Abstract
The ritual drama of the death journey that Scioto Hopewell peoples enacted in Charnel House C of Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthwork and that was reconstructed in the previous chapter was not a unique performance. Similar dramas that portrayed the soul of the deceased person departing to an afterlife as a bird in flight or carried by a bird appear to have had considerable geographic spread and temporal depth within the Eastern Woodlands. This chapter describes such dramas in central Ohio, northeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and west-central Illinois during the Middle Woodland period, and in West Virginia during the Early Woodland period. In all, six more ritual dramas of the death journey are documented here, for the sites of Newark, North Benton, Sugar Run, Ogden-Fettie, Klunk-Gibson, and Cresap. The most basic goal of this chapter is to reconstruct the theatrical actions, narratives, and participants of the six ceremonies. This is done following the same three strategies used in the previous chapter to document the ritual drama within Charnel House C and some of the native-specific meanings and purposes of the ceremony. Most primary is a cultural and historical contextualizing approach that focuses on the internal logic of available archaeological evidence—both content and spatial layouts—supplemented by insights gained from historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ ideas about journeys to an afterlife. Second is comparison of the cases at hand to the cross-cultural concept of the ritual drama. This strategy raises a variety of questions for investigation, such as whether a ceremony was a choreographed performance and the details of its choreography; the size and nature of the social collective who performed the ceremony; the plot and details of the narrative enacted; whether the plot was historical or mythical in nature; the picture presented of the cosmos, its realms, its beings, and their interrelations; and whether an ontology that posited the notion of the personnage was expressed. A third strategy used in the previous chapter and here to reconstruct the ritual dramas is the method of anthropologie de terrain. It discriminates aspects of burial that result from intentional ritual practices as opposed to those that do not and instead reflect natural decompositional and other taphonomic processes. Only two skeletons from two of the six ritual dramas are documented with adequate field photographs and could be evaluated by this method.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. Mark McConaughy for providing me with a detailed map of the Sugar Run mound in western Pennsylvania and copies of his 2007 SAA meeting poster and 2008 MAC meeting paper on the Sugar Run mound, for our discussions of the Sugar Run and North Benton mounds, as well as his calling my attention to new AMS dates from the Cresap mound in West Virginia. Alan Harn of the Illinois State Museum at Dickson Mounds provided me with a copy of a helpful photograph of the Caped Burial in the Haystack mound of the Ogden-Fetti Mound Group, Illinois. The Ohio History Connection, Columbus, OH, provided copies of newspaper articles on and photographs of the North Benton mound at various times of exposure of the long-necked bird stone effigy, as well as Emerson Greenman’s field notes and map of his excavation of the Eagle Mound in the Newark Earthwork. As always, Dr. Brad Lepper had helpful insights to share about the Newark site, for which I am thankful. I am grateful to the Illinois State Archaeological Society, Springfield, and the Western Illinois Archaeological Research Center, Macomb, for providing me with scans of six of Gregory Perino’s field photographs of Burials 71 and 72 in the Central Tomb of Pete Klunk Mound 1. My conversations with Della Cook about Burials 71 and 72, Mound 1, and the Pete Klunk mound group at large, and with Jason King about the internal chronology of mound building in the Klunk-Gibson cemetery complex were very helpful and I thank them. The interpretations made in this chapter also benefited much from the comments of Bret Ruby. I am indebted to Rebekah Zinser for redrafting the floor plan of the Sugar Run mound from the map provided by Dr. McConaughy.
Notes
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1.
The precise identity of the bird is unclear. The excavator, Magrath (1945:42), labeled it an “eagle”. McConaughy (2011:93) held that it looks more like a swan or goose, given its long neck, which raptors do not have. Whether the effigy had a curved raptorial beak is unknown. Before the effigy was photographed, a rain caused a “serious cave-in, necessitating the complete uncovering of the figure again. The photograph was taken after the second uncovering” (Magrath 1939). The photograph (Magrath 1945:45, figure f) shows that a line in the muddy soil was drawn around the head of the effigy bird, indicating it had a curved raptorial beak (see also McConaughy 2011:93). The published plan map of the effigy (Magrath 1945:41, figure 4) shows the outline of the clay platform on which stones were laid out and indicates that the platform for the head had a curved raptorial beak. However, no stones representing a hooked raptorial beak are indicated in either the photograph or the plan map. An unpublished photograph of Burial 2 and the north side of the bird effigy, as well as an unpublished field drawing of the effigy (Ohio Historical Society n.d.1.), shows fewer stones on the effigy’s head than does the published photograph, implying the removal of some stones of the effigy during the photographing process. Both the unpublished photograph and field drawing show the bird head to have stones depicting an open beak without a hook.
