Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World (Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)
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the primary focus of those who study ancient cultures should be the revival of the voices of the ancient peoples who created those cultures.
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the contributors to this volume interpret the past not as a dead and static series of events but as an active and animated influence that has messages for both Native American and Euro-American cultures today.
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On the one hand, the art motifs, themes, and styles pointed to some sort of unity across ethnographic boundaries of all kinds, but the nature of that unity was a subject for debate. On the other hand, some of the art was clearly produced locally and some was exotic but not found universally, indicating that in some way the images had regional meanings—an aspect of diversity within the vast collection of art forms.
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“Cult” was one of the terms most frequently used to describe the phenomenon during the early years.
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Philip Phillips attributed the original use of the word to Herbert Spinden, a Mesoamericanist who had suggested in 1931 that the Southeastern art was the result of a “warrior cult” diffused from Mexico (Williams 1968:72).
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Spinden was apparently using the word with its ordinary meaning in religious studies: a group of people united by belief and ritual practice.
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A cult is not a whole religion which dominates or connects with all of cultural life—it is much more restricted in emphasis. It appears that we are dealing with a major series of religious ideas and institutions here” (Williams 1968:77).
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The shifting of labels was helpful in lessening the restrictive power of the presuppositions about the nature of the phenomenon contained in the “cult” label, but it did not directly address the problem of the unity-diversity tension.
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Waring and Holder recognized that despite the frequently exotic origin of the raw material “the finished ceremonial object usually shows the characteristics of the stylistic subarea in which it is found, and, within limits, could not be confused with material from another area.”
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Waring and Holder concluded with a hypothesis about the spreading cult, thus reaffirming their emphasis on the unity of the phenomenon. Within that spread, however, they left room for regionalization: “Local variations in the complex are explicable in terms of the previous ceremonial life and basic economics of the subareas under consideration” (Williams 1968:29).
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Cult’ is, however, a misnomer, a word of insufficient coverage. It would probably be more accurate to describe the phenomenon as an interconnected medley of cults, partly syncretized, on the way perhaps to becoming a pan-Southeastern ideology” (Phillips and Brown 1978:169).
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Jon Muller suggested that “Southern Cult” not be used in a “sociological sense,” that it should be understood as plural, and that it would probably continue to be misleading, but he argued for retaining it for lack of a better term. He then devoted most of his chapter to providing a chronological sequence of periods of the “cult” to help clarify some of the confusion about regional styles and stylistic evolution.
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In terms of the regionalism-unity dialectic, it stood in the old tradition: while it offered valuable regional studies, it approached them from the view of the reified body of iconographic art. That is to say, the apparent invitation to the authors was to clarify the SECC materials, thus establishing a class of objects for focus within the local area.
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It is now clear that SECC images are expressed in a variety of divergent styles tied to specific geographic areas inhabited by a mosaic of ethnic and linguistic groups.
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the images are not distributed uniformly across the Southeastern culture area. Rather, major sites yield contrasting sets of SECC images and artifact genres (Krieger 1945), very likely associated with local variations in beliefs, worldviews, rituals, and social ranking.
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the SECC materials have a much longer history than was originally envisioned, and evidence suggests that the meanings of p...
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the original complex begins to dissolve into a series of regional complexes, each to be understood as undergoing local develo...
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The scholarly community faces several challenges. (1) Did the Braden style have its origins in the Cahokia phenomenon? (2) How does ongoing discussion of the nature and history of Cahokian society affect the understanding of the evolution and proliferation of the Braden style? (3) How should the indigenous local art traditions and styles be understood? Is “style region” the most accurate or useful way to think of the Mississippian-era art map of the Eastern Woodlands and Plains? (4) How did Braden art impact the local traditions? (5) What other exotic iconographic art influenced the local ...more
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What kinds of social phenomena produced the patterns of art styles and iconographic meanings that left their footprints in the ground? And how many such phenomena did it take to accomplish the artistic mosaic of the Eastern Woodlands during those astounding Mississippian centuries?
