The Calumet Ceremony in the Southeast and Its Archaeological Manifestations

An extremely important institution among the Indians of the Southeast in the historic period, the calumet ceremony was first recognized by French adventurers in the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great Lakes region in the mid-seventeenth century. By the end of the century the ceremony was universal among Lower Mississippi Valley groups. A major focus of calumet literature in recent years has been on the timing of and the mechanism for the introduction of this ceremony in the Eastern Woodlands. Some have argued for prehistoric roots, while others have supported a historic development. A study of the spatiotemporal distribution of catlinite pipes is one way to address these issues, because such pipes are the principal archaeological expression of the ceremony. This paper focuses on the two most common catlinite pipe forms: disk pipes and elbow pipes. Overall, both forms are rare in the Southeast, but relatively they are widespread. The disk type has the greatest range and is also the earlier of the two forms, primarily being found during the protohistoric period. It is proposed here, however, that calumet introduction was coincident with the elbow catlinite form that first appeared in the Southeast in the mid-to-late seventeenth century. It is believed that calumet ceremonialism was spreading into the southern portion of the Lower Mississippi Valley at about the same time as the first French explorers were entering the area from the north.

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Ceramic Wares and Water Spirits

Ceramics of Ancient America ◽

10.5744/florida/9780813056067.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 29-61

Author(s):

David H. Dye

Keyword(s):

Religious Beliefs ◽

Rock Art ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Life And Death ◽

Protohistoric Period ◽

Ceramic Vessels ◽

Hernando De Soto

Water spirits as major Mississippian cosmic powers assumed various forms ranging from panther-like to serpent-like, and these varying visualizations were crafted as ceramic vessels, copper objects, rock art, and shell media. Evidence of water spirit religious sodalities is reflected in the numerous Lower Mississippi Valley “cat serpent” bottles and bowls found in northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri. Their use flourished during the protohistoric period, the decades between the Hernando de Soto entrada and initial French contact. Water spirit vessels were crucial for transforming and in consuming medicinal potions for purification in water spirit rituals. In this chapter I discuss these Lower Mississippi Valley “Great Serpent” effigy vessels and argue that they were central to religious beliefs in Beneath World deities associated with the cycle of life and death and appealed to through ritual supplication and veneration.

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Stone Vessels from a Northeast Louisiana Site

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/275089 ◽

1944 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 386-394 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Clarence H. Webb

Keyword(s):

North Atlantic ◽

Atlantic Coast ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Santa Barbara ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

The North ◽

The Pacific ◽

River Region ◽

Indian Tribes ◽

A Site

Holmes states that steatite was widely used by the Indian tribes north of Mexico for the manufacture of implements, ornaments and utensils. The manufacture of stone vessels predominated on the Pacific coast, especially in the Santa Barbara region where sites have stone vessel fragments in all strata, and along the Atlantic coast, where this trait was especially associated with the Old Algonkian culture of the North Atlantic. The use of stone vessels in the areas in which pottery was used, both in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast, although much less common, is indicated by occasional references to vessels or fragments on various sites and by the presence of quarries such as those described by Jones3 in the Tallapoosa River region of Alabama. The comparative infrequency of these artifacts on sites in the lower Mississippi Valley inspired the preparation of this report of a large cache of fragments of stone vessels found on a site in West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana.

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Deglacial Flood Origin of the Charleston Alluvial Fan, Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley

Quaternary Research ◽

10.1006/qres.1994.1031 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 41 (3) ◽

pp. 278-284 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Donna A. Porter ◽

Margaret J. Guccione

Keyword(s):