If the bird effigy had a hooked beak, the combination of this feature and the bird’s long neck would make it an unnatural creature, save perhaps in the case of the flamingo with its long neck and downward curved upper and lower beak (National Geographic Society 1987:54–55). Whatever the creature’s identity, it was an established, widely known construct in Hopewellian thought, having been depicted multiple times. It was embossed on a breastplate found in Burial 9 Mound 7 in the Mound City site, Ohio (Mills 1922:534, figure 62; see also Figure 11.11B; Carr 2008c:179, figure 4.5A–D), incised on a Hopewell pottery vessel found in Mound 2 in the Mound City site (e.g., Brown 2012:242–243; Squier and Davis 1848:plate 46-2), and incised on Havana Hopewell pottery in Illinois and Marksville (Hopewell) pottery in Louisiana (e.g., Brown 1968; Ford and Willey 1940; Setzler 1933). These images contrast with the long-necked bird without a curved beak patinated on a breastplate from Burial 5 in the Fortney Mound, southwestern Ohio (Carr 2008c:178, figure 4.4 top, nested within the neck and wing and to the right of the duck-human.)
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2.
Placed near the head of the man in Burial 4, at Parker’s Landing, Pennsylvania, was a large sandstone slab that, on one side, had a natural marking that resembles a precolonial petroglyph of a bird with spread wings, a bifurcated tail or legs, and a nonraptorial beak. A photograph of the marked stone is in the North Benton site collection curated by the Ohio Historical Society, Columbus (acc. no. 1834/–). The stone and its design were obviously significant, having been 25″ × 21″ and 16″ × 13″, respectively.
The Parker’s Landing petroglyph is shown in McConaughy (2011:85, figure 5, left). If this bird identity of the marking is correct, then it could indicate a bird carrying away to an afterlife the soul of the man in Burial 4, analogous to the large stone bird effigy in the North Benton mortuary and the burials associated with it. It might also represent the free soul of the man in Burial 4 having the form of a bird and taking flight upon death to an afterlife, or his free soul being transformed into a bird at death and flying to an afterlife (Chapter 6: Interpretation of the Nine Skeletons with Bird-Like Features). Four lines of evidence intersect and support this view: the marking’s shape; the placement of the stone by the man’s head, the head commonly being taken by historic Woodland and Plains Indians as the location of an individual’s free soul; the location of the head and stone by the two holes in the grave’s wall, which possibly were made to allow the release of the man’s soul(s); and the analogous association of the mortuary’s other burials with the large, stone bird effigy.
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3.
Most death journey narratives that involve a brain extractor, including one by the Sauk and Fox (Yarrow 1881:95), speak of the deceased meeting him or her and the removal of the deceased’s brains as a normal part of the journey. However, two contradictory Sauk and Fox narratives tell that the brain extractor should be avoided, lest the deceased be “destroyed” (Jones 1939:68; Skinner 1923:36).
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4.
Several horseshoe-shaped or half-circle-shaped embankments and horse-shoe shaped or half-circle-shaped arrangements of multiple circular embankments in Ohio are depicted in Squier and Davis (1848:plates 20, 22, 24, 27, 31-3, 31-4, 34-3, and perhaps 16, 29), including the “D”-shaped enclosure around Mound 25 at the Hopewell site (plate 10). In three cases (plates 29, 31-3, 31-4), the arcs open onto a river and recall the design of cremation Burial 43A,B under Mound 25 at the Hopewell site, with its water-symbolizing conch shells below the cremations and its probable Milky Way referent. Three examples in the Portsmouth earthwork complex (plate 27) are joined by a long causeway to a concentric ring earthwork with entries in the four directions and a mound at its center—a good candidate for a reference to this world, its four cardinal directions, its center, and layers of upper realms above it. The causeway is intersected by the Ohio River. The totality may have traced, in native thought, the journey of souls of the deceased from the central mound in this world through Above realms, across a river, and to the Milky Way—all common elements of death journeys recorded for Indians of the Eastern Woodlands and Plains (Chapter 6). Why there would be three arcs is unclear.