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The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to compare the Dhegihan cosmology to the Muskogean and Central Algonkian cosmological models; and second, to determine which cosmology best fits the motifs and symbols employed in the Greater Braden art style
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The appeal of visual imagery remains a strong motivation among many of today’s Osage—and their Dhegihan kin, the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Arkansas (Quapaw)—in preserving illustrative materials, and this characteristic has been a great help in gathering ethnographic information from Dhegihan sources, principally the Osage.
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the Dhegihan Sioux were the linguistic group responsible for Cahokia and these western Mississippian complexes
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historic Osage iconographic representations of the cosmos—where north is “above” and south is “below,” west is female/night and east is male/day—are mirrored by the orientation of the mound sites at the confluence
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The “serendipitous” period of expansion after AD 1200 is mentioned in the oral traditions regarding the movements of the five cognate tribes: Omaha, Osage, Kansa, Ponca, and Quapaw/Arkansas
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the Osage cosmos, which was a symmetrical, layered universe, held together by a great red oak tree, its axis mundi. The underlying principle of their cosmos was balance among all the forces of the universe (called wa-kan)
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The map depicts the four levels of the Upper World surmounted by an avian figure, identified as Wah’-Kon-Tah E-Shinkah or E-Shinka-Wakon. His name has also been recorded as Hon-ga A-hui-ton, an epithet that Francis La Flesche records as meaning “the Little Holy One”
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synonymous with “Morning Star,”
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perched on the arch of the heavens, the rainbow serpent of the day sky.
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Supporting the four levels of the Upper World and the rainbow is a red oak tree, the tree of life.
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below the roots of the red oak are the four levels of the Beneath World, with water spirits or “snakes” betwe...
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Above the rainbow are the moon (Wa-kon-da hon-don), the large red or morning star (Mi-ka’-k’e hon-ba-don thin-kshe), and a group of six stars sometimes known as the “large foot of the goose” (Ta-thabthin). Next is the evening star (Mi-k...
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ga). Under these are the seven stars of the Pleiades (known as Ta-pá), an important constellation because it is the place of origin of the Osage. Finally, on the ...
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On the very top of the cosmos is the primal spirit or first being (Hon-ga A-hui-ton), who is also know...
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This raptor represents the risen sun, and its red color is an allusion to the rays reflecting f...
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two heads, as it should be shown, because the two heads are intended to illustrate it...
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Similar two-headed raptor depictions occur in the seminal pictographic art at Picture...
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Early Mississippian rock-art site, Picture Cave contains over three hundred car...
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images (reflecting many of the characters discussed ...
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AD 1025.
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100 kilometers west of Cahokia.
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Janus-headed raptors have also been found depicted in the cache of copper plates found in Dunklin County, Missouri. These Braden-style repoussé plate...
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among the Omaha, Quapaw, and Osage one of the two great divisions is the sky people, identified as Tsi-Zhu.
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the lower worlds to the south are represented by a vertical tunnel-like structure. At the very bottom, the arch of the night sky is drawn. Its tiny size belies its importance, for this small component actually depicts the Milky Way (Wa-cí-da u-zhon-ge) and the goddess of the night, the Moon (Wa-kon-da hon-don).
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spirit people traveled about the levels of the Upper World in the north and were given souls and human forms by powerful spirits inhabiting the Upper Worlds.
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not only the initial creation of humanity but also the “path of awakening” ...
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These celestial parents—sky and earth, sun and moon—are the parents of the stars, and the stars are the Dhegihan ancestors
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These star people received their final human form by traveling through the four levels of the Upper World and are now spreading out to populate a newly created Middle World.
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The four Upper Worlds have been separated by the red oak tree, the axis of the universe. This axis mundi is a widespread tradition in the Plains prairie region and is incorporated as a central pole in sun dances and in mourning rituals
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This ancient “Venerable Man” cottonwood pole represents the resurrected Hon-ga A-hui-ton, who, being the eldest son of the Sun, the one called Morning Star, is an important figure in Dhegihan tradition and has the same powers as his father. Before the creation of the Middle World, Hon-ga A-hui-ton loses his life and his head in a great cosmic ball game
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His head is carried to the village of the victors, along with those of his celestial companions.
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