As part of the
Morocco Homecoming about a month ago, I visited the Morocco library, which is part of the Newton County Library system. The library is new, built in 2005, and located on the west edge of Morocco, near the pool and the ball field.
The Newton County Public Library headquarters are in Lake Village, with branches in Morocco and Roselawn. It has a
website and an active
Facebook page. I wondered what had happened to Kentland, Brook, and Goodland, and was told that they had their own libraries. When the northern libraries realized that the Newton County name was open, they grabbed it. We have something similar in Jasper County, where Remington maintains its own library, while Demotte, Wheatfield, and Rensselaer are part of Jasper County Public Library.
The inside of the library is as attractive as the outside.
The library was open for a few hours on this particular Sunday for a special event in their history room. A resident was donating a large collection of Indian arrowheads and other artifacts that he had collected in the area.
His collection joined an already large collection of arrowheads. The picture below shows just one of the displays of arrowheads that were in the small room.
A few days ago an older resident of Jasper County was talking about how arrowheads used to be much easier to find when the farmers plowed their fields in the fall. The wind would erode the soil on the tops of hill, leaving the arrowheads exposed in the spring. Now with no-till agriculture, there is less erosion and less soil disturbance.
It is nice to see that Morocco acknowledges the history of the area before white settlement. However, while these displays are artistic, they do not provide any information about what the artifacts can tell us about how these people lived. It would be nice to see a good interpretive display in addition to these decorative displays.
The most peculiar thing in the history room was this little critter. Judging by names (Beaver Township, Beaverville, IL) beavers must have been everywhere in the days before settlement.
Morocco High School's mascot was the Beaver! The beaver you photographed was the Beaver that went to every game, and brought our teams good luck!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the great article - we are working on an interpretive flyer to go along with our arrowhead collection, and have just had the collections both appraised. Thank you, again, for the terrific article!
It is a very nice library, and it took too many years for that community to have a special one.
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