Chief Leatherlips Monument

The story

In 1990, Boston artist Ralph Helmick and a team of local stonemasons spent two months stacking slabs of native Ohio limestone over a concrete foundation in Dublin's Scioto Park [1.1.3]. The result was the Dublin Arts Council's first public art installation: a 12-foot-tall portrait of Wyandot Chief Shateyaronyah built directly into the terraced hillside. Instead of cordoning the stone chief off behind a fence, Helmick built terraced stone steps into the back of his head so you can walk right up his limestone scalp, stand inside his hollow crown, and look across the Scioto River from his eye level.

The history behind the stone is heavy. White settlers gave Shateyaronyah the moniker 'Leatherlips' because they claimed his word was as unyielding as cured leather. After he signed the 1795 Treaty of Greeneville and urged peace with encroaching settlers, anti-treaty factions within the tribe accused him of treason and witchcraft. In June 1810, an execution party cornered the old chief near this riverbank and executed him with a tomahawk.

If you ask long-time local golf fans, they'll tell you Leatherlips never left. Every late spring, when violent torrential rainstorms inevitably delay Jack Nicklaus's Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club just across the river, locals blame the 'Curse of Leatherlips'—whispering that the chief's spirit sends downpours to soak the country club crowds walking over his former hunting grounds.