It was after this that some Native American families began raising livestock. The Hanseatic League market was in decline during the 16th century. Explorer Samuel Argoll [Name spelling variation of Samuel Argoll "...Samuel Argoll, 40 years since, took possession and atturninent of the Indian kings." "Lancaster County Indians: Annals of the Susquehannocks and Other", Pp. 13-15 By Henry Frank Eshleman, Published 1909 Express Print Co, Indians of North America, Original from Harvard University, Digitized Aug 17, 2006. http://books.google.com/books?id=1pxzKXaP0usC (July 21, 2008)] reported buffalo herds along the Chesapeake Bay shore in 1612. Some have suggested these might have been Europe's aurochs, a progenitor of the modern cow, which became extinct by 1626. These ideas are among those searching for an explanation of what is being held. The wood, itself, was twice Radiocarbon dating to be about 500 (+/- 50) years old. The tool used for the carving the wood eludes the scientist, pointing out, it could have been carved long after the wood's carbon date.

A pseudo science encircles it with thoughts about it being much older than later. There was no carbon dating when the sculture was first discovered. It is not known who began calling the carving the "Kanawha Madonna" as the name appeared in news reports. In recent decades, the pseudo science theorize that early sailors could have made a transatlantic crossings from as far back in time as the Middle Ages and long before. Some people earlier believed the Madonna carving was the work of a Christian monk from un-recorded history. Others have searched for an explanation from the time after Europe's renaissance. The Portuguese and the Cork Harbour Irish (their Viking overlords) were known to leave goats on islands for their future provision during the period of exploration and early Atlantic fishing voyages. The Cistercians followed the Viking period having an Abby at Cork Harbour of the Irish Catholic marine knights. These few clans served on merchant vessels with close connections and trade with the Kingdom of Castile which extends from the time of the Kingdom of Asturias. The Chief Herald of Ireland, Edward MacLysaght, studied these and the period in detail. MacLysaght wrote an acceptable modern version history of these clans. The ancient Cherokee of the region had trails to the Chesapeake Bay before 1570 when the bay was called "Bahia de Santa Maria" by the Jesuit Mission called Ajacan near Jamestown, Virginia, today. There are early reports of Cherokee with blue eyes. The Lost Colony of North Carolina is another popular thought inquisitively mentioned . [(Lowery 1905, Appendix DD p.459) "The Chesapeake was visited in 1588 by Vincente Gonzales, for he entered a bay where Indians told him there was an English settlement towards the north on a river flowing into it, but Gonzales does not give the name of the bay. ("Relacion qye dio el Capitan Vizente Gonzales," 1588, MS. Dirc. de Hidrog., Madrid, Col. Nararrete, tomo xiv., Doc. 54, fol. 8.) Juan Menendez Marques in his "Relacion esxrita en el fuerte de San Agustin . . . al P. Comesario General de Indias Fr. Miguel Avengocar," June 7, 1606 (Ruidiaz, too ii., p. 498) refers to this expedition of 1588 as being to the Bay of Jacan (Chesapeake Bay, Axacan variant, see Ajacan)." The Spanish Settlements Within The Present Limits Of The United States" by Woodbury Lowery, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, The Knickerbocker Press, 1905.] It is of these speculation that have surrounded the Kanawha Madonna rather than a product of early Native American art.

After much scrutiny, it is thought to have been carved by a Native American. The "Kanawha Madonna" is on display at the West Virginia Culture Center in Charleston, West Virginia.

Lore
Among the popular lore, the stautette is attributable to the Lower Cherokee lore of "Moon Eyed People" in Georgia, and associated, Madoc lore which also includes the lore of the Welsh speaking tribe at "Louisville Falls". At the end of Dunmore's War, Chief Cornstalk explained why the Shawnee only hunted into the eastern Kentucky's Big Sandy region, "Kentuc", and Kanawha River tributaries south of the Ohio of the "Spiritual (holy) People". [Some claim from early printed history such as the following quoth, "...Towards the Southwest, four days journey is situate a town called Sequotan, which is the Southermost town of Wingandacoa, near unto which, six and twenty years past, there was a ship cast away, whereof some of the people were saved, and those were white people, whom the country people preserved. . . Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Voyages, Traffiques, and Discourses of the English Nations (1599-1600), reprinted in Albert Bushnell Hart, ed., American History Told by Contemporaries (New York, 1898), volume 1, 89-95.] Shawnee Chief Black Fish also spoke of the Azgen taboo. This was the bases of the Shawnee territory claim which impeded the colonial surveying west of the Kanawha River that led to Dunmore's War. This nearly three feet tall and nearly thirty pounds Honey locust statuette remains to opinion of the observer.

Notes

Reference

"The mysteries of the Kanawha Madonna"
http://www.wvculture.org/agency/press/madonna.html

"West Virginia’s Kanawha Madonna Shrouded in Mystery" by Brad McElhinny, Daily Mail staff, May 2007. A popular article published by The Daily Mail, a major state newspaper in West Vieginia. In the article, interviews with the curator and other scholars with a photo is provided as a reprint otherwise republish at Website http://s8int.com/WordPress/?p=563

"How Science Works - And How It Doesn't" By W. Hunter Lesser, The West Virginia Archeologist Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 1989
http://cwva.org/ogam_rebutal/lesser_how_sci_works.html

"A MESSAGE FROM THE PAST" By Robert L. Pyle, © 1983 WV Division of Natural Resources http://cwva.org/wwvrunes/wwvrunes_1.html