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The Passamaquoddy also knew the Milky Way to be a path of souls, while their neighbors, the Penobscot, told of a brain taker (Chapter 6: Appendix 6.5). It is unclear, for sparse information, whether both peoples knew of both the Milky Way path and the brain taker.
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6.
The spatial relationship of the horseshoe-shaped altar and Burial 4 allows conjecture of additional possible aspects of the ceremonies performed, the performers, and the deceased at the North Benton site. In contrast to the layout of most of the mortuary’s burials, which had mirror-reflection symmetry on either side of the site’s east–west axis, Burial 4 on the north of the axis had no analogous burial on the south side. Instead, that position was occupied by the horseshoe-shaped altar, suggesting some complementary relationship between it and Burial 4. One possibility is that the old man interred in Burial 4 was a shaman-like practitioner who, among his duties, had served as a psychopomp, like the practitioner who smashed skulls on the altar and facilitated the passage of souls to an afterlife. This interpretation is suggested by several pieces of evidence, including the body position of the man and at least three of the four artifacts placed with him. The man was laid out with one hand resting on his chest and the other on his abdomen—a globally widespread shamanic trance posture used in healing work or psychopomp work (Goodman 1990:116–122, 155–167). (Some of the trance experiences that Goodman attributes to healing when the right hand is placed on the chest and the left on the abdomen could as easily be classified as death experiences, instead [Goodman 1990:117–Judy, 118–Felicitas, 120–Krischta, 121–Hanna].) Concerning artifacts, one hand held a silver inlaid wooden tube, which a survey of literatures on historic Woodland, Prairie, Plains, and Subarctic Native Americans (Carr, Weeks, and Bahti 2008:515) suggests was used for sucking out spirit intrusions from ill persons and/or blowing medicine on a patient. If the tube had, instead, been fitted with a reed, it could have functioned as a whistle in ceremonies of diverse kinds, in hunting, and/or in warfare (ibid., 516). The other hand held a panpipe, which according to the same survey (ibid., 516) was likely played in a variety of ceremonies, possibly including those welcoming individuals from outside a community. Also found in the grave was a smoky quartz projectile point, which the survey (ibid., 515) indicates could have been used in scratching clients in preparation for a ceremony or to heal them, pendulum divination prior to healing, or sending spirit intrusions to harm others. Thus, the old man interred in Burial 4 was most likely a shaman-like practitioner, and would have mirrored the shaman-like practitioner who smashed skulls on the horseshoe-shaped altar.
An alternative interpretation would be that those two individuals were one and the same. Specifically, after smashing skulls on the horseshoe-shaped altar and conducting all souls of the deceased in the mortuary to a land of the dead via the stone bird effigy, it is possible that the practitioner passed on his roles to another individual, sacrificed himself for his community, and was laid in Burial 4 to pass on to the afterlife, the last mortuary event at North Benton before the mortuary was sealed with a mound. Smooth succession of religious and political leadership through planned auto-sacrifice or killing of a leader nearing the end of his life is a strategy that was used in some non-Western societies with shamans, chief-priests, and divine kings (Metcalf and Huntington 1991:162–188).
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7.
The lined, water-holding stone cist of the North Benton charnel house is analogous to the ponds constructed at entrances through the walls of the Fort Ancient site in southwestern Ohio (Connolly 1996a:260, 267–268; 1996b; Sunderhaus and Blosser 2006:134–142), the water-collecting depressions outside the gateways of the Mound City site (Brown 2012:28, figure 3-3; Squier and Davis 1848:plate 19), the clay-lined, water-holding ditch of the Shriver Circle earthwork near Mound City (Burks and Cook 2011:676), and the circular, water-filled ditches that are interior to the circular embankments of Early and Middle Woodland circular earthworks (Hall 1976:362).
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8.
