Chief of Eastern Shawnee Tribe Speaks at OU-Chillicothe Event

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The first woman elected Chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe came to Chillicothe to speak of the heritage of the Oklahoma based Tribe and its connection with Ohio.

Chief Glenna Wallace spoke at Ohio University-Chillicothe’s Bennett Hall Monday afternoon, saying she was determined to research her Shawnee heritage. “You can’t study the Shawnee without coming to Ohio.”

Wallace told Litter Media’s Dan Ramey that the Eastern Shawnee had shrunk to 69 members, but now has grown to 3,550 members.

In 2007, she came to Columbus to hear Author John Sugden (“Tecumseh: A Life” and “Tecumseh’s Last Stand”) speak on Shawnee Chief Tecumseh at Ohio State University. 

Before hearing Sugden speak, she’d only heard of Ohio’s Serpent Mound and the Cahokia Earthworks (World Heritage Site) in Illinois.

It was then she learned about the Newark Earthworks. She asked herself “Why is there never a mention of this (Newark) in a book?”

Wallace and members of her tribe visited the Newark Earthworks in 2007. There has been a golf course built on the earthworks for 100 years. Wallace says the day of their visit, the course was hosting a golf tournament and her group was treated rudely by the golfers. In her speech, she compared the experience to someone playing games at Arlington Cemetery. She went from being elated to visit the Earthworks to angered and disgusted. 

Wallace, a Christian said, “I walked down from those steps with the feeling “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”

As a college professor, Wallace has traveled to 17 countries to visit World Heritage Sites. She says coming to Newark, it was looking at something every bit as spectacular as the pyramids of Egypt, the Acropolis in Greece, the Great Wall of China.

The questions began “How did this happen to this burial ground?”

“We have a harmonious relationship with the Ohio History Connection” said Wallace who says since her initial visit to the Newark Earthworks has found a new sense of respect for the ceremonial burial grounds by the OHC.

Litter Media’s Dan Ramey spoke with Chief Glenna Wallace, where retells her Newark experience along with other aspects of the Shawnee Tribe’s mission efforts to tell their story to the land where they once thrived. Watch Dan’s YouTube interview here in the link below: