Abstract
The universes that Scioto, Miami, and other Ohio Hopewellian peoples experienced and cautiously engaged in during their individual daily lives and communal ceremonies were filled with a great diversity of persons and societies. These included not only human beings and their communities, but also nonhuman sentient, volitional, agentive, and social beings and their “tribes” to whom modern Westerners are not so sensitive: animals, plants, material objects, and features of the land of various species that we would call “ordinary” or “natural”, as well as creatures that we would label “extraordinary” or “mythical”. Many of these beings were similar to ones whom historic Woodland and Plains Indians recognized and with whom they interrelated, allied, and coped. A few examples best known to ethnohistorical and archaeological researchers of past Woodland and Plains Indians are the thunderers, horned serpents, and underwater panthers.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References Cited
Adair, James (1968) The History of the American Indians. Introduction by Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. Johnson Reprint Co., New York, NY. (Original 1775. Edward and Charles Dilly, London, UK.)
Adair, James (2005). The History of the American Indian, edited by K. E. H. Braund. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL. (Original, 1775, Edward and Charles Dilly, London, UK.)
Adams, Richard C. (1905). Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing. Richard C. Adams, Washington, D.C.
Alighierie, Dante (1308–1321). The Divine Comedy. (Reprinted 2013. Translated by J. A. Carlyle and P. H. Wicksteed. Vintage Books, New York, NY.)
Almond, Philip C. (1994). Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
Baby, Raymond (1961). A Unique Hopewellian Breastplate. Ohio Archaeologist 11(1):13–15.
Bacon, Willard S. (1993). Factors in Siting a Middle Woodland Enclosure in Middle Tennessee. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 18(2):245–281.
Bacqueville de la Potherie, Claude Charles Leroy (1753). Histoire de l’Amérique septentrionale. Jean-Luc Nion and François Didot, Paris, France.
Bailey, Garrick A. (1995). The Osage and the Invisible World: From the Works of Francis La Flesche. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK.
Barbeau, Marius (1914). Supernatural Beings of the Huron and Wyandot. American Anthropologist, n.s. 16:288–313.
Barbeau, Marius (1915). Huron and Wyandot Mythology. Canada Department of Mines, Geological Survey, Memoir 80, Anthropological Series 11. Government Printing Bureau Ottawa, ON, Canada.
Barbeau, Marius (1949). The Old World Dragon in America. In Indian Tribes of Aboriginal America, edited by S. Tax, pp. 115–112. Selected Papers of the 29th International Congress of Americanists. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Barbeau, Marius (1951). The Dragon Myths and Ritual Songs of the Iroquois. Journal of the International Folk Music Council 3:81–85.
Barnett, W. F. (2003). Satan. In New Catholic Encyclopedia, pp. 698–699. Gale Group in association with Catholic University of America, Detroit, MI.
Barnouw, Victor (1977). Wisconsin Chippewa Myths and Tales and Their Relation to Chippewa Life. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Barth, Karl (1956). Church Dogmatics, edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, UK, and Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY. (Translated from German.)
Berlo, Janet C. (2000). Spirit Beings and Sun Dances: Black Hawk’s Vision of the Lakota World. George Braziller, New York, NY.
Bernstein, Alan E. (1993). The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Berres, Thomas E. (2000). Mythical and Material Reality of the Thunderbird in the Northeast and Plains. Paper presented at the Joint Midwest Archaeological Conference and Plains Anthropological Conference, St. Paul, MN. November.
Berres, Thomas E. (2004). Bear Imagery and Ritual in Northeast North America: An Update and Assessment of A. Irving Hallowell’s Work. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 29(1):5–42.
Bierhorst, John (1995). Mythology of the Lenape: Guide and Texts. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
Birmingham, Robert A. (2010). Spirits of Earth: The Effigy Mound Landscape of Madison and the Four Lakes. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Blair, Emma Helen, translator and editor. (1911–1912). The Indian Tribes of the Upper Mississippi Valley and Region of the Great Lakes as Described by Nicolas Perot, French Commandant in the Northwest; Bacquevile de la Potherie, French Royal Commissioner to Canada; Morrell Marston, American Army Officer; and Thomas Forsyth, United States Agent at Fort Armstrong. 2 vols. Arthur H. Clark Co., Cleveland, OH.
Blessing, F. K. (1963). Birchbark Mide Scrolls from Minnesota. Minnesota Archaeologist 29(3):89–142.
Bourgeois, Arthur P., editor. (1994). Ojibwa Narratives of Charles and Charlotte Kawbawgam and Jacques LePique, 1893–1895. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI.
Bowers, A. (1950). Mandan Social and Ceremonial Organization. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Braund, Kathryn E. Holland (2005). James Adair: His Life and History. Introduction to The History of the American Indians, by James Adair, pp. 1–53. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL.
Brose, David S. (1985). The Woodland Period. In Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians, by D. S. Brose, J. A. Brown, and D. W. Penney, pp. 43–92. Harry Abrams, Inc., New York, NY.
Brown, Charles E. (1939). Myths, Legends and Superstitions about Copper. The Wisconsin Archeologist, n.s. 20(2):35–40.
Brown, Joseph Epes, editor. (1953). The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. University of Oklahoma Press, Tulsa, OK.
Buikstra, Jane E., and Douglas K. Charles (1999). Centering the Ancestors: Cemeteries, Mounds, and Sacred Landscapes of the Ancient North American Midcontinent. In Archaeologies of Landscapes: Contemporary Perspectives, edited by W. Ashmore and A. B. Knapp, pp. 201–228. Blackwell, Malden, MA.
Buikstra, Jane E., Douglas K. Charles, and Gordon F. M. Rakita (1998). Staging Ritual: Hopewell Ceremonialism at the Mound House Site, Greene County, Illinois. Kampsville Studies in Archeology and History, 1. Center for American Archeology, Kampsville, IL.
Buttrick, Daniel Sabin (1884). Antiquities of the Cherokee Indians. Indian Chieftain, Vinta, Indian Territory.
Byers, A. Martin (1996). Social Structure and the Pragmatic Meaning of Material Culture: Ohio Hopewell as Ecclesiastic-Communal Cult. In A View from the Core: A Synthesis of Ohio Hopewell Archaeology, edited by P. J. Pacheco, pp. 174–192. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, OH.
Byers, A. Martin (2004). The Ohio Hopewell Episode: Paradigm Lost, Paradigm Gained. University of Akron Press, Akron, OH.
Byers, A. Martin (2006). Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Byers, A. Martin (2010). The “Heartland” Woodland Settlement System: Cultural Traditions and Resolving Key Puzzles. In Hopewell Settlement Patterns, Subsistence, and Symbolic Landscapes, edited by A. M. Byers and D. Wymer, pp. 276–296. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Byers, A. Martin (2013). From Cahokia to Larson to Moundville: Death, World Renewal, and The Sacred in the Mississippian Social World of the Late Prehistoric Eastern Woodlands. Newfound Press, University of Tennessee Libraries, Knoxville, TN.
Carr, Christopher (1997). Powers of the Four Directions in Ohio Hopewell Religion (50 B.C.–A.D. 350). Society for American Archaeology, annual meeting, Nashville, TN. April.
Carr, Christopher (2000). Ohio Hopewellian Cosmology and Its Material, Symbolic Representations. Conference on Perspectives on Middle Woodland at the Millennium. Center for American Archaeology, Pere Marquette Park, IL. July.