Mound Unit 2 was constructed long enough after Mound Unit 1 that its builders were unaware of the layout of Unit 1. The construction of Unit 2 destroyed the head of the bird effigy and scattered at least one cremation under the effigy in Unit 1 (McConaughy 2011:87). Unit 3 has a radiocarbon date about 340 years after Unit 1 (A.D. 590 ± 70, cal A.D. 665; McConaughy 2011:91). Units 2 and 3 contained central burials that were extended and accompanied by grave goods, as well as cremations with and without grave goods. In contrast, Unit 1 contained only cremations and none had grave goods. The central burials in Unit 2 were entombed in rectangular stone box graves, whereas the central burial in Unit 1 was placed in a round cobblestone-lined cist and the cremations in Unit 1 were interred in simple pits in the ground. The central burial in Unit 3 was placed extended on the original ground surface (McConaughy 2007; 2011:75, 77, 88–90, 91).
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9.
McConaughy (2007; 2008:4; 2011:78–79) identified the shape of the second cobblestone pavement as that of a plan view of a copper celt that “exaggerated the flare of the bit end”. However, the heavily concave inward sides of the pavement do not come close to the profiles of Hopewellian expanded-bit copper celts, which angle outward from head to bit without much, if any, curvature inward.
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10.
Similarly, the historic Berens River Saulteaux of Manitoba, Canada, associated the Thunderers with the country of the dead, both of which lay to the south in their view (Hallowell 1940:40).
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11.
“[T]wo biconcave stones lay some three feet beyond and to the left of the [skeleton’s] feet. One of these is noticeably oval in outline, about 6-1/2 × 8 inches, and 2-1/2 inches thick. The upper surface bears a saucer-like depression ½-inch deep, and the lower face is so slightly concave as to appear almost flat. The other stone is almost circular, 8 inches in diameter, and 1-1/4 inches thick. The concavity in the upper face is 1/4-inch deep, the lower face being very slightly concave. This stone appears to be limestone; the first may be diorite” (Taylor 1929 in Farnsworth 2004:43–44). A photograph of the Caped Burial in its tomb (Illinois State Museum, Springfield) shows that the oval stone had an upper surface smaller than its lower surface, such that its sides slanted outward from top to bottom. The second disk appears to have more vertical sides.
A possible use of the diorite, symmetrical, almost flat disk is as a grinding slab for pulverizing pigments. Analogues include a nearly circular limestone disk found in Burial 2 of the Swartz Mound 1, Illinois (Perino 1957 in Farnsworth and Wiant 2006:312–314), and a nearly circular sandstone disk found in the Great Cache of the Tremper Mound, Ohio (Mills 1902:378–379). The specimen from Swartz has flat faces and vertical sides, is about a foot in diameter, and bears traces of red and black pigment on its upper surface. The disk from Tremper has flat faces and vertical sides, is 11.5 inches in diameter, and has dark stains from grinding charcoal or cannel coal. Three other similar disks are known from Middle Woodland sites in the Illinois valley, including one found in one of the Naples mounds and two others near the Montezuma mounds (Perino 1957 in Farnsworth and Wiant 2006:314).
The limestone disk from the Haystack mound is the wrong raw material for a grinding palette. Perhaps it was used in some kind of game in which objects were tossed in it, or it was filled with water for divining. Several historic Woodland Indian narratives about the death journey tell of games played in the afterlife or another celestial realm, or of games that could distract the journeyer from reaching the afterlife. Regarding distractions along the journey to an afterlife, a Miami first-person narrative about the journey (Kinietz 1938:53; Appendix 6.2, case Cas027) tells that, after crossing a river, the deceased “arrived at a lodge, where I saw another old man at the door, holding in his hand a wooden bowl and the usual number of plumb stones. He asked me to play at Sansawīngee, but I declined and passing this lodge I continued to travel on, and soon met two men, standing on opposite sides of the road, each of them holding in his hand a Pekitehōmingk [stick used in playing ball sometimes called Pekitarhunār]. They asked me to join them but I would not.” Narratives from other Woodland tribes mention games played in the afterlife itself: the Ojibwa (Hallowell 1940:32, lacrosse; Landes 1968:195–196, case Cas024, games, including gambling); the Fox (Jones 1939:16, case Cas044, games), and the Seminole (Skinner 1962:73, case Fein0144, ball games). The Passamaquoddy (Miller 1997:41–42, case Cas072) told of a Land of the Northern Lights where a tantalizing, colorful ball game was played. The realm was not a land of the dead, although it was reached via the Milky Way, as were many lands of the dead known by Woodland Indian tribes.
