Wyatt Wegle, 9, of East Palestine strikes a large Haudenosaunee drum during a hands on mini-museum visit by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History on Saturday morning. East Palestine library officials brought the Pittsburgh-based museum to the village in order to expose their patrons through the museum’s road program. (Photo by Stephanie Ujhelyi)

EAST PALESTINE — Nothing like a sperm whale tooth to catch the imagination of a 5-year-old child.

Wade Wilson was just one of the youth to visit a Carnegie Museum of Natural History mini-museum exhibit regarding the Haudenosaunee, ancient Egyptian and Inuit cultures held Oct. 2 at East Palestine Memorial Public Library.

In addition to some replica artifacts, some musical instruments and games, visitors were able to ask museum educators Ripley Garaghan and Aimee Stator about some of the particular items and their meanings within the peoples’ cultures.

Noreen McBride, assistant library director in charge of youth services, said she learned about the mini-museum word of mouth, after they conducted one at the Shenango Public Library in New Castle.

After learning about the museum’s program that they did at the Community Library of the Shenango Valley in Sharon, Pa. After she inquired about bringing them to East Palestine, the museum offered a scholarship, which helped lowered the fee that was overwrote from the Friends of the Library non-profit, and they brought the cultural-themed program to the village.

Currently the museum in Pittsburgh is offering an exhibit on ancient Egypt, that combined with the existence of their culture through modern culture kept educators largely focused on the Inuit, who hail from the Alaska area, and the Haudenosaunee (previously deemed the Iroquois by the French colonialists), which is a confederacy of five different tribes in the northern New York State, southern Ontario and eastern Quebec.

The mini-museum approach brings these smaller exhibits to visitors’ backyards with the use of replicas instead of the originals.

For example, among the ancient Egypt offerings was a smaller replica of the Rosetta Stone, which is a famous inscribed stone that is used to decipher hieroglyphs (the ancient Egyptian written language). The original Rosetta Stone is much larger (3-foot by 2-foot) and can be found at a museum in Great Britain.

Egyptian blue, which can only be described as a deep blue-green color, was a synthetic pigment developed by combining sand and copper then heating it to 900 degrees Celsius for up to 100 hours.

Garaghan showing off a hippo statute in Egyptian blue explained how it was used to fend off trespassers in ancient Egypt.

Hippos are extremely territorial animals, so a hippo statute at the front door was the equivalent of a “No Trespassing” sign in ancient Egypt.

Due to color’s vibrancy, it was used consistently throughout culture to introduce that pop of color, Egyptians loved it — especially against a somewhat bleak color scheme of muted colors. “Like ketchup, (the ancient Egyptians) put it on everything,” Garaghan explained “Of course, I would too.”

Especially among the children, the various toys instruments of the Inuit and Haudenoshanee peoples were popular draws. Every piece of the animal carcass was repurposed in most cases. Someone might find the stomach and skin of a deer made into a drum, while the meat was consumed.

To learn more about the Carnegie’s mini-museum program, visit http://www.carnegiemnh.org.

East Palestine Memorial Library will be offering a program at 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, on flint mapping and arrowhead making as well as hosting a party to celebrate the theatrical release of “Wicked,” where they will make tie-dye shirts, offer trivia and much more at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21 — all at their location at 309 N. Market St. in East Palestine. For more information about the library, call 330-426-3778.