Carr, Christopher (2007). Directions of the Scioto Hopewell Cosmos. Paper for the Santa Fe Institute Workshop, “Cosmology and Society in the Ancient Amerindian World.” Santa Fe, NM. October.
Carr, Christopher (2008a). Environmental Setting, Natural Symbols, and Subsistence. In The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors, edited by D. T. Case and C. Carr, pp. 41–100. Springer, New York, NY.
Carr, Christopher (2008b). World View and the Dynamics of Change: The Beginning and the End of Scioto Hopewell Culture and Lifeways. In The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors, edited by D. T. Case and C. Carr, pp. 289–328. Springer, New York, NY.
Carr, Christopher (2008c). Social and Ritual Organization. In The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors, edited by D. T. Case and C. Carr, pp. 151–288. Springer, New York, NY.
Carr, Christopher, and D. Troy Case (2005). The Nature of Leadership in Ohio Hopewellian Societies: Role Segregation and the Transformation from Shamanism. In Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual, and Ritual Interaction, edited by C. Carr and D. T. Case, pp. 177–237. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, NY.
Carr, Christopher, and Robert McCord (2013). Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures: Part 1—Biological Identification and Ethnohistorical Insights. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 38(1):5–82.
Carr, Christopher, and Robert McCord (2015). Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures: Part 2—Archaeological Context and a Journey to an Afterlife. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 40(1):18–47.
Carr, Christopher, Rex Weeks, and Mark Bahti (2008). The Functions and Meanings of Ohio Hopewell Ceremonial Artifacts in Ethnohistorical Perspective. In The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors, edited by D. T. Case and C. Carr, pp. 501–521. Springer, New York, NY.
Carver, Jonathan (1976). The Journals of Jonathan Carver and Related Documents, edited by J. Parker. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, MN. (Original 1766–1770.)
Case, D. Troy, and Christopher Carr, editors. (2008). The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding. Springer, New York, NY.
Chamberlain, Alex F. (1890). The Thunderbird amongst the Algonkins. American Anthropologist, o.s. 3:51–54.
Chamberlain, Alex F. (1900). In Memoriam: Walter James Hoffman. Journal of American Folklore 13(48):44–46.
Charles, Douglas K., and Jane E. Buikstra, editors. (2006). Re-creating Hopewell. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Churchill, M. C. (2000). Purity and Pollution: Unearthing an Oppositional Paradigm in the Study of Cherokee Religious Traditions. In Native American Spirituality: A Critical Reader, edited by L. Irwin, pp. 205–235. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
Connelley, William Elsey (1899). Wyandot Folk–Lore. Crane & Company, Topeka, Kansas.
Converse, Harriet M. (1908). Myths and Legends of the New York State Iroquois. New York State Museum, Bulletin 125.
Converse, Robert N. (1979). The Glacial Kame Indians. Special Publication. The Archaeological Society of Ohio, Columbus, OH.
Cooper, Reverend John M. (1933). The Northern Algonquian Supreme Being. Primitive Man 6(3–4):41–111.
Cordy-Collins, Alana (1980). An Artistic Record of the Chavin Hallucinatory Experience. The Masterkey 54(3):84–93.
Curtin, J., and J. N. B. Hewitt (1918). Seneca Fiction, Legends, and Myths. Thirty-second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1910–1911:37–813. Smithsonian Institution. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Dablon, Claude (n.d., ca. 1670). Of the Mission of Saint Esprit at Chagaouami–1. Gong Point, in Lake Tracy or Superior. Of the Peculiarities and Rarities That Are Found in Lake Superior; and, First, of the Different Fisheries in Which It Abounds. In Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, edited by R. G. Thwaites, Vol. 54, Document 126, Relations de Ce Qui S’est Passe’ en la Nouvelle France, les Anne’es 1699 & 1670, Chapter 11.
DeBoer, Warren R. (1997). Ceremonial Centers from the Cayapas (Esmeraldas, Ecuador) to Chillicothe (Ohio). Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7(2):225–253.
Detwiler, Fritz (1992). ‘All My Relatives’: Persons in Oglala Religion. Religion 22:235–246.
Dewdney, Selwyn (1967). Indian Paintings of the Great Lakes. Second Edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Canada. (Original 1962, with Kenneth E. Kidd.)
Dewdney, Selwyn (1975). The Sacred Scrolls of the Southern Ojibway. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Diamond, Beverly, M. Sam Cronk, and Franziska von Rosen (1994). Visions of Sound: Musical Instruments of First Nations Communities in Northeastern America. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Dorsey, George A. (1891). Hopewell Effigy or Mound 25. Unpublished manuscript, File A17, Folder 5, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL.
Dorsey, George A. (1904a). Traditions of the Arikara. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 17. Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.
Dorsey, George A. (1904b). Traditions of the Wichita. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 21. Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.
Dorsey, George A. (1904c). Traditions of the Pawnee. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, MA.
Dorsey, George A. (1905). Traditions of the Caddo. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 41. Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.
Dorsey, George A. (1906). The Pawnee. Mythology, Part I. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 59. Carnegie Institution, Washington, D.C.
Douglas, Mary (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, UK.
Douglas, Mary (1991). Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology, Second Edition. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, UK. (First edition 1975.)
Douglas, Mary (1994). Forgotten Knowledge. In Shifting Contexts: Transformations in Anthropological Knowledge, edited by E. Strathern, pp. 13–27. Routledge, London, UK.
Dye, David H. (1989). Exhibition Catalog: Introduction. In The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis—The Cottonlandia Conference, edited by P. Galloway, pp. 321–382. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
Ellison, George (1992). James Mooney and the Eastern Cherokees. Introduction to James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, pp.1–33. Historical Images, Asheville, NC.
Emerson, Thomas E. (1989). Water, Serpents, and the Underworld: An Exploration into Cahokian Symbolism. In Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis—The Cottonlandia Conference, edited by P. Galloway, pp. 45–92. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz (1984). American Indian Myths and Legends. Pantheon Books, New York, NY.
Eyman, Frances (1963). An Unusual Winnebago War Club and an American Water Monster. Expedition 5(4):31–35.
Fecht, William G. (1985). New Thoughts on the Piasa Bird Legend. Central States Archaeological Journal October:174–179.
Feest, Christian F. (1986). Indians of Northeastern North America. Iconography of Religions, Section X.7. E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Flannery, Regina, and Mary Elizabeth Chambers (1985). Each Man Has His Own Friends: The Role of Dream Visitors in Traditional East Cree Belief and Practice. Arctic Anthropology 22(1):1–22.
Fogelson, Raymond D. (1978). The Cherokees: A Critical Bibliography. Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian Bibliographical Series. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN.
Fox, William A. (2004). Horned Panthers and Erie Associates. In A Passion for the Past: Papers in Honour of James F. Pendergast, edited by J. V. Wright and J-L Pilon. Mercury Series, Archaeology Paper 164. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, QC, Canada.
Fox, William A., and Robert J. Salzer (1999). Themes and Variations: Ideological Systems in the Great Lakes. In Taming the Taxonomy: Toward a New Understanding of Great Lakes Archaeology, edited by R. F. Williamson and C. M. Watts, pp. 237–263. Eastendbooks, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Gardiner, Eileen (1993). Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook. Garland Publishing, New York, NY.
Gatschet, Albert (1899). Water-Monsters of American Aborigines. Journal of American Folklore 12:255–260.