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The idea that Havana Hopewell peoples in the lower Illinois valley were organized into lineages that had significant time depth is well engrained in the social archaeological literature of the lower Illinois valley archaeologists (Brown 1981:34; Charles 1992:191; 1995:88; King 2016:6, 98, 102, 129, 167). The basis for this view is the two distinct mortuary tracks that Brown (1981:34–36) defined for the Klunk-Gibson burial group: a track to which access was limited to certain individuals, that focused on extended postmortem processing of the deceased, and that led to burial in the fancy log or limestone-walled central tombs and in ramps of mounds, and a second unrestricted track in which the dead were directly inhumed in simple graves dug in peripheral locations of mounds. Brown’s model was a simplification of Buikstra’s (1976:33–41) earlier study of the Klunk-Gibson mortuary program and importantly tied together as one extended track burial in ramps with burial in central tombs. (For a history of this intellectual development, see Carr 2005b:247–254). However, biological studies to date have not been able to confirm that the two tracks represent lineages. Buikstra (1976:57), using epigenetic osteological characters, found no statistically significant stable genetic relationship that defined access to specific kinds of mound features (tracks). Bolnick and Smith (2007) found no statistically significant differences in the mtDNA haplogroup frequencies of human remains associated with the two mortuary tracks or with other mound features.
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The fact that the individuals whose bones comprise Burial 72 differed in their biological matrilines does not bear directly on whether those individuals were from the same clan or different clans. Postmarital residence of Middle Woodland populations in the lower Illinois river valley appears to have been patrilocal generally (Konigsberg and Buikstra 1995:194–201; but see Bolnick and Smith 2007), suggesting the likelihood of a patrilineal kinship system, if lineages of time-depth existed. In addition, in certain historic northern Woodland Indian tribes in demographically challenging situations, clan assignment did not follow biological descent (Callender 1962:95, 98, 99, 100, 107).
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Whether additional social groups who used other mound-cemeteries in the Klunk-Gibson mound group might have joined the (seemingly two) social groups who used Mound 1 is unknown at the time of this writing. The one radiocarbon date from Pete Klunk Mound 5 and the one from Pete Klunk Mound 7 are both similar to the one reliable date from Pete Klunk Mound 1 (respectively: 1922+45 BP, 37 cal BC-cal AD 214; 1946+45 BP, 50 cal BC-cal AD 208; 1942+45 BP, 48 cal BC-cal AD 209). However, each of these dates spans over two centuries, even with only a 68% (one-sigma) confidence interval. This temporal uncertainty makes it impossible to say whether the three mounds were used sequentially or simultaneously, and thus whether the social groups who built Mound 1 were different from or the same as those who built Mound 5 and/or Mound 7. Likewise, it is impossible to infer whether ceremonies at two or three of these mounds were held conjointly at the same moment in time or a few years apart or at more distant points in time. This uncertainty is exacerbated by having only date per mound.
Further, the proveniences from which the bones that composed Burials 71 and 72 came are unknown currently. No evidence has yet been found that the bones were derived from a mound other than Mound 1 and that the ceremonies held at the Mound 1 Central Tomb might have involved people from other social groups linked to other mounds. Such between-mound matching of the bones of a single individual have not been discovered from any pairs of mounds in the Klunk-Gibson mound group at this time of writing.
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The most likely orientation of the main axis of the Eagle Mound is 23.4 degrees north of east. Squier and Davis (1848:68) compare the shape of the mound to a bird. They state that the mound lies immediately in the center of the circular earthwork, and report that the “head of the bird points directly towards the entrance of the enclosure [Fairground Circle]”. Hively and Horn (1982:S16, table 2) surveyed the Fairground Circle and found that “the avenue axis” of the entrance—presumably the line defined by the center of the Circle and the center of the entrance—is oriented 23.4 degrees north of east. This orientation supersedes the approximation of 31o made by Case and Carr (2008:appendix 7.2, Newark Earthwork), based on two old maps of the Newark site: roughly 31o north of east per Salisbury and Salisbury (1862 in Lepper 1996:230, figure 13.4) supported by the 34o north of east illustrated in the possibly less accurate map of Squier and Davis (1848:plate 25).
