Wickliffe Village Mural

Here is a 40 foot, ten panel mural created by Susan A. Walton, S. A. Walton Studio, for Murray State University’s Wickliffe Mounds Archaeological Research Center, a site later named a Kentucky State Park.

Wickliffe Mounds was a Mississippian town located on bluffs overlooking the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

The mural is my concept of what part of this Mississippian village may have looked like in its day, complete with houses made of painted river cane wattle-and-daub, and roofed with thatch cut from prairie grass. In all probability the community was surrounded by extensive fields dug and planted by the people using hafted stone hoes, the blanks or unfinished preforms of which can be seen in the mural, tucked into a pack basket for trade or finishing later.

The artwork features figures engaged in trade over pack baskets, one of which holds Gulf Coast lightning whelk shells for making black drink cups, beads and other artifacts. The painting includes a man dressed as a Chunkey game player, with discoidal and spear, based on a figure engraved on a shell gorget, and women spinning cordage and sewing animal skins; and men gambling and flint knapping. Included are details such as a quiver of arrows, each fletched with wild turkey feathers; a hunted goose; a child with a blowgun; baskets of persimmons, walnuts and pawpaws; and some token Osage orange fruit whose seeds could one day start a grove of trees from which some future bow staves could be made. The Osage Orange tree is native to Oklahoma, and it is possible some fruit or bow staves were another kind of trading good that may have linked the Mississippian people of the Mississippi River Valley to the Caddo of Oklahoma. Osage wood was and is a highly prized wood for making bows, but they could also be made from local hickory.

The mural was designed to raise curiosity and provoke discussion between guides and visitors. Does it make you want to learn more about the people who lived here before us? I hope so! It serves as an educational museum exhibit inside their Lifeways Building.

Give us a call for consultation on creating exhibit items like murals, diorama backdrops, replicas of artifacts, thatched houses, plant and animal models, illustrations, signage, and related items.

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