Spiro Mounds
Spiro Mounds is a major Northern Caddoan Mississippian archaeological site located in present-day Eastern Oklahoma. The 80-acre site lies near the Arkansas River in Fort Coffee, seven miles north of the town of Spiro. Between the 9th and 15th centuries, the local indigenous people created a powerful religious and political center, culturally linked to the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere. Spiro was a major western outpost of Mississippian culture, which dominated the Mississippi Valley and its tributaries for centuries. Spiro Mounds is under the protection of the Oklahoma Historical Society and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, treasure hunters bought the rights to tunnel into Craig Mound—the second-largest mound on the site—to mine it for artifacts, they exposed a hollow burial chamber inside the mound, a unique feature containing some of the most extraordinary pre-Columbian artifacts found in the United States. These included works of fragile, perishable materials: textiles and feathers, uniquely preserved in the conditions of the closed chamber.
The treasure hunters sold the artifacts they recovered to art collectors, some as far away as Europe. Some of these artifacts were returned to regional museums and the Caddo Nation, but other artifacts have never been accounted for; this site has been significant for North American archaeology since the 1930s due to its many preserved textiles and wealth of shell carving. The history of Spiro is divided into archaeological phases: Evans Phase Harlan Phase Norman Phase Spiro phase Residential construction at Spiro decreased around 1250, people settled in nearby villages, such as the Choates-Holt Site to the north. Spiro was used as a ceremonial and mortuary center through 1450; the mound area was abandoned about 1450, although nearby communities persisted until 1600. The cultures following in the wake of Spiro were less hierarchical. Mississippian culture spread along the lower Mississippi River and its tributaries between the 9th and 16th centuries; the largest Mississippian settlement was Cahokia, the capital of a major chiefdom that built a six-mile-square city east of what is now St. Louis, Missouri in present-day Southern Illinois.
Mississippian culture ranged from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast, along the Ohio River and into both the lowland and mountain areas of the Southeast. Mississippian settlements were known for their large platform earthwork mounds surmounted by temples, the houses of warrior kings and priests, the burial houses of the elite; the mounds were arranged around large, flat plazas believed to be used for ceremonial community gathering and ritual games. Archaeological research has shown that Mississippian settlements such as Cahokia and Spiro took part in a vast trading network that covered the eastern half of what is now the U. S. and parts of what is now the Western U. S. as well. The Spiro site includes 150 acres of land; as in other Mississippian-culture towns, the people built a number of complex earthworks. These included mounds surrounding a large and leveled central plaza, where important religious rituals, the politically and culturally significant game of chunkey, other important community activities were carried out.
The population lived in a village. In addition, archaeologists have found more than twenty related village sites within five miles of the main town. Other village sites linked to Spiro through culture and trade have been found up to a 100 miles away. Spiro has been the site of human activity for at least 8000 years, it was a major Mississippian settlement from 800 to 1450. The cultivation of maize allowed accumulation of crop surpluses and the gathering of more dense populations, it was the headquarters town of a regional chiefdom, whose powerful leaders directed the building of eleven platform mounds and one burial mound in an 80-acre area on the south bank of the Arkansas River. The heart of the site is a group of nine mounds surrounding an oval plaza; these mounds were the bases of the homes of important leaders or formed the foundations for religious structures that focused the attention of the community. Brown Mound, the largest platform mound, is located on the eastern side of the plaza, it had an earthen ramp.
Here, atop Brown Mound and the other mounds, the town's inhabitants carried out complex rituals, centered on the deaths and burials of Spiro's powerful rulers. Archaeologists have shown that Spiro had a large resident population until about 1250. After that, most of the population moved to other towns nearby. Spiro continued to be used as a regional ceremonial center and burial ground until about 1450, its ceremonial and mortuary functions continued and seem to have increased after the main population moved away. Craig Mound – called "The Spiro Mound" – is the second-largest mound on the site and the only burial mound, it is located about 1,500 feet southeast of the plaza. A cavity created within the mound, about 10 feet high and 15 feet wide, allowed for perfect preservation of fragile artifacts made of wood, conch shell, copper; the conditions in this hollow space were so favorable that objects made of perishable materials such as basketry, woven fabric of vegetal and animal fibers, lace and feathers were preserved inside it.