Giles, Bretton (2010). The Ritual Mnemonics of Hopewell Symbols: An Analysis of Effigies and Ceremonial Regalia from Tremper, Mound City, and Hopewell. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY.
Gill, Sam D., and Irene F. Sullivan (1992). Dictionary of Native American Mythology. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Goodman, Ronald (1992). On the Necessity of Sacrifice in Lakota Stellar Theology as Seen in “The Hand” Constellation, and the Story of “The Chief Who Lost His Arm.” In Earth and Sky, edited by R. Williamson and C. Farrer, pp. 215–220. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Gregory the Great, Pope Saint (1983). Dialogues. Translated by O. J. Zimmerman. The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C. First printing 1939.
Grinnell, George Bird (1908). Blackfoot Lodge Tales: The Story of a Prairie People. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY.
Hall, Robert L. (1979). In Search of the Ideology of the Adena-Hopewell Climax. In Hopewell Archaeology: The Chillicothe Conference, edited by D. S. Brose and N. Greber, pp. 258–265. Kent State University Press, Kent, OH.
Hall, Robert L. (2006). The Enigmatic Copper Cutout from Bedford Mound 8. In Re-creating Hopewell, edited by D. K. Charles and Jane E. Buikstra, pp. 464–474. University of Florida Press, Gainesville, FL.
Hallowell, A. Irving (1926). Bear Ceremonialism in the Northern Hemisphere. American Anthropologist 28(1):1–175.
Hallowell, A. Irving (1960). Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View. In Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, edited by S. Diamond, pp. 19–52. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
Hamell, George R. (1998). Long-Tail: The Panther in Huron-Wyandot and Seneca Myth, Ritual, and Material Culture. In Icons of Power: Feline Symbolism in the Americas, edited by N. J. Saunders, pp. 258–291. Routledge, London, UK.
Hamell, George R., and William A. Fox (2005). Rattlesnake Tales. Ontario Archaeology 79/80:127–149.
Hamilton, Henry W. (1952). The Spiro Mound. Missouri Archaeologist 14, whole volume. Columbia, MO.
Harrod, Howard L. (2000). The Animals Came Dancing: Native American Sacred Ecology and Animal Kinship. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.
Hartman, L. F. (2003). Devil. In New Catholic Encyclopedia, pp. 704–705. Gale Group in association with Catholic University of America, Detroit, MI.
Hewitt, J. N. B. (1891). Kaahastinens or the Fire-Dragon. American Anthropologist: 4:384.
Hewitt, J. N. B. (1922). James Mooney. American Anthropologist, n.s. 24(2):209–214.
Hilger, Mary Inez, Sr. (1951). Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 146. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Hinsley, Curtis M. (1999). Introduction to the Dover Edition. In Algic Researches: North American Indian Folktales and Legends, pp. ix–xiv. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY.
Hoffman, W. J. (1891). The Midē′wiwin or “Grand Medicine Society” of the Ojibwa. Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885–1886, pp. 149–300. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Hoffman, W. J. (1896). The Menomini Indians. Fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885–1886, pp. 3–328. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Howard, James H. (1960). When They Worship the Underwater Panther: A Prairie Potawatomi Bundle Ceremony. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 16:217–224.
Howard, James H. (1965). The Plains Ojibwa, or Bungi. Anthropological Papers, No. 1. South Dakota Museum, University of South Dakota, Vermilion, SD.
Howard, James H. (1977–1978). Review of The Southeastern Indians, by Charles Hudson. American Indian Quarterly 3(Winter):373–375.
Howard, James H. (1981). Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and Its Cultural Background. Ohio University Press, Athens, OH.
Hudson, Charles (1976). The Southeastern Indians. University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, TN.
Hudson, Charles (1977). James Adair as Anthropologist. Ethnohistory 24 (Fall):311–328.
Hudson, Charles (1984). Elements of Southeastern Indian Religion. Iconography of Religions, Section X: North America. E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Hudson, Charles (2000). Reply to Mary Churchill. American Indian Quarterly 24(3):494–502.
Hultkrantz, Åke (1983). The Elders of the Fish in Aboriginal North America. American Indian Quarterly 7(3):1–22.
Jacobs, Reverend Peter (Pah-tah-se-ga) (1855). Journal from Rice Lake to Hudson’s Bay Territory, and Returning. Commencing May, 1852. Carlton and Phillips, New York, NY.
Jenness, Diamond (1935). The Ojibwa Indians of Parry Island. Canada Department of Mines, Bulletin 78:1–115.
Johnston, Basil H. (1995). The Bear-Walker and Other Stories. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Johnston, Basil H. (1998). Mermaids and Medicine Women: Native Myths and Legends. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Jolivet, R., and B. Whitney (2003). Evil. In New Catholic Encyclopedia, pp. 487–491. Gale Group in association with Catholic University of America, Detroit, MI.
Jones, Reverend Peter (1861). History of the Ojebway Indians; with Especial Reference to Their Conversion to Christianity. A. W. Bennett, London, UK.
Jones, William (1900). Field notes left with the late Dr. Truman Michelson. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Jones, William (1917). Ojibwa Texts, Part 1, edited by T. Michelson. American Ethnological Society, Publications 7. E. J. Brill, Limited, Leyden, The Netherlands, and G. E. Stechert and Company, New York, NY.
Jones, William (1919). Ojibwa Texts, Part 2, edited by T. Michelson. American Ethnological Society, Publications 7. G. E. Stechert and Company, Agents, New York, NY.
Kehoe, Alice (1992). Clot-of-Blood. In Earth and Sky, edited by C. R. Farrer and R. A. Williamson. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM.
Kehoe, Alice (1995). The Plains Blackfoot Person. In Women and Power in Native North America, edited by L. F. Klein and L. A. Ackerman, pp. 113–125. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK.
Kinietz, W. Vernon (1947). Chippewa Village: The Story of Katikitegon. Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bulletins, 25. Detroit, MI.
Kinietz, Vernon, and Erminie W. Voegelin, editors. (1939). Shawnese Traditions: C. C. Trowbridge’s Account. University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Occasional Contributions, 9. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.
Klauber, Laurence M. (1972). Rattlesnakes: Their Habits, Life Histories, and Influence on Mankind. Vols. 1–3, Second Edition. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, for the Zoological Society of San Diego, San Diego, CA.
Knight, Vernon James (1986). The Institutional Organization of Mississippian Religion. American Antiquity 51(4):675–687.
Knight, Vernon James (2006). Farewell to the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. Southeastern Archaeology 25(1):1–5.
Kohl, J. G. (1860). Kitchi–Gami: Wanderings Round Lake Superior. Chapman and Hall, London, UK. (Reprinted 1956, Ross and Haines, Inc., Minneapolis, MN.)
Kolakowski, Leszek (2005). The Good. In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, edited by L. Jones, pp. 3635–3636. MacMillan Reference USA, Detroit, MI.
Kurath, Gertrude P. (1957). The Christianization of Michigan Algonquians. Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 44. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, MI.
Lahontan, Baron de (1905). New Voyages to North America, 2 vols. Edited by R. Thwaites, 1703. (Reprinted by A. C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, IL.)
Landes, Ruth (1968). Ojibwa Religion and the Midewiwin. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI.
Lankford, George (2004). World on a String: Some Cosmological Components of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. In Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South, edited by R. F. Townsend and R. Sharp, pp. 207–217. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Lankford, George (2007a). Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL.