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A less likely reconstruction would see two buildings: one roughly 67 × 24 ft and subdivided into two rooms and one 21 × 26 ft and subdivided into two rooms.
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Of the various other associations between birds in flight and humans found in Woodland and Plains Native American cultures and explored earlier (Chapter 10: Initial Interpretations Considering Skeletal Positioning, Alone), only one might fit the Eagle mound and its context in Newark as an alternative to the death-related ideas presented here. If the building under the Eagle mound was not used to cremate the deceased, then perhaps it was the meeting place for members of a sodality or clan-specific ceremonial society who gathered periodically to trance together and merge with a shared bird guardian spirit. The bird form of the guardian, and perhaps the members’ experiences of soul flight as a bird or being carried by a bird, would explain the bird form of the Eagle mound and the building under it. Analogues can be found in historic Algonkian sodalities composed of persons blessed by the same spirit or tied to the same sacred pack and its powers (Callender 1962:31, 35; Skinner 1915; Tax 1937:267) and in the historic Ojibwa Midē′wiwin with its symbolism of birds atop the center poles of the medicine lodge (Dewdney 1975; Hoffman 1891; Landes 1968). A close Scioto Hopewell analogue is a ceremonial society that was composed of persons who smoked and tranced together for corporate reasons, as indicated by two large deposits of pipes decommissioned together at the Tremper and Mound City earthworks (Carr 2008c:233–236; see also 284, note 20).
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18.
The floor of Charnel House C under Mound 25 in the Hopewell earthworks was built by removing the vegetation and topsoil down to the hard, clayey subsoil, puddling clay over it, and then spreading a layer of small yellow gravel (Greber and Ruhl 1989:42, 44). The North Benton mortuary’s floor was constructed by stripping off the topsoil and surfacing the area with sandstone rubble reduced by pounding, with coarser rubble below and finer above, followed by smoothing and compacting (Magrath 1945:41–42). The Sugar Run mortuary was built directly on the existing ground surface with an intact A horizon (McConaughy 2007; 2011:75, 87). The tomb within Haystack mound was built on top of a rush-reed woven mat, perhaps covered by ash-like material (Taylor 1929 in Farnsworth 2004:43–44). The floor for the Central Tomb of Pete Klunk Mound 1 was created by cutting away portions of the earthen ramps of tombs on either side of it and using those soils to make a level surface (Perino 1968:36).
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Dragoo (1963:290) estimated the floor of the Cresap mound to have been used sometime between about 550 B.C. and 200 B.C. uncalibrated radiocarbon time, based on a suite of radiocarbon dates that are difficult to interpret.
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20.
The four suites of burials within the four primary mounds on the floor of Cresap, in their order of the primary mounds’ construction, are: (1) Burials 19, 31, 11, and 28, and Features 2, 3, 4, 5, 12, and 18, all in the central primary mound; (2) Burials 34 and 52, and Feature 13 in the north and western primary mound; (3) Burials 21, 32, 13, 14, 15, 22, 23, and 24 in the southern primary mound; and (4) Burials 54, 40, 41, 43, 48, 49, 50, 51, and 53 in the eastern primary mound.
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Whether and how the first episode of burial activities at Cresap may have meshed with those at other mortuary sites in the area as part of a larger mortuary program and with processes of community creation and interrelations is unclear and does not shed light on the size and composition of the social group(s) that built Cresap. The large Natrium mound (Solecki 1952) is the only other excavated early Early Woodland mound in the immediate area, 6 miles downstream. It appears to have been functionally similar rather than complementary to Cresap in having been an accretional facility with in situ cremations, redeposited cremations, and extended burials. Early Woodland residential sites in the region are ephemeral, thinly scattered, and widely dispersed across primarily tertiary and secondary streams, suggesting seasonally mobile, small social units with low density (Clay 1986:594; Niquette 1992:16; see also Maslowski 1985:30; Seeman and Branch 2006:117–118).