In historic tribes, such objects have traditionally been created by women. Found inside were several examples of Mississippian stone statuary made from Missouri flint clay and Mill Creek chert bifaces
Red Horn
Red Horn is a culture hero in Siouan oral traditions of the Ioway and Hocąk nations. He has different names. Only in Hocąk literature is he known as "Red Horn", but among the Ioway and Hocągara both, he is known by one of his variant names, "He Who Wears Faces on His Ears"; this name derives from the living faces on his earlobes, or earbobs that come to life when he places them on his ears. Elsewhere, he is given yet another name, "Red Man". Red Horn was one of the five sons of Earthmaker, whom the Creator fashioned with his own hands and sent to earth to rescue humanity. During his sojourn on earth, he contested both giants and water spirits, led war parties against the bad spirits who plagued humanity; as Wears Faces on His Ears, he is said to be a star, although its identity is a subject of controversy. Under the names "One Horn" and "Without Horns", he and his sons are chiefs over the small hunting spirits known as the herok'a and the "little children spirits". Red Horn, as chief of the herok ` a, has a sometimes corporeal identity with the arrow.
Archaeologists have speculated that Red Horn is a mythic figure in Mississippian art, represented on a number of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex artifacts. According to legend, Red Horn is one of the five great soteriological spirits fashioned by the Creator's own hands, sent to earth to make the world safe for the least endowed of Earthmaker's creation, the "two-legged walkers"; the first spirit to be sent down to earth to help humanity was Trickster, whose foolishness made it necessary to recall him. Earthmaker next sent down Bladder, whose arrogance led to the loss of all but one of his 20 brothers, so he too was recalled. Earthmaker made Turtle and charged him to teach the humans how to live, but Turtle brought them war, was in his turn recalled; the fifth and last of these heroes dispatched by Earthmaker was Hare, who conquered all the bad spirits who had preyed on humanity. By accident, however, he introduced death, but made up for it by creating the Medicine Lodge, by whose discipline members could achieve immortality.
Earthmaker made Hare in charge of this earth, to each of the other three spirits he gave an otherworldly paradise to govern. The penultimate savior figure in this series was Redhorn, he had quite nearly succeeded, but was killed in a wrestling match with the enemies of the human race. Although revived, he too was recalled, although the reasons for his failure are obscure. One source suggests. Earthmaker sent down another son, He who Wears Human Heads as Earrings, he went around talking to people, but they would always fix on his earrings which were actual, miniature human heads. When these little heads saw someone looking at them, they would make funny faces. In the end, He who Wears Human Heads as Earrings could not accomplish the mission either. Unlike all the other soteriological spirits, Red Horn is not assigned a paradise over; these facts indicate. Meeker suggested that a certain notable Piegan contemporary of the same name may have been elevated to divine status. More Lankford held a similar view: "...
Red Horn was a recent addition to the Winnebago pantheon diffused from the Blackfoot tribe." The adventures of Red Horn are set out in a set of stories known as the "Red Horn Cycle". The Red Horn Cycle depicts his adventures with Turtle, the thunderbird Storms-as-He-Walks and others who contest a race of giants, the Wąge-rucge or "Man-Eaters", who have been killing human beings whom Red Horn has pledged to help. In the episode associated with this name, Red Horn turns himself into an arrow to win a race. After winning the race Red Horn creates heads on his earlobes and makes his hair into a long red braid called a he, "horn", in Hocąk, thus he becomes known as "Red-horn" and as "He who Wears Faces on His Ears". In one episode an orphan girl who always wears a white beaverskin wrap is pressured by her grandmother to court Red Horn. Despite the girl's adamant refusal, the grandmother insists, she relents and goes off to find Red Horn, surrounded by other girls. She teases him, unexpectedly, he smiles at her.
