Episode 10: The Origin of MIssissippian Culture

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

The Hopewell culture (see When Hopewell Culture Covered Entire Eastern US) seems to have ended around 400-500 AD. As prehistoric North Americans gradually migrated into all habitable areas, trade ended and interest in art and jewelry declined. The Late Woodland period (500-1000 AD) saw an increase in farmsteads, storage pits and pottery suitable for cooking plant foods. As farmsteads expanded, the small fraction of people who owned land became chiefs. At the same time, burial mounds became smaller, typically accommodating a single corpse and their prize possessions.

Mississippian culture emerged slowly as late Woodland culture declined. First came animal effigy mounds (typically lizards, snakes, birds and other creatures from Mississippian creation stores).

By 700-800 AD, corn (via Mexico and the Southwest) had become a common crop throughout the eastern continent, and there were defensive walls (indicative of warfare) around larger towns and a shift of burial mounds to town centers.

By 900 AD early Mississippian villages were using bow and arrows. Violent deaths increased with the advent of the bow an arrow, along with more massive defensive structures, typical embankments were six or more feet high and often featured an adjacent moat.

By 900 AD, Mississippians had reoccupied the Poverty Point site with a smaller town (now known as Holly Bluff).

The Mississippian period is divided into

• Early Mississippian period (1000-1200 AD) – with Cahokia (across the Mississippi River from modern day St Louis) as the civilization’s epicenter.
• Middle Mississippian period (1200 – 1400 AD – Mississippian culture widespread with unified religious practices.
• Late Mississippian period (1400 -1540 AD) – associated with gradual decline of Mississippian culture.

During the Mississippian period, most people lived in villages or on farmsteads. The best remains are found in former Oneota territory in the Great Lakes region (their villages weren’t destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores). The Caddo confederacy in east Texas, southern Arkansas, western Louisiana and southeastern Oklahoma, is still a recognized indigenous nation today.

Commonalities of Mississippian culture (which extended from the East Coast to the Mississippi and from the Gulf Coast to just north of the Great Lakes) included

1. Tall flat top mounds surrounded by palisades of vertical logs,
2. Housing clusters fronting on an open central plaza.
3. Corn fields.
4. Numerous towns.
5. Far reaching trade networks.
6. Shared religious beliefs associated with a distinctive style of art known as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.

Some flat topped mounds had houses on top, in some cases for chiefs, in others for council meeting houses or charnal houses (to house the bodies of deceased chiefs). There were also conical mounds used as mass graves.

There was a large body of art with common symbols that are likely linked to modern Muskogean mythology. These include crossed circles (representing the four directions of the wind), swastikas (representing the turning of the stars around the North Star),  eye and hand symbols, birds of prey, horned serpents and warriors and are found on necklaces, earrings, arrowhead caches, bracelets, hair pieces, pendants, pipes and pottery and realistic statuettes of men and women. Most Mississippian artists preferred imported exotic minerals for carving, but also used wood, ceramic and stone.

These art forms would later be adopted by the Crow, Pawnee, Caddo, Muskogee and Hochunk (formerly known as Winnebago).

Mississippian culture had a three-tiered cosmos:

• The upper world, inhabited by thunderbirds (supernatural birds of prey) who battle the monsters of the underworld to protect humans.
• The middle world – inhabited by humans.
• The underworld – ruled by panthers and flying horned snakes, who can be also be accessed by shamans to help human beings.

The Hochunk nation in Wisconsin has the best preserved Mississippian creation story. It starts with a group of brothers who bully their younger brother, Red Horn, who is helped by a turtle and a thunderbird that shoots lighting from his eyes.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5713021/5712756