Historically sharp

Details

Published on Monday, July 2, 2018

Photos by Cassandra Wehrhahn

Various spearpoints and dartpoints are laid out on display. The carefully crafted points are each unique, being made of different types of stone.

By Cassandra Wehrhahn

Neepawa Banner & Press

The Beautiful Plains Museum of Neepawa is filled with an assortment of historical artifacts donated from various sources. Now a brand new exhibit has made the museum its permanent home.

The exhibit first became available to the public on June 1, and primarily features a variety of expertly crafted spearpoints, dartpoints, and arrowheads of assorted sizes, material, age and areas of origin. Artifacts in the exhibit are from a mixture of individual donors and collections.

“Lots of items from this display are from the area,” stated summer student Jenna Heschuk. “Which is why the artifacts have come to the Neepawa Museum.”

The oldest noted spearpoint in the exhibit is the Clovis Spearpoint, originally from Clovis, New Mexico, which is approximately 10,500-12,000 years old. The spearpoint is from the Layng collection, which was donated by Mary Chaplin. “This   spearpoint  is probably the most significant, simply due to how old it is,” relayed Heschuk, who conducted the research on the pieces. “I got a lot of my information from the book Projectile Points of Southern Manitoba.”

Other artifact origins include Scottsbluff, Pelican Lake, and Ellen Street in Neepawa.

Displayed alongside these pointy artifacts are pieces of Native pottery, Flint Knapping tools, bifacial stemmed knives, hammers of stone and antler, stone axe heads, moccasins, mukluks, and a Victorian style wall pocket.

Multiple stone hammerheads were featured below the spearpoints and dartpoints in the display case. Two of these stone tools were found on the southwest corner of Ellen Street and First Avenue in Neepawa during 1921.