The other girls were jealous, they push and shove her and tell her "You don't know anything." Red Horn and his friends are camped just outside the village. During this time the women bring the warriors moccasins and the she brings a pair to Red Horn, who accepts them; when the warriors return from battle, they play a prank and have the sentries proclaim that Red Horn and one of his friends are dead. The grandmother begins to cut the hair of the orphan girl, as if she were Red Horn's wife; when he comes into view and it is apparent that he is not dead, the grandmother laments "I have wrecked my granddaughter's hair." The victors dance for four days, many of the young men approach Red Horn to recommend their sisters to him. He takes no interest, asks instead, "Where does the girl in the white beaverskin wrap live?" At night Red Horn lies down next to her. Her grandmother throws a blanket over them and they are married. In another episode, with their lives staked on the outcome, the giants challenge Red Horn and his friends to play kisik.
The best giant player was a woman with long red hair just like Red Horn's. The little heads on Red Horn's ears caused her to la
Green Bay (Lake Michigan)
Green Bay is an arm of Lake Michigan, located along the south coast of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the east coast of Wisconsin. It is separated from the rest of the lake by the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, the Garden Peninsula in Michigan, the chain of islands between them, all formed by the Niagara Escarpment. Green Bay is some 120 miles long, with a width ranging from about 10 miles to 20 mi, it is 1,626 square miles in area. At the southern end of the bay is the city of Green Bay, where the Fox River enters the bay; the Leo Frigo Memorial Bridge spans the point where the bay begins and the Fox River ends, as the river flows south to north into the bay. Locally, the bay is called the Bay of Green Bay to distinguish the bay from the city; the bay is navigable by large ships. The bay is located in parts of five counties in Wisconsin, two in Michigan. Oconto, Green Bay is home to Copper Culture State Park, which has remains dated to around 5000-6000 BC, it is a burial ground of the Copper Culture Indians.
This burial ground is considered to be the oldest cemetery in Wisconsin and one of the oldest in the nation. The Ho-Chunk believe; the French Jesuit, Roman Catholic priest, missionary, Father Claude-Jean Allouez said the first Mass in Oconto on December 3, 1669. The bay was named la baie des Puants by the French explorer Jean Nicolet as shown on many French maps of the 17th and 18th centuries. According to George R. Stewart, the French received the name from their Indian guides, who called the natives living near Green Bay by a derogatory word meaning "Stinkers", thus the bay was the "Bay of the Stinkers", but this name perplexed the French, Jacques Marquette thought the name might relate to the smell of the swamps, when he explored the area in May 1673, his fellow explorer Louis Joliet, with two canoes and five voyageurs of French-Indian ancestry were on their way to find the Mississippi river. They travelled up the Fox River, nearly to its headwaters; the French called the bay Baie Verte, the English kept this name as Green Bay.
The name of the bay in the Menominee language is Pūcīhkit, or "bay that smells like something rotting". Peshtigo Fire: a firestorm that affected land on both sides of Green Bay, the deadliest fire in the history of the United States
Thunderbird (mythology)
The thunderbird is a legendary creature in certain North American indigenous peoples' history and culture. It is considered a supernatural being of strength, it is important, depicted, in the art and oral histories of many Pacific Northwest Coast cultures, but is found in various forms among some peoples of the American Southwest, East Coast of the United States, Great Lakes, Great Plains. In Algonquian mythology, the thunderbird controls the upper world while the underworld is controlled by the underwater panther or Great Horned Serpent; the thunderbird throws lightning at the underworld creatures and creates thunder by flapping its wings. Thunderbirds in this tradition are depicted as having an X-shaped appearance; this varies from a simple X to recognizable birds. The X-shaped thunderbird is used to depict the thunderbird with its wings alongside its body and the head facing forwards instead of in profile; the Menominee of Northern Wisconsin tell of a great mountain that floats in the western sky on which dwell the thunderbirds.