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The ritual drama held in the Cresap mortuary is similar to a historic Chitimacha narrative (Swanton 1911:358; Chapter 6: Appendix 2—Chitimacha, case Cas05); both told of the deceased traveling north, then up. However, in the Cresap case, ascent was by flying, whereas in the Chitimacha narrative, ascent was by climbing on the outer surface of the sky vault after passing through the place where it rose and fell periodically. The ritual drama within the charnel house under the Eagle mound involved the deceased going up and then northeast, somewhat similar to a historic Potomac narrative (up, east; Swanton 1946:749; Chapter 6: Appendix 2—Potomac, case Cas066), or up and then southwest, somewhat similar to a historic Iroquois narrative (up, west; Shimony 1961:229; Chapter 6: Appendix 2—Iroquois, case Fein130; see also Chapter 7: Table 7.8). However, in the Eagle mound case, ascent was by flying, whereas in the Potomac narrative, ascent was by climbing a tree.
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References for singular interpretations of “Interregional Hopewell” are: a culture (Shetrone 1930:185–188); a biological stock (Hooton 1922; Neumann 1950; 1952; Prufer 1961; for a summary see Buikstra 1979); a convergence of languages (Seeman 1995); intercultural contacts with a common ancestral culture in the Southeast (Setzler 1933:6–7); a formal trade network (Struever 1964; Struever and Houart 1972; see Griffin 1965 and Seeman 1979 for rebuttals); a loose confederacy (Deuel 1952:255–256); competing peer polities (Braun 1986; Dancey and Pacheco 1997:9–10; Pacheco and Dancey 2006:17); a mortuary cult (Prufer 1964; see Caldwell 1964 and Struever 1964 for rebuttals); a religious Great Tradition (Caldwell 1964:141–143); a world view (Carr 1998; 1999; 2000; Carr and Case 1996; Romain 2000); a multiregional artistic style (Prufer 1968; Willey 1971); a social-symbolic system marking leadership and prestige (Seeman 1995); an ecological adaptation (Braun 1986; Dancey 1996).
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Equally common across the Woodlands and North America was Datura spp., jimsonweed. Its use has been documented for one historic Atlantic-coast Indian tribe’s male rites of initiation (Brown 1997). However, the experience of flying is not a primary effect of jimsonweed.
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Rätsch (1998:678) thinks that the mushroom effigy from the Mound City earthwork (Mills 1922:547–548) is of a different genus of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the Psilocybe. Romain (2009:221, note 3) provides a counterargument that it is an Amanita. The Psilocybe are not known particularly for their production of the experience of flying when ingested.
A second mushroom effigy, made of stone and not depicting an Amanita, was found in Offering 1 of Mound 17 in the Hopewell earthwork (Shetrone 1926:44–45; accession number 283/131, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH.)
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In addition, over time, the shaman’s experience and the popular understanding that, during trance, the travel of the shaman’s soul involves the flight of a bird (the shaman’s soul takes on the form of a bird upon exiting the body, or the soul is carried by a bird tutelary spirit) may have been generalized into the notion that, at death, the travel of every person’s soul to an afterlife involves the flight of a bird (the soul has the form of a bird, the soul metamorphoses into a bird, or the soul is carried by a bird). Hence, there is a sharing among the six Middle Woodland dramas of death of the association between soul departure at death and the flight of a bird.
I also wonder whether such a generalization of the association between soul travel and bird flight to the arena of death and to the death of all persons might be tied to the spread into the Eastern Woodlands of strong native tobacco, Nicotiana rustica, which can cause the sensation of flying when smoked or ingested (see text). Perhaps soul flight became more widely experienced with the introduction of tobacco, whereas previously, soul flight was experienced primarily by shamans. It may not be coincidental that the earliest documented instance of the smoking of tobacco and the earliest ritual drama involving the deceased laid out in the form of a flying bird, as currently reported for the Eastern Woodlands, both occurred at the same time, at the Cresap mound (see text).
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Carr, C. (2021). More Souls in Flight: Ritual Dramas of Death Journeys through the Above Realm(s) of Hopewellian and Adena Societies Beyond the Scioto. In: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_11
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