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Date Posted: 15:10:42 10/21/03 Tue
Author: joe - 3 Aug 2003
Subject: Mysterious effigy a remnant of a distant past

Mysterious effigy a remnant of a distant past

On a grassy rise of oak and sabal palm, near a fork of the river west
of DeLand, is a remarkable effigy of a predator from another time. Its
feathered body, curved talons and unblinking eyes have been part of
the river here for centuries.

People call it the owl totem because scholars once thought it
represented a clan. But today, those who study these things say it's
not a totem, or clan emblem.

It's something else, something with long-lost primal meanings and
powers.

It's a replica of the largest wooden effigy ever recovered from a
North American archaeological site. That's the way archaeologist
Barbara Purdy put it in one of her books about Hontoon Island
artifacts.

Artisans made it with tools of shark's teeth, stone and shell. Its age
is estimated at 700-800 years, about the time the Renaissance began to
dawn in Europe.

Modern civilization disturbed its long rest on Wednesday, June 27,
1955.

"I found it," said Victor Roepke, 90.

He stopped work at the Habitat for Humanity Bargain Barn in DeLand and
sat in the shade. Roepke said he was turning his mostly wet mile of
riverfront on the south end of Hontoon Peninsula into high and dry
building lots that summer, using dirt from a canal and the river.

"I had a dragline working down there on the banks, digging out, making
higher ground. They pulled it out of the river," he said. The 12-foot
timber was thick with black mud.

"After I got it washed off enough so I could see it, I knew what it
was," Roepke said. "It had to be a totem pole." He said he wasn't
excited, but moved it out of the way with a front-end loader so work
could continue.

Then people started showing up, wanting to see the owl, take
snapshots. Two days later, an archaeologist from the Florida Museum of
Natural History drove down and hauled the carving to Gainesville.

The owl never returned.

A few years later, when Hontoon Island became a state park, the
full-sized fiberglass replica was erected there. From a distance, if
you ignore the color, it looks almost exactly like the real owl.

But the real Hontoon owl is centerpieced at the visitors center at
Fort Caroline National Monument, part of the Timucuan Ecological and
Historic Preserve near the mouth of the St. Johns River east of
Jacksonville. It's flanked by large colorful murals of what a Timucuan
village may have looked like when French settlers sailed into the
river in 1564 -- a real thing within an imaginary panorama.

"It's probably the most talked about piece in the visitors center,"
said Craig Morris, a veteran ranger at Fort Caroline. The mural makes
the owl part of a charnel house because he said it's believed to have
been a supernatural creature watching over untold generations of bones
at Hontoon.

"This is not a totem. It has human eyes, as well as round bird eyes.
It has five claws; owls have four. It's a symbol of a human turning
itself into an owl," he said.

Owls are powerful figures in Timucuan myth and religion. It is the
night spirit's messenger and protector of shaman priests. A disturbed
owl is a sign of trouble in the natural world. That's what they say at
the Museum of Natural History.

The primitive image helps visitors grasp one aspect of the deep,
profound relationship the Hontoon people had with the natural world,
Morris said. Some visitors are awed.

"I think it's a sense of wonder," Morris said slowly. ". . . that this
isn't just an owl. No. It's an owl that represents . . ." He stopped
grasping.

"We'll never know what its real function was. Never. It's the only
thing in the museum that cannot be explained."

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