They control the hail and delight in fighting and deeds of greatness. They are the enemies of the great horned snakes - the Misikinubik - and have prevented these from overrunning the earth and devouring mankind, they are messengers of the Great Sun himself. The Ojibwe version of the myth states that the thunderbirds were created by Nanabozho for the purpose of fighting the underwater spirits, they were used to punish humans who broke moral rules. The thunderbirds arrived with the other birds in the springtime. In the fall they migrated south after the ending of the underwater spirits' most dangerous season. Winnebago tradition states that a man who has a vision of a thunderbird during a solitary fast will become a war chief. Media related to Thunderbird at Wikimedia Commons
Kaw people
The Kaw Nation are a federally recognized Native American tribe in Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. They come from the central Midwestern United States; the tribe known as Kaw have been known as the "People of the South wind", "People of water", Kaza and Kasa. Their tribal language is Kansa, classified as a Siouan language; the toponym "Kansas" was derived from the name of this tribe. The name of Topeka, capital city of Kansas, is said to be the Kaw word Tó Ppí Kˀé meaning "a good place to grow potatoes"; the Kaw are related to the Osage Nation, with whom members intermarried. The Kaw Nation's headquarters is in Kaw City and the tribal jurisdictional area is within Kay County, Oklahoma; the elected chairwoman is Lynn Williams serving a four-year term. Of the 3,126 enrolled members, 1,428 of them live within the state of Oklahoma. Kaw Nation owns the Kanza Travel Plaza; the estimated annual economic impact of the tribe is $200 million. The tribe operates the Kanza Health Clinic, Kanza Wellness Center, Kaw Nation School Age Enrichment Center, Kanza Museum, Kaw Nation Environmental Department, Kaw Nation Police Department, Kaw Nation Social Service and Educational Department, Kaw Nation Emergency Management Department, Kaw Language Department and the Kaw Nation Judicial Branch.
The Kaw Nation Judicial Branch includes a domestic violence program. The Kaw Nation operates its own Housing Authority, Title VI Food Services and issues its own tribal vehicle tags; the Kanza News, the newsletter of Kaw Nation, is published quarterly. The Kaw are a member of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan language family. Oral history indicates that the ancestors of the five Dhegiha tribes migrated west from the Ohio Valley; the Quapaw separated from the other Dhegiha at the mouth of the Ohio, going down the Mississippi River to live in what is today the state of Arkansas. The other Dhegiha proceeded up the Missouri Rivers; the Osage left the main group in central Missouri. This tradition is reinforced by the fact that the Illinois and Miami Indians called the lower Ohio and Wabash Rivers the Akansea River, because, as they told French explorers, the Akansea dwelt there; the Dhegiha migrated westward in the early to mid-17th century. Their reason for leaving their traditional home may have been due to the displacement westward of Indian tribes caused by European settlement on the Atlantic Coast of the United States.
Displacement and Western migration was the fate of many Indian tribes. The first certain knowledge we have of the Dhegiha is 1673 when the French explorer of the Mississippi River, Pere Marquette, drew a crude map which showed the Dhegiha tribes near their historic locations; the French explorer Bourgmont was the first European known to visit the Kaws in 1724. He found them living in a single large village near the future site of the town of Doniphan, Kansas, on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River. In 1780 the Kaw abandoned this village and took up residence on the Kansas River, but the ruins of their earlier village were long a landmark for travelers; when Lewis and Clark ascended the Missouri, they noted passing the site of the "old village of the Kanzas" on July 2, 1804. From 1780 to 1830 the Kaw lived at Blue Earth Village on the Kansas River, at the site of present-day Manhattan, Kansas; the Kaw moved to the Kansas River Valley to be closer to the buffalo herds on the Great Plains. The tribe depended upon buffalo hunting for its subsistence and less on agriculture.
Living on the Kansas River gave them access to a rich territory of fur bearing animals to trade to the French for guns and other commodities, their villages forming important secondary centers in the Great Plains trading networks and their men being important intermediaries in the trade with the Pawnee and the Osage. This movement west made them more vulnerable to attack from powerful enemies such as the Pawnees. Lewis and Clark noted that they were "reduced by war with their neighbors", they estimated the Kaw to number 300 men—about 1,500 persons in all. The traveler George C. Sibley gave a favorable description of the Kaw in 1811, he visited their village at the junction of the Big Blue Kansas Rivers. "The town contains 128 houses, or lodges, which are about sixty feet long and twenty-five feet wide... They are commodious and quite comfortable...." The Kaw "are governed by the influence of the oldest and most distinguished warriors. They are at peace with any of their neighbors, except the Osage, with whom there appears to be a cordial and lasting relationship.
The Kansas are a stout, handsome race, more active and enterprising than the Osage. They are noted for their bravery and heroic daring." The Kaw lived in their village about one-half the year. The women tended corn fields; the other half year they journeyed to western Kansas to hunt buffalo while living in teepees. Horse racing and hunting were said to be the two passions of the men, they were, in the words of Sibley, "homeless wanderers and such is the stubbornness of their Nature that they will rather remain as they are". The Kaw would continue to be regarded as resistant to change; the purchase by the United States of Louisiana Territory in 1803 led to disastrous impacts on the Kaw. They were hemmed in, first, by Eastern Indians forced to migrate west and, secondly, by White settlers who coveted the "beautifu
Otoe
The Otoe are a Native American people of the Midwestern United States. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and related to that of the related Iowa and Missouri tribes; the Otoe Tribe lived as a semi-nomadic people on the Central Plains along the bank of the Missouri River in Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri. They lived in elm-bark lodges while they farmed, used tipis while traveling, like many other Plains tribes, they left their villages to hunt buffalo. In the early 19th century, many of their villages were destroyed due to warfare with other tribes. European-American encroachment and disease played a role in their decline. Today, they are federally recognized as the Otoe tribes of Oklahoma, share a reservation with the Nevaeh Sac and Fox people; the Otoe were once part of the Siouan tribes of the Great Lakes region, a group known as the Winnebago. At some point, a large group began to migrate to the South and West; this group split again, coalescing into at least three distinct tribes: the Ioway, the Missouria and the Otoe.
The Otoe settled in the lower Nemaha River valley. They adopted the horse culture and semi-nomadic lifestyle of the Great Plains, making the American bison central to their diet and culture; the States, the Lewis and Clark Expedition headed up the Missouri River to explore the new territory. The Otoe were the first tribe, they met at a place on the west bank of the Missouri River that would become known as the Council Bluff. Like other Great Plains tribes, the Otoe periodically left their villages to hunt for buffalo. Between 1817 and 1841, the Otoe lived around the mouth of the Platte River in present-day Nebraska. During this time, the remaining families of the Missouria rejoined them, they gathered with others to trade for European goods. In the 1830s, the tribe was noted to have problems with alcohol, dispensed by traders; some Otoe would trade vital supplies to the point of becoming destitute. As their dependence on alcohol grew, the men no longer hunted, but resorted to looting vacant Pawnee villages while the people were out hunting.
Christian missionaries built a mission there. In 1854 the Otoe-Missouria ceded most of their lands south of the Platte River in eastern Nebraska to the U. S. by treaty. They retained the Oto Reservation along the Big Blue River on the present Kansas-Nebraska border, they struggled to adapt to reservation life. During the 1870s, the tribe split into two factions; the Coyote band favored an immediate move to Indian Territory, where they believed they could better perpetuate their traditional tribal life outside the influence of the whites. The Quaker band favored remaining on the Big Blue River land, they were willing to sell the western half of the reservation to whites to gain income for a tribal annuity. By the spring of 1880, about half the tribe had left the reservation and taken up residence with the Sac and Fox Nation in Indian Territory. By the next year, in response to dwindling prospects of self-sufficiency and continued pressure from white settlers, the remaining Otoe members in Nebraska sold the Big Blue reservation.
They migrated to Oklahoma. With the Otoe-Missouria there, they purchased a new reservation in the Cherokee Outlet in the Indian Territory; this is in Pawnee Counties, Oklahoma. Today the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Indians is federally recognized, it is based in Oklahoma. Annette Arkeketa and playwright Chono Ca Pe Eagle of Delight Shaumonekusse Anna Lee Walters, author Tommy Morrison, former heavyweight boxer/co-star in Rocky V movie Johny Hendricks, MMA Fighter Joan Grant Phoenix, United States Marine Corps Fort Atkinson Woodcliff Burials Ioway-Otoe Language, Ioway Cultural Institute.
Southeastern Ceremonial Complex
The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, aka S. E. C. C. is the name given to the regional stylistic similarity of artifacts, iconography and mythology of the Mississippian culture that coincided with their adoption of maize agriculture and chiefdom-level complex social organization from 1200 to 1650 CE. This development developed independently; this ceremonial complex represents a major component of the religion of the Mississippian peoples, is one of the primary means by which their religion is understood. Obsolete names for this ceremonial complex, found in some anthropological sources, include Buzzard Cult and Southern Death Cult. Much of what is called a "complex" was more of an "exchange network." This kind of network may be illustrated by a pair of shell gorgets whose representation is so similar as to suggest that they were made by the same artist. One is found in the other in Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma. Numerous other pairs of similar gorgets serve to link sites across the entire Southeast; the social organization of the Mississippian culture was based on warfare, represented by an array of motifs and symbols in articles made from costly raw materials, such as conches from Florida, copper from the Great Lakes area and Appalachian Mountains, lead from northern Illinois and Iowa, pottery from Tennessee, stone tools sourced from Kansas and southern Illinois.
Such objects occur in elite burials, together with war axes and other weapons. These warrior symbols occur alongside other artifacts, which bear cosmic imagery depicting animals and mythic beasts; this symbolic imagery bound together warfare and nobility into a coherent whole. Some of these categories of artifacts were used as markers of chiefly office, which varied from one location to another; the term Southeast Ceremonial Complex refers to a complex variable set of religious mechanisms that supported the authority of local chiefs. The S. E. C. C. was first defined in 1945 by the archaeologists Antonio Waring and Preston Holder as a series of four lists of traits, which they categorized as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Their concept was of a complex of a specific cult manifestation that originated with Muskogean speakers in the southern United States. Since scholars have expanded the original definition, while using its trait lists as a foundation for critical analysis of the entire concept.
In 1989 scholars proposed a more archaeologically based definition for the Mississippian artistic tradition. Jon Muller of Southern Illinois University proposes the classification of the complex into five horizons, with each as a discrete tradition defined by the origin of specific motifs and ritual objects, the specific developments in long-distance exchange and political structures. With the redefinition of the complex, some scholars have suggested choosing a new name to exemplify the new understanding of the large body of art symbols classified as the S. E. C. C. Participants of a decade-long series of conferences held at Texas State University have proposed the terms "Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere" or "M. I. I. S." and "Mississippian Art and Ceremonial Complex" or "M. A. C. C." Present theories suggest that the complex developed from pre-existing beliefs spread over the midwest and southeast by the Hopewell Interaction Sphere from 100 BCE to 500 CE. The major expression of the complex is known as the Braden Style.
Other regional styles developed as a result of the fusion of ideas borrowed from the Braden Style and pre-existing local expressions of post-Hopewellian traditions. As the major centers, such as Cahokia and the trade networks broke down, the regional styles diverged more from the Braden Style and from each other. During the ensuing centuries, the local traditions diverged into the religious beliefs and cosmologies of the different historic tribes known to exist at the time of European contact. Most S. E. C. C. Imagery focuses on the supernatural beings who inhabit the cosmos; the cosmological map encompassed real, knowable locations, whether in this world or the supernatural reality of the Otherworld. S. E. C. C. Iconography portrayed the cosmos in three levels; the Above World or Overworld, was the home of the Thunderers, the Sun and Morning Star or Red Horn / "He Who Wears Human Heads For Earrings" and represented Order and Stability. The Middle World was the Earth; the Beneath World or Under World was a cold, dark place of Chaos, home to the Underwater Panther and Corn Mother or "Old Woman Who Never Dies".
These three worlds were connected by an axis mundi portrayed as a cedar tree or a striped pole reaching from the Under World to the Over World. Each of the three levels was believed to have its own sub-levels. Ingrained in the world view was the concept of duality and opposition; the beings of the Upper and Under realms were in constant opposition to each other. Ritual and ceremony were the means by which these powerful forces could be harnessed. Many common motifs in S. E. C. C. Artwork are locative symbols that help determine where the action takes place and where the beings originated; the falcon is one of the most conspicuous symbols of the S. E. C. C, it was an avatar of warriors and an object of supplication for a lengthy life, healthy family, a long line of descendants. Its supernatural origin is placed in the Upper World with a pantheon including the Sun and Four Stars, he is most represented on precious materials, sometimes shell, most on beaten copper. He dances, costumed wit
