Cherokee Traditions: Shell Carving

Osiyo, my name is Candice Byrd, and today we will be talking about the art of shell carving. About five years ago, I was studying under Ngofti Scott, and he was our only master shell carver in the Master Apprentice Program, and I was invited to come and be a part of his class. And when I first began the class, I didn't know what to expect. I really wasn't sure if it would be a good fit for me, but Ngofti was such an amazing and generous teacher. He was so knowledgeable, and he was so generous with that knowledge that I really got into the shell carving. I developed a love for the shells and for this art form. Shell carving is one of the oldest art forms and life ways that we have, and that we still have examples of. Dating back to Spiro and Cahokia and the mound builders, a lot of the Southeastern Mississippian iconography that you see came from surviving examples of these shells. Sometimes shells were made for spoons. You could make them into drinking bowls. We were wearing and using local river and lake mussel shells, but we were also importing from the East Coast. We can see examples of wampum shell being used, or quahog, the quahog shell. You can see where we were using our natural sources, whatever was surrounding us at that time. And since removal, after the Trail of Tears, the shell carving tradition went silent, or it went to sleep for a very long time. Nowadays, what Ngofti taught us to do was he taught us how to make what he called wearable art. And so that's what I do, is I make wearable art. Typically, for every one full mussel, you can get sometimes at least three pairs of earrings. This is part of what Ngofti taught us on how to cut these guys out. When we were making them into earrings, he called these crescents, drops, and feathers. Sometimes if this bridge is thick enough, we'll make buttons, but that was part of Ngofti's using all of the parts of the shell that we can. The way it was traditionally done is, so first of all, we were, a lot of our tribes, we lived near the water. And so the way I was taught is that in order to drill a hole, you would have probably had to have been using a stone tool of some kind. And to drill a hole prehistorically, we would have had to have been doing this underwater in order to keep the dust down. Because the inhalation of the dust, that's when it becomes toxic. Well, Ngofti was very much, he was very much a stickler about safety because we wanna make sure that we prolong the life of the shell carving and the shell carver. And that's how you do it. And we want to prevent inhalation of toxic fumes, toxic dust, because I was told that once that dust gets in your lungs, it doesn't leave or it's very difficult to leave. So today, as I show you the process of shell carving, I will be wearing and demonstrating some of the safety measures that I was taught. I'm wearing an apron, I'll be wearing safety goggles, and I will be wearing a respirator as well to protect my lungs and the safety goggles to protect my eyes. Now we will be using this lapidary wheel that will be behind me, and we'll be also using a buffer wheel as well. And everything, I try to keep all my shell carving underwater to make sure that the dust stays down. And so I will be doing those things and keeping the shell underwater as I carve it and as I shape it. All right, so you see, this is the bark. This is the anterior side of the shell. This is the part that stays inside the mud. The muscle has a muscular foot that comes out and that's how it moves. That's how it moves along the lake bed and the surface bed. And you can kind of see along this bark. These are growth rings. These are like trees. This tells me about approximately how old this shell must be. So you can see that it takes years for the muscle shell to reach adulthood. I have to use the lapidary wheel. I have to use sandpaper. It's a type of special grinding paper in order to get this nice and shaped off and that'll shape up very nicely. I will spend some time just hand sanding. Like I said, I like to keep all my work underwater. So a few years ago, one of our local rivers and lakes were drained and it was supposed to be a safety thing. So a friend and I went and we scoped it out and we saw, oh, it must've been thousands and thousands of acres and acres of these freshwater mussels. And this was one that I picked up from the lake. This is the largest one I have ever found. These mussel shells, they used to be bigger and they used to be thicker. And you can see that this is a beautiful, beautiful example of shell, of a white shell. It's important to me that people know about the significance of these shells. These are aquatic invertebrates and they do filter our water. They do filter metal contaminants. They filter, they determine the water quality of our streams, which also affects the quality of our fish. These shells are dependent on fish for their reproduction. It's a very symbiotic relationship. The fish depend on the shell, the shell depend on the fish. And so that's what the shells kind of remind me of is the importance of the quality of our water. Ngofti taught us to harvest sustainably. I don't take ones that are still alive. I take ones that are dead because these things, once they're left, oh, about a week or so, they turn into dust. So when I gather my shells, I try to keep them in a dark area. I have to clean them because they are an aquatic invertebrate. So I clean them out and I make sure that they're in a dry place. So I set them in a dry, dark place where they don't have any contact with direct sunlight because the longer that they stay exposed to direct sunlight, they will crumble and they will turn into dust. So when I gather, I make sure I try to gather. I do gather sustainably. Ngofti would call that the fire because when that fire starts to come out, you know, it's getting finished, it's getting there. It's come back as more of an art form and I would credit that to Ngofti Scott. Ngofti was, he was a Cherokee citizen. He was a Cherokee and a Creek man. His name meant clenched fist and he wanted to honor both of his peoples. He wanted to honor both of his parents. And so he went out to the Institute of American Indian Arts where he studied two foot stone casting and he studied different ways of silversmithing. And he said that, you know, being surrounded by the Southwestern, by the art of the Southwestern indigenous tribes, he began to ask himself, what were the Southeastern tribes doing? What were the Cherokees doing? What were the Creeks doing? What were they making? What was our art form? And that's when he began studying our local freshwater mussel shells. When I became his student, his love and passion for the art form itself was transferred over to me. I love jewelry and a lot of people love jewelry. And I'd never thought that this was a way to share like a love of heritage. As a student of the Southeastern iconography, I'm always learning. I try to be respectful of the iconography because of quite honestly, a lot of the meanings behind the symbolism has been lost or it has been re-translated or sometimes we reinterpret it for ourselves. So I'm excited to be a part of that movement. I really thank Ngofti, what Ngofti and what Bill Glass Jr. and what a lot of those guys who came back from IAIA did. I think they were really trying to start a movement of promoting Southeastern art. Well, it's important to me to carry this on because this way is very much connected, I think to our natural environment because our shells are so connected to our waterways. They're connected to the quality of water. They are our natural water filters. And so that's one of the reasons why I still do this art form is because I believe it's important to take knowledge of those things that are literally hard to see. They're difficult to see and they don't speak but they take care of our water for us. They take care of our water. They determine the quality of our water and sometimes they're in trouble. These on the right, these are a pair that Ngofti made. I keep these one because obviously they're quite beautiful. They're lovely. They're reminders of him and I miss him now that he's gone but he's always my standard. He's always trying to work towards the quality that he produced. These are mine here on the left. These are some of the first pair that I make. I always try to aspire to the quality of his work. And Ngofti said so himself, like these things can be turned into art and these things are symbolic of an ancient tradition that is worthwhile to carry on.