Lankford, George (2007b). The Great Serpent in Eastern North America. In Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, edited by F. K. Reilly III and J. Garber, pp. 106–135. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Lankford, George (2007c). Some Cosmological Motifs in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. In Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, edited by F. K. Reilly III and J. Garber, pp. 8–38. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Lankford, George (2007d). The “Path of Souls”: Some Death Imagery in the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex. In Ancient Objects and Sacred Realms: Interpretations of Mississippian Iconography, edited by F. K. Reilly III and J. Garber, pp. 174–212. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Lankford, George E., F. Kent Reilly III, and James Garber (2011). Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Larimore, Mark (2005). Evil. In New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, edited by M. C. Horowitz, pp. 744–750. Charles Scribner’s Sons, Detroit, MI.
Latorre, F. A., and D. L. Latorre (1976). The Mexican Kickapoo Indians. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Lawson, John (1714). History of Carolina, Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of that Country. London. (Reprinted 1860, Raleigh, NC, and 1937, Richmond, VA.)
Leland, Charles G. (1884). The Algonquin Legends of New England. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, MA. (Reprinted, 1968, by Singing Tree Press, Detroit, MI.)
Lenik, Edward J. (2002). Picture Rocks: American Indian Rock Art in the Northeast Woodlands. University Press of New England, Hanover, NH.
Lewis-Williams, J. D., and T. A. Dowson (1988). The Sign of All Times. Current Anthropology 29(2):201–213.
Luckhurst, C. T. (1916). Memoir of Ann Eliza Bleecker, 1799. Relating the History of Maria Kittle. Special Collections, New York State Library, New York, NY.
Mails, Thomas E. (1972). The Mystic Warriors of the Plains. Council Oak Books, Tulsa, OK.
Mails, Thomas E. (1979). Fools Crow. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
Mails, Thomas E. (1978). Sundancing at Rosebud and Pine Ridge. Center for Western Studies, Augustana College, Sioux Falls, SD.
Mails, Thomas E. (1991). Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power. Council Oak Books, Tulsa, OK.
Mallorie, Garrick (1893). Picture Writing of the American Indians. Tenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution 1888–1889. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Mann, Barbara Alice (2003). Native Americans, Archaeologists, and the Mounds. Peter Lang, New York, NY.
McLachlan, Carrie Ann (1999). Cherokee Cosmology. Master’s thesis, Department of History, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC.
McLoughlin, William G. (1984). Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
McLoughlin, William G. (1994). The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794–1839: Essays on Acculturation and Cultural Persistence, edited by W. H. Conser Jr. University of Georgia Press, Athens, GA.
Michelson, Truman (1935). The Menomini Hairy Serpent and the Hairy Fish. Journal of American Folklore 48(188):197–199.
Mills, William C. (1916). Exploration of the Tremper Mound. Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 18:269–321.
Milton, John (1667). Paradise Lost: A Poem in Ten Books. S. Simmons, London, UK. (Reprinted 2005, edited by D. S. Kastan. Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, IN.)
Mooney, James (1891). The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1897–1898, Pt. 1:1–576. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Mooney, James (1900). Myths of the Cherokee. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology. U.S. Government Printing Offices, Washington, D.C.
Mooney, James (1905). The Story of the Shield. Science, n.s. 21(534):442.
Moorehead, Warren K. (1892). Map of the floor of Mound 25 in Cuts 5, 3, and 6, at the Hopewell earthwork. Unpublished document, File A17, Folder 3, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL.
Moorehead, Warren K. (1897). The Hopewell Mound Group (continued). The Antiquarian 1:236–243.
Moorehead, Warren K. (1922). The Hopewell Mound Group of Ohio. Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 211. Anthropological Series 6(5):73–184, plates 51–83.
Morrison, Kenneth M. (1984). The Embattled Northeast: The Elusive Ideal of Alliance in Abenaki-Euramerican Relations. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
Morrison, Kenneth M. (2000). The Cosmos as Intersubjective: Native American Other-Than-Human Persons. In Indigenous Religions: A Companion, edited by G. Harvey, pp. 23–36. Cassell, London, UK.
Morrison, Kenneth M. (2002). The Solidarity of Kin. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Neihardt, John G. (1932). Black Elk Speaks. William Morrow & Company, New York, NY.
Oneroad, Amos E., and Alanson B. Skinner (2003). Being Dakota: Tales and Traditions of the Sisseton and Wahpeton, edited by L. L. Anderson. Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, MN.
Otto, Martha Potter (1984). Masterworks in Pipestone: Treasure from Tremper Mound. Timeline 1:18–33.
Otto, Martha Potter (1992). A Prehistoric Menagerie: Ohio Hopewell Effigy Pipes. In Proceedings of the 1989 Smoking Pipe Conference: Selected Papers, edited by C. F. Hayes III, C. C. Bodner, and M. L. Sempowski, pp. 1–11. Rochester Museum & Science Center Research Records 22. Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester, NY.
Overholt, Thomas W., and J. Baird Callicott (1982). Clothed-In-Fur and Other Tales: An Introduction to an Ojibwa World View. University Press of America, Inc., Washington, D.C.
Parker, Arthur C. (1923). Seneca Myths and Folk Tales. Buffalo Historical Society, Buffalo, NY.
Payne, John Howard (n.d.). Papers, 14 vols. Unpublished typescript, Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.
Payne, John Howard (1849). The Ancient Cherokee Traditions and Religious Rites. Quarterly Register and Magazine December:444–450. Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, IL.
Payne, John Howard (1862). The Green-Corn Dance. The Continental Monthly 1(January):17–29. (Reprinted as The Green Corn Dance, edited by John Swanton, in Chronicles of Oklahoma 10 [June 1932]:170–195.)
Peacock, Thomas, and Marlene Wisuri (2002). Ojibwe Waasa Inaabidaa: We Look in All Directions. Afton Historical Society Press, Afton, MN.
Peers, Laura, and Jennifer S. H. Brown (2000). “There Is No End to Relationship among the Indians”: Ojibwa Families and Kinship in Historical Perspective. The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 4(4):529–555.
Penney, David W. (1985). Continuities of Imagery and Symbolism in the Art of the Woodlands. In Ancient Art of the American Woodland Indians, edited by D. S. Brose, J. A. Brown, and D. W. Penney, pp. 147–198. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, NY, in association with the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI.
Perino, Gregory (1960). The Piasa Design in Arkansas. Central States Archaeological Journal 7(4):146–150.
Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown (1978). Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma, Part 1. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, MA.
Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown (1984). Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma, Part 2. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, MA.
Pluckhahn, Thomas J., Robbie Ethridge, Jerald T. Milanich, and Marvin T. Smith (2006). Introduction. In Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians, edited by T. J. Pluckhahn and Robbie Ethridge, pp. 1–25. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL.
Pomedli, Michael (1987). Beyond Unbelief: Early Jesuit Interpretations of Native Religions. Studies in Religions 16(3):275–287.
Pond, Gideon H. (1867). Dakota Superstitions. Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul, MN.
Quimby, George I. (1960). Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes, 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1800. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Radin, Paul F. (1909). Winnebago Tales. Journal of American Folklore 22(85):288–313.
Radin, Paul F. (1923). The Winnebago Tribe. Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1915–1916, pp.33–550. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Radin, Paul F. (1926). Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian. D. Appleton and Co., New York, NY.
Radin, Paul F. (1927). Primitive Man as Philosopher. D. Appleton Co., New York, NY.
Radin, Paul F. (1937). Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin. Viking Press, New York, NY.
