THE MISSISSIPPIANS
| The Mississippians were an agrarian prehistoric people who constructed large earthen mounds in what is today the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. Like the Hopewell and Adena, Mississippians are noted for their moundbuilding culture, but unlike these earlier cultures, Mississippian society was more stratified and politically more centralized. Mississippians were also far more dependent on agriculture than earlier societies, relying notably on the newly introduced crop of short-season maize, which provided the people with reliable harvests and an unprecedented abundance of food. This in turn offered them time to develop their social structure and extend their economic influence across much of the land east of the Rocky Mountains. |
| Mississippians constructed conical mounds, ridgetop mounds, and platform mounds. The latter sometimes reached magnificent proportions and some were multi-terraced. Mounds were sometimes altered over time as they were put to different uses or incorporated into larger and different earthworks. This can be seen at Cahokia's well-known Mound 72, where small conical mounds were covered with earth to become a single ridgetop mound. Conical mounds were typically used for burials, and as ridgetop mounds were sometimes built over them, ridgetops may contain burials as well. Ridgetop mounds may have served an additional function, such as being alignment or boundary markers. Platform mounds, by far the most common mound type, were not used for burials but were instead used to support and elevate important buildings. These could be ceremonial structures such as temples and charnel houses, or simply the homes of the elite. |
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A pileated woodpecker looks out over the floodplain of the American Bottoms and the city of ancient Cahokia in this image from a poster by Sue Walton. Monk's Mound is seen poking above the morning fog. The pileated's larger and possibly extinct relative, the ivory-billed woodpecker, figured prominently in southeastern Native American cultural tradition. The woodpecker is said to have pecked holes in the first reeds, releasing waters unto the earth for man and for beast. It was also a symbol of war, and red woodpecker scalps were used to decorate ceremonial items related to warfare, just as wood duck feathers were used to decorate items related to peace. |
The largest platform mound, Monks' Mound, is located in Collinsville, Illinois, in the rich floodplain known as the American Bottoms. This large terraced mound, covering over fourteen acres and rising approximately 100 feet, was constructed in stages by people laboriously moving earth in pack baskets from borrow pits around the site, without the aid of draft animals or tools much more complicated than fire-hardened digging sticks, tamping posts, and stone hoes. This mound featured a massive building and access ramps for each of its terraces, and was situated at the north end of a large leveled plaza. This mound is one of many found within and around Cahokia Mounds State Park. |
At right is a Mississippian woman clad in a feather cape with a wattle-and-daub house in the background. The painted designs seen here and elsewhere on Sue Walton's Wickliffe, Kentucky mural were taken from engraved conch shell cups found at Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma, and from gorgets found in the American south east. Spiro was a site which was part of the Caddo culture, related to the Mississippian culture by a common religion known as the Southern Cult. At various sites around the eastern U.S., chunks of old daub have been found that show evidence of "paint" or whitewash, confirming the reports of European explorers who had described painted houses and temples among the Natchez people in Mississippi. At Wickliffe, the site of an ancient structure was unearthed that had a circle-and-cross motif painted on its earthen floor. |
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