Mississippi River ◽

Alluvial Fan ◽

Coarse Grained ◽

Silty Clay ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Fine Grained ◽

The North ◽

Sand Body ◽

Braided Stream

AbstractLarge-magnitude flooding of the Mississippi River from proglacial lakes Agassiz and Superior most likely occurred between 11,300 and 10,900 and 9900 and 9500 yr B.P. The Charleston alluvial fan, a depositional remnant of one of these floods, is located at the head of a wide alluvial plain near Charleston, Missouri. The fan is an elongate, convex-up sand body (16 × 24 km) composed of medium- and fine-grained sand at least 8 m thick. This sand contrasts with the older coarse-grained sand of the braided stream surface to the west and south and younger silty clay of the meandering stream level to the north and east. A weakly developed soil separates the underlying braided steam deposits from the alluvial fan. A bulk-soil radiocarbon date of 10,590 ± 200 yr B.P. from the contact between the fan and clays of the meandering stream system indicates that the Charleston fan was deposited near the end of the early interval of flooding from Lake Agassiz about 10,900 yr B.P. If the Charleston fan is the last remnant of deglacial flooding in the lower Mississippi Valley, then deposition of significant quantities of sediment from largemagnitude floods between 10,000 and 9500 yr B.P. did not extend into the lower Mississippi Valley through Thebes Gap.

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Pots and Pox: The Identification of Protohistoric Epidemics in the Upper Mississippi Valley

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/40035904 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 71 (2) ◽

pp. 233-259 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Colin M. Betts

Keyword(s):

Seventeenth Century ◽

Mississippi River ◽

Population Decline ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Upper Mississippi River ◽

Cultural Dynamics ◽

Substantial Evidence ◽

Historic Period ◽

Transmission Of Disease

Exogenous diseases represent one of the principal agents of culture change associated with the historic period, yet the timing of their initial influence remains undocumented in many regions of North America. Settlement variables, cooking pot volume, and mortality profiles from Oneota tradition occupations are used to investigate the possible occurrence of epidemics in the Upper Mississippi River valley. Synchronous fluctuations in settlement and ceramic variables indicate that following at least two centuries of population growth a significant population decline occurred in the early seventeenth century. Several factors provide support for the role of disease in this decline, including its timing, magnitude, and the documented presence of epidemics in adjacent regions combined with substantial evidence for extensive contact with those areas. This event, prior to direct, sustained contact, is associated with the increased intensity of intergroup exchange occurring with the fur trade. The ability to identify the occurrence of such epidemics is essential for understanding protohistoric cultural dynamics as well as the transmission of disease on a continental level.

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American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories, par Daniel H. Usner, Jr.American Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Social and Economic Histories, par Daniel H. Usner, Jr. Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1998. xvi, 189 pp. $45.00 U.S. (cloth).

Canadian Journal of History ◽

10.3138/cjh.35.1.177 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 177-178

Author(s):

Nelson Ouellet

Keyword(s):

American Indians ◽

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley

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Presumed Trade and Aberrant Pottery

Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology ◽

10.1017/s0081130000004901 ◽

1949 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 130-145

Author(s):

Alex D. Krieger

Keyword(s):

Mississippi Valley ◽

Lower Mississippi Valley ◽

Great Range ◽

Source Areas ◽

Site Occupation ◽

Foreign Origin ◽

Pronounced Deviation

The pottery in the following sections is not considered to belong to the Alto Focus complex, but to occur with it at different points in the Davis site occupation by trade or other means. If the writer appears to vacillate over what is and what is not trade pottery here, it is due in part to the problem of separating what could have been produced at the site (as extreme variations of resident styles) from what probably was not (because of some distinctive attribute which would mark it as foreign). In certain cases of pronounced deviation, a foreign origin is obvious enough, particularly when the source areas are well known. But where the whole tradition is similar as in the clay-tempered pottery of the lower Mississippi Valley region, and a great range of decorative techniques was employed for long periods of time, the problem is not easy.

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‘A Welsh Lancashire’? Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century

Recusant History ◽

10.1017/s0034193200000595 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 176-188 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Philip Jenkins

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

Recent Work ◽

Civil Wars ◽

The West ◽

The North ◽

South Wales ◽

Jesuit Mission ◽

Charles Ii ◽

Popish Plot

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.

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