Radin, Paul F. (1945). The Road of Life and Death: A Ritual Drama of the American Indians. Pantheon Books, New York, NY.
Radin, Paul F. (1948). Winnebago Hero Cycles: A Study in Aboriginal Literature. Indiana University Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoire 1. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
Radin, Paul F. (1950). The Origin Myth of the Medicine Rite: Three Versions. Indiana University, Publications in Anthropology and Linguistics, Memoir 3. Bloomington, IN.
Radin, Paul F. (1956). The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. Routledge and Paul, London, UK.
Radin, Paul F. (1970). The Winnebago Tribe. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE. (Original 1923. Thirty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology for the Years 1915–1916, pp.33–550. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.)
Rajnovich, Grace (1994). Reading Rock Art: Interpreting the Indian Rock Paintings of the Canadian Shield. Natural Heritage/Natural History, Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada.
Redsky, James (1972). Great Leader of the Ojibwe: Mis-quona-queb, edited by J. R. Stevens. McClelland and Steward Ltd., Toronto, ON, Canada.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1987). Shamanism and the Art of the Eastern Tukanoan Indians. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Reilly, F. Kent, III (2011). The Great Serpent in the Lower Mississippi Valley. In Visualizing the Sacred: Cosmic Visions, Regionalism, and the Art of the Mississippian World, edited by G. E. Lankford, F. K. Reilly III, and J. F. Garber, pp. 118–134. University of Texas Press, Austin, TX.
Ricoeur, Paul (1967). The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Harper and Row, New York, NY. (Original 1960.)
Ricoeur, Paul (2005). Evil. In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, edited by L. Jones, pp. 2897–2004. MacMillan Reference USA, Detroit, MI.
Ritzenthaler, Robert E., and Pat Ritzenthaler (1970). The Woodland Indians of the Western Great Lakes. American Museum Science Books, Natural History Press, Garden City, NY.
Robertson, Marion (1973). Rock Drawings of the Micmac Indians. Nova Scotia Museum, Halifax, NS, Canada.
Roe, Peter (1995). Style, Society, Myth, and Structure. In Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives, edited by C. Carr and J. Neitzel, pp. 27–76. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Romain, William F. (1988). The Serpent Mound Solar Eclipse Hypothesis: Ethnohistoric Considerations. The Ohio Archaeologist 38(3):32–37.
Romain, William F. (1991). Symbolic Associations at the Serpent Mound. The Ohio Archaeologist 41(3):29–36.
Romain, William F. (1994). Hopewell Geometric Enclosures: Symbols of an Ancient World View. The Ohio Archaeologist 44(2):37–43.
Romain, William F. (1996a). Hilltop Enclosures: Were They the Dwelling Places of Underworld Monsters? Ohio Archaeologist 46(2):36–44.
Romain, William F. (1996b). Hopewell Geometry: Forms at the Interface of Time and Eternity. In A View from the Core: A Synthesis of Ohio Hopewell Archaeology, edited by P. J. Pacheco, pp. 194–209. The Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, OH.
Romain, William F. (2000). Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands. University of Akron Press, Akron, OH.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1839). Algic Researches: Comprising Inquiries, Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians/First Series: Indian Tales and Legends, Vol. 1. Harper, New York, NY.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1851–1857). Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, 6 vols. Bureau of Indian Affairs. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1860). Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, containing all the original Paper laid before Congress respecting the History, Antiquities, Language, Ethnology, Pictography, Rites, Superstitions, and Mythology of the Indian Tribes of the United States. 6 vols. J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, PA.
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe (1999). Algic Researches: North American Indian Folktales and Legends. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY. (Original 1839. Algic Researches: Comprising Inquiries, Respecting the Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians/First Series: Indian Tales and Legends, Vols. 1, 2. Harper, New York, NY.)
Sharma, Avrind (2005). Satan. In The Encyclopedia of Religion, Second Edition, edited by L. Jones, pp. 8123–8126. MacMillan Reference USA, Detroit, MI.
Shetrone, Henry C., and Emerson F. Greenman (1931). Explorations of the Seip Group of Prehistoric Earthworks. Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 40:343–509.
Skinner, Alanson (1911). Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers 9(1):1–179.
Skinner, Alanson (1913a). Social Life and Ceremonial Bundles of the Menomini Indians. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers 8(Part 1):1–165. Order of Trustees, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.
Skinner, Alanson (1913b). Notes on the Florida Seminole. American Anthropologist, n.s. 15(1):63–77.
Skinner, Alanson (1914). The Algonkin and the Thunderbird. The American Museum Journal 14:71–72.
Skinner, Alanson (1915). Associations and Ceremonies of the Menomini Indians. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers 8(Part 2):167–215. Order of Trustees, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.
Skinner, Alanson (1920). Medicine Ceremony of the Menomini, Iowa, and Wahpeton Dakota, with Notes on the Ceremony among the Ponca, Bungi Ojibwa, and Potawatomi. Indian Notes and Monographs, 4. Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, NY.
Skinner, Alanson (1921). Material Culture of the Menominee. Indian Notes and Monographs, Miscellaneous Series 20(1). Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York, NY.
Skinner, Alanson (1923). Observations on the Ethnology of the Sauk Indians. Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Bulletin 5(3). Milwaukee, WI.
Skinner, Alanson (1924a). The Mascoutens or Prairie Potawatomi Indians: Part I, Social Life and Ceremonies. Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Bulletin 6(1):1–262. Milwaukee, WI.
Skinner, Alanson (1924b). The Mascoutens or Prairie Potawatomi Indians: Part III, Mythology and Folklore. Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Bulletin 6(3). Milwaukee, WI.
Skinner, Alanson (1925). Traditions of the Ioway Indians. Journal of American Folklore 38(150):425–506.
Skinner, Alanson (1926). Ethnology of the Ioway Indians. Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee, Bulletin 5(4):181–354. Milwaukee, WI.
Skinner, Alanson (1928). Sauk Tales. Journal of American Folklore 41(159):147–171.
Skinner, Alanson, and John V. Satterlee (1915). Folklore of the Menomini Indians. American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers 13 (Part 3):217–546. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.
Skinner, Charles M. (1896). Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, Vol. 2. J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, PA.
Smith, Huron H. (1933a). Ethnobotany of the Forest Potawatomi Indians. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 7(1):1–230. Milwaukee, WI.
Smith, Huron H. (1933b). Ethnobotany of the Ojibwe Indians. Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee 4(3):327–525. Milwaukee, WI.
Smith, John (1907). Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606–1625, edited by Lyon Gardiner Tyler. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY. (Reprinted 1959 by Barnes & Noble, Inc., New York, NY.)
Smith, Theresa S. (1991). Calling the Thunder, Part One: “Animikeek”, the Thunderstorm as a Speech Event in the Ansihinaabe Lifeworld. American Indian Culture and Research Journal 15(3):19–28.
Smith, Theresa S. (1995). The Island of the Anishnaabeg: Thunderers and Water Monsters in the Traditional Ojibwe Life-World. University of Idaho Press, Moscow, ID.
Speck, Frank G. (1909). Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians. Anthropology Publication 1. University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, PA.
Speck, Frank G. (1935). Mammoth or “Stiff–Legged Bear”. American Anthropologist 37(1):159–163.
Speck, Frank G., and Jesse Moses (1945). The Celestial Bear Comes Down to Earth: The Bear Sacrifice Ceremony of the Munsee-Mahican in Canada as Related by Nekatcit. Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, Scientific Publications, 7. Reading, PA.
Squier, Ephraim G., and Edwin H. Davis (1848). Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Starr, S. Frederick (1960). The Archaeology of Hamilton County, Ohio. Journal of the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History 23(1).
Steponaitis, Vincas P., and Vernon J. Knight Jr. (2004). Moundville Art in Historical and Social Context. In Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South, edited by R. F. Townsend and R. Sharp, pp. 167–181. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Straus, Anne S. (1977). Northern Cheyenne Ethnopsychology. Ethos 5(3):326–357.
Sturtevant, William C. (1954). The Medicine Bundles and Busks of the Florida Seminole. Florida Anthropologist 7:31–70.
Sunderhaus, Ted S., and Jack K. Blosser (2006). Water and Mud and the Re-creation of the World. In Re-creating Hopewell, edited by Douglas K. Charles and Jane E. Buikstra, pp. 134–145. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Swanton, John Reed (1910). Thunderbird. In Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, Part II, edited by F. W. Hodge, pp. 746–747. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 30. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Swanton, John Reed (1911). Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley and Adjacent Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 43. Smithsonian Institution, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Swanton, John Reed (1928). Religious Beliefs and Medicinal Practices of the Creek Indians. Forty-Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Swanton, John Reed (1929). Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 88. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Swanton, John Reed (1946). The Indians of the Southeastern United States. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 137. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Tanner, John (1956). Narrative of the Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner during Thirty Years’ Residence among the Indians in the Interior of North America, edited by Edwin James. Ross & Haines, Minneapolis, MN. (Original 1830. Edwin James, editor. G. and C. and H. Carvill, New York, NY.)
Thwaites, R. G., editor and translator. (1896–1901). The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, I–LXXII. Burrows Brothers Co., Chicago, IL.
Townsend, Richard F., and Robert V. Sharp, editors. (2004). Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Trigger, Bruce G., editor. (1978). Northeast. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 15. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Urban, Greg, and Jason Baird Jackson (2004). Mythology and Folklore. In Southeast. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14, edited by R. D. Fogelson, pp. 707–719. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Valentine, Randolph J. (2001). Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Van Nest, Julieann (2006). Rediscovering This Earth: Some Ethnogeological Aspects of the Illinois Valley Hopewell Mounds. In Re-creating Hopewell, edited by Douglas K. Charles and Jane E. Buikstra, pp. 402–426. University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL.
Vecsey, Christopher (1983). Traditional Ojibwa Religion and Its Historical Changes. The American Philosophical Society, Memoirs, Vol. 152. The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA.
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s. 4:469–488.
Walker, Chester P. (2004). Prehistoric Art of the Central Mississippi Valley. In Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South, edited by R. F. Townsend and R. Sharp, pp. 219–229. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, and Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
Waring, A. J., Jr. and Preston Holder (1945). A Prehistoric Ceremonial Complex in the Southeastern United States. American Anthropologist, n.s. 47(1):1–34.
Warren, William Whipple (1957). History of the Ojibway People, Based upon Traditions and Oral Statements. Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, Vol. 5. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN. (Original 1885.)
Waters, Anne (2004). Language Matters: Nondiscrete Nonbinary Dualism. In American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, edited by Anne Waters, pp. 97–115. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.
Webb, William S., and Raymond S. Baby (1957). The Adena People, No. 2. Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, OH.
Webster (1997). Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. Random House, New York, NY.
Weeks, William Rex (2009). Antiquity of the Midewiwin: An Examination of Early Documents, Origin Stories, Archaeological Remains, and Rock Paintings from the Northern Woodlands of North America. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ.
Willoughby, Charles C., and Ernest A. Hooton (1922). The Turner Group of Earthworks, Hamilton County, Ohio. With Notes on the Skeletal Remains by Earnest A. Hooton. Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Papers 8(3):1–132. Cambridge, MA.
Wissler, Clark, and D. C. Duvall (1908). Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 2, Part I. Order of the Trustees, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY.
Yarrow, H. C. (1881). A Further Contribution to the Study of Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians. Bureau of American Ethnology, Report 1:87–203. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.
Zaleski, Carol (1987). Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death in Medieval and Modern Times. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Acknowledgements
I thank Dr. Rex Weeks for introducing me to some of the fundamental Western and Christian biases in the works of Charles Hudson and Selwyn Dewdney on historic Woodland Native American philosophy-religion and the spread of these biases into the thinking and works of many Woodland archaeologists. I also am thankful to Dr. Weeks for showing me how historic Woodland and Plains Indian oral texts are essential to understanding the ontologies, values, ethics, and world views of these peoples. I am grateful to Dr. Scott Toussaint, M.Div., D.Min., Th.D, Ph.D., for the detailed reading he gave the section on Euro-American Christian thought about good and evil, for the corrections he provided, and for deepening my understanding of this subject through our ensuing discussions. I appreciate Kitty Rainey Kolb’s generosity in drafting the base map for Figure 8.2.
Notes
-
1.
The survey of historic Woodland and Plains Indians’ concepts about underwater-underground creatures that is reported in the first half of this paper is an extensive elaboration of the one that appeared in Carr and McCord (2013).
-
2.
Hudson (1976:144–145) describes and illustrates the Ukte′na as having bird wings in addition to a serpent body and deer antlers. Mooney (1900) does not mention the bird wings.
-
3.
One Cherokee was said to have been successful at obtaining an Ulûñsûti. “The owner keeps it wrapped in a whole deerskin, inside an earthen jar hidden away in a secret cave in the mountains. Every seven days he feeds it with the blood of small game, rubbing the blood all over the crystal as soon as the animal has been killed. Twice a year it must have the blood of a deer or some other large animal. Should he forget to feed it at the proper time it would come out of its cave at night in a shape of fire and fly through the air to slake its thirst with the lifeblood of the conjurer or some one of his people. He may save himself from this danger by telling it, when he puts it a way, that he will not need it again for a long time. It will then go quietly to sleep and feel no hunger until it is again brought out to be consulted. Then it must be fed again with blood before it is used” (Mooney 1900:298).
-
4.
Scrolls that are illustrated by Dewdney (1975) and depict serpents without horns are: figures 70, 71, 77, 80–86, 93, and 94. Scrolls showing serpents with horns are: figures 71–73, 77, 80–82, 110, 113.
-
5.
That the bull that guarded the west door of the Winnebago’s medicine lodge was an underwater bull is suggested by the fact that other components of the medicine lodge were made from underwater-underground beings. The eight side-supports of the lodge were yellow female snakes. These were tied together with rattlesnakes. The east door was made of a male and a female black snake, and the west of female blue snakes. Guarding the east door was a mountain lion which, by analogy to Ojibwa narratives (Landes 1968:145), would have been a form of the underwater panther or Great Lion, the supervisor of the door guards of the medicine lodge.
-
6.
Historic Woodland and Plains tribes all saw earthly bears as powerful persons, but varied in their perceptions of the intentions bears had toward humans. This variation probably reflects the ambiguity of bears, both as the most human-like of nonhuman North American animals in looks and behaviors yet also as dangerous carnivores who could cagily hunt a human as game (Berres 2004:8).
Earthly bears were widely respected across the historic Woodlands for their powers to heal, in part because they had very good claws for digging up roots—a major source of medicines (Berlo 2000:132). Bear paws and other parts were employed by healers (Berres 2004:30 and references therein; Gill and Sullivan 1992:23), including Ojibwa Midē′wiwin priests (Dewdney 1975:115, 152; Landes 1968:118). The bear was also commonly held by northern Woodland tribes to be the master of all land animals and controller of the supply of game for humans (Berres 2004:30 and references therein; Flannery and Chambers 1985:3–4; Hallowell 1926:59, 145). In addition, the historic Cherokee spoke of the close ties of bears to humans and the food they offered. Bears were said to have originated from a village of humans who decided to make their life in the forest and eat wild rather than grown foods, thus leading to their transformation into bears. These individuals promised to give humans their own flesh when humans were in need of food (Mooney 1900:325–327; see also 327–329).
At the same time, some earthly bears also were held to be harmful. The harmful bears that obstructed doorways in the Ojibwa Midē′wiwin rite may have resided mainly on the earth rather than below. The Ojibwa also had to contend with “bear walkers” (Mukwo-bimossae): human sorcerers who would murder a rival or a person who slighted them and, after the burial of the victim, would turn themselves into a bear, disinter the body in the middle of the night, take it home, and feast on it (Dewdney 1975:116–117; but see Johnston 1995:8).
-
7.
All the above comparisons are asymmetric, starting with the Ohio Hopewell corpus and looking for analogues in the historic Woodland and Plains corpus, rather than vice versa. This method of comparison is necessary in part because the geographic area of the Ohio Hopewell is only a subset of the much greater Woodland-Plains area. We can expect that Ohio Hopewell peoples were unfamiliar with some underwater-underground creatures known to other societies in some other parts of the Woodlands and Plains in both precontact and postcontact times.
-
8.
The Wahpeton Dakota envisioned the tent pins that held down the covering of their Medicine Lodges to be the tiger salamander, Ambystoma tigrinum. However, qualifying Hall (1979:260), these do not appear to have been extraordinary salamanders, as they are spoken of hand in hand with the ordinary land tortoise, which is envisioned to be the poles of the Medicine Lodge. “These poles represent the land tortoise, because of all animals the land tortoise has the strongest paws and is consequently fitted to hold up the lodge” (Skinner 1920:281). In addition, the salamander tent pins do not seem to be analogous to the four powerful “water spirits” and “enormous snakes” with which Creator, in Winnebago lore, pierced the newly formed earth to stop it from spinning (Radin 1945:18; 1970:120, 164). In the Wahpeton Dakota origin myth, the newly created earth does not spin and nothing is used to pin it down (Skinner 1920:273–278). The Winnebago water spirits seem somewhat analogous, instead, to the Wahpeton Dakota unkteḣi, who are water creatures that commanded four mud divers to get earth from under the primal waters, took mud clenched in the paw of the muskrat mud diver, and blew it to create land. The unkteḣi have several forms, including horned snakes and a four-footed creature that resembles a buffalo; salamanders are not listed (Skinner 1920:339, note 44).
No salamanders are referenced in Weeks’s (2009) comprehensive review of imagery of the Midē′wiwin and Medicine Rites. The Miami held that a lizard-man was among seven animal-men transformers and the culture hero who taught the Midē′wiwin to a Miami man (ibid., 188–190)—the only association of a lizard with a Woodland or Plains Medicine Rite.
-
9.
There are at least two and possibly four Hopewellian artworks that depict parts of multiple kinds of animals from the Above and Below realms that are interwoven into one complex design, but not so as to form a single being—a “composite creature”. A copper cutout from the Copper Deposit in Mound 25 of the Hopewell site has the overall shape and interior features of a pit viper snake head. Within it is a mosaic of images of two raptor talons, two duck heads, and the eared head of a bear and/or feline (Moorehead 1922:plate 68-4). A copper cutout from the Hopewellian Bedford Mound 8 in Illinois depicts the head of a caiman or an alligator when held one way and much of two birds when inverted 180 degrees (Hall 2006). This is not a case of a single composite animal but of transformation of one animal into another depicted through rotation and inversion—a convention common in Adena and Hopewell art. Two human parietals from the Central Altar of Mound 3 at the Turner site (Willoughby 1922:57, 58, figures 23, 24) are each carved with a turtle (elements of a map/sawback turtle and/or snapping turtle) indicating the earth-turtle island. The carina on the turtle’s back may double for bird feathers, indicating an Above realm, while the turtle’s legs may double for those of a feline and indicate an underwater panther (Carr 2008c:55, 59, figure 2.9a,b), but these equivalencies cannot be substantiated.
-
10.
Barbeau (1949:116) said that the Wyandots’ Snake clan had a horned serpent guardian who could change into a lion or a dwarf. He does not provide any citation. No myth describing such a change is reported in Barbeau’s 1915 monograph, Huron and Wyandot Mythology. However, he does report (1915:435, plate 10A) a stone in the Wyandot community of Lorette, Ontario, that has markings like the footprint of a dwarf and the trail of a slithering snake.
-
11.
After contact, the terms for panther were extended to the lion, tiger, and leopard (Hamell 1998:262–263).
-
12.
The underwater-underground panther, horned serpent, and/or bear are distinguished on the following Midē′wiwin scrolls: Dewdney (1975:90–92, 94–99, 102; figures 71–73, 77–86, 95), Hoffman (1891:plate 3A), and Landes (1968:82–83, figure 1).
-
13.
“Bear emerged from Earth’s center…. He reared up and went down to the ocean. There he looked north. He saw white caps and didn’t dare cross. He saw the Point, looked out from it, but discerned nothing. He went to the south Point, saw nothing, and returned to here at the ocean. He touched the water with his right hand, but noticed no effect [on the water’s behavior]. He tried his left hand, but it too made no difference. The Great Lion happened to be ashore in the south. Bear asked him, ‘Will you help me? I can’t get across.’ ‘Oh, you do want help! You, so brave and strong!’ He touched the water with one hand and it became calm and smooth as glass. Bear said ‘Thank you!’” (Landes 1968:108).
-
14.
“Now, when he [Bear] got his manito thing [midē′ lodge] constructed, then he, our Grandfather, came up and looked in. He saw no caretaker guarding the manito entrance. He gazed around and saw a midē′ manito [Lion]. He told him, ‘After he [the Manitos collectively] arrives [in this primordial mythic lodge to consider the Indians’ requests], will you not stay on guard? Perhaps the Indian will be confused [and so wander where he should not]. But he will see you and you will know how to handle it’” (Landes 1968:151).
-
15.
“The Horned Serpent (‘Snake’) wrapped himself clear around the wigwam [medicine lodge]—one side was shaded by this. The guardian Tiger [Panther] asked, ‘Why is this? It seems you do not plan to direct the Indian rightly.’ Snake took a handful of dirt and opened his hand to show an Indian was there. It was black. Tiger slapped his hand, knocked out the dirt, and said they were not to leave the matter so. Tiger grabbed a handful of sand, opened his hand, and there was an Indian, glistening like glass. ‘So will we treat the Indian’ [that is, light and handsome, not dark and ugly]” (Landes 1968:94–95, as told by Hole-in-the-Sky).
In a more elaborated version told by Hole-in-the-Sky, “Another manito visitor [Snake] came there [the midē′ lodge] to see it too. He wrapped himself all round the lodge, and one side of his body cast shade on it [the shade exposed his harmful purpose]. The old [and big] Lion [or Tiger] spoke to him. ‘Why is this? I doubt you will do the Indian any good. You are not intending rightly.’ Lion slapped his hand and knocked dirt out of it, which he saw as to be an Indian. He said, ‘You will not use the Indian that way!’ Then he [Lion] grasped a handful of sand and opened his fist to show an Indian, glistening. ‘This is what we will do with the Indian.… It is better for you [Snake] to stay out yonder [outside the lodge], no closer than within echoing distance of a child’s voice. You can take offerings of tobacco from there and sometimes there you may be of aid, perhaps to a child who dies. This is how you may be able to help the Indian’” (Landes 1968:102).
-
16.
In Hoffman’s (1891:168–169, plate 3) description of the Midē′wiwin for the Red Lake reservation, Minnesota, the serpents outside the east and west doors of the first-degree lodge do not have horns. On the birchbark scrolls that Dewdney (1975) illustrates, some serpents have horns whereas others do not (see Note 4, above). Outside specifically the east and/or west doors of the first-degree lodge, serpents with horns are found on some scrolls (ibid., figures 71–73, 77, 110, 113), whereas serpents without horns are found on others (ibid., figures 70, 83, 34, 86, 93, 94). One scroll from the Cass Lake reservation, Minnesota, and illustrated by Landes (1968:82–83, figure 1) depicts hornless serpents outside the east and west doors of the first-degree lodge. She generalizes, however, for the Ojibwa at Cass Lake Reservation, Minnesota, and Manitou Reserve, Ontario, that otter guarded the door of the first-degree lodge (ibid., 145).
-
17.
A much broader understanding of the possible functions of Ohio Hopewell earthworks than Byers and Romain offered is given by DeBoer (1997). He envisioned the earthworks as analogous to those of the Chachi in Ecuador, which were “multifunctional installations that served as church, capitol, court, cemetery, as well as territorial marker”, including as the locations for holiday celebrations, weddings, funerals, feasts, and games (ibid., 225, 232).
-
18.
Sound, continued application of Hall’s (1979) interpretation of mound construction using water-logged soils as re-enactment of the Woodland mud diver myth and as world re-creation is found in geological studies by Van Nest (2006) and Sunderhaus and Blosser (2006:143–145). Sunderhaus and Blosser (2006:141) also tied earthwork construction at Fort Ancient to Woodland Native American notions beyond world renewal, including perhaps migration mythology, ritual purification, representation of the multi-tiered universe, and the axis mundi as a means of communication between tiers. Likewise, Birmingham, who credits Hall with the inspiration of his interpretation of the effigy mounds of Wisconsin as places where world-renewal rites were enacted (Birmingham 2010:xxi), attributed effigy mound construction to a much wider range of religious-ideological and other causes: the expression of clan totems and membership; burial of the dead; tying the group to the land and marking the group’s territory by their burying their ancestors in that place; expressing a dual kinship system and a dual cosmic organization that mirrored each other; expressing the creation of the cosmos; and re-creating the world periodically by duplicating in earthen form both its cosmological and social structure; social feasting; and creating a shared regional ethnic identity (ibid., 11, 17, 21, 31, 34–35, 201, 202).
-
19.
The Catholic Church’s position that evil has no reality and Satan is not an equal to God is attributable to St. Augustine. He had been a Manichaean before converting to Catholicism, and knew well the Manichaean view of a dualism between good and evil solidified in opposing worlds and beings.
-
20.
Hudson well understood that Adair’s (2005 [1775]) Christian intellectual framework was the vantage from which he observed Southeastern Indians and that he imposed it on their ways when writing about them: “there is little doubt that … Adair imposed his theory [about the Jewish origins of the American Indians] on what he was seeing and hearing. He reveals himself when he says that he does not believe that the Indians themselves understood either the spiritual or literal meaning of their religious songs (Adair 1968:98). This strongly implies that he, Adair, attempted to supply the meaning” (Hudson 1977:316). Again Hudson touches on this when he states, “In some places it is difficult or impossible to decide whether Adair is expounding an actual Hebrew parallel to Indian thought, or whether, on the contrary, the connection is completely spurious and he is expounding pure Old Testament” (ibid., 321).
-
21.
Hudson realized when writing his book, The Southeastern Indians, that the ethnohistorical literature of the Indians of the Southeast is uneven in geographic and topical coverage, late in its timing, and an inadequate translation of their cultures (Hudson 1976:4, 11–14). He described his strategy of “compromise” for combining different kinds of information, where available and the best, from different tribes in order to assemble a picture of the Southeastern Indians at large (ibid., 14). However, he did not make a critical analysis of early Western observers’ Christian frameworks, their observations of the Southeastern Indians, and his own interpretations of their observations when forging a summary of Southeastern Indian life.
-
22.
Another example of Hudson’s use of Judeo-Christian ideas to “translate” Southeastern Indian notions into ones understandable by a Western reader is his explanation of the myth of the origin of corn and game. “Like the Garden of Eden episode in the Old Testament, the Thunder Boys explained why the Cherokees did not live in an ideal world” (Hudson 1976:155).
Hudson’s envisioning of the problem of describing the Southeastern Indians’ cultures in a manner that could be understood by a Western reader—the issue of translation across cultures—he expressed as follows: “The Indians of the Southeast have been inadequately portrayed by both historians and anthropologists…. One general problem has been that the Indian cultures were so different from European cultures that it has been difficult for European intellectuals to translate the life experience of Indians into terms a layman can readily understand; this problem still exists today, but it was even more acute when European colonization first began” (ibid., 4).
-
23.
“Perhaps it would not be going too far to say that with respect to the Southeastern Indian belief system, witches were anomalous in the human realm in much the way that the frog, the bat, and the snake were anomalies in the animal realm. That is to say, a witch looked like an ordinary human being, but his evil nature placed him outside the human realm…. The Cherokees … say of a witch that he is u:ne:gu:tso:d′ʌ, so heartlessly evil as to be beyond forgiveness…. [T]here is no forgiveness for a witch, for his evil is intrinsic to his being” (Hudson 1976:182).
-
24.
To reconstitute and enrich their religious lives, contemporary Native Americans on the Plains and in the Southeastern Woodlands have sometimes turned to influential syntheses of earlier Plains and Southeastern religious life that were written by White ethnographers and ethnohistorians with Euro-American Christian biases or dictated to them by natives who belonged to the Christian Church. Among these popular syntheses are John Neilhardt’s (1932) Black Elk Speaks; Joseph Epes Brown’s (1953) The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux; Thomas Mails’s (1972) The Mystic Warriors of the Plains, (1978) Sundancing at Rosebud and Pine Ridge, and (1991) Fools Crow: Wisdom and Power; and Charles Hudson’s (1976) The Southeastern Indians. Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology and the Heye Foundation have also been mined in this way by some Woodland and Plains groups. For example, “the Cherokee High School [in Cherokee, North Carolina] uses James Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokee and Charles Hudson’s Southeastern Indians” as texts for their students to learn “Cherokee” traditions (McLachalan 1999:10–11).
Hudson’s book has been used as a text more widely in secondary public schools in the South and in Oklahoma (Rex Weeks, personal communication 2018). These revival and educational processes have compounded the syncretism of Christianity with native Woodland and Plains religious thought and rites among contemporary Woodland and Plains tribes.
-
25.
The Manitoulin Island Ojibwa “associated” but did not “equate” the Thunderers and Mishebeshu, respectively, with the Holy Spirit and the Devil. How the Manitoulin Island Ojibwa actually characterized God and the Devil, and the degree to which God and the Devil were personified and nuanced in the relational, situational world view of traditional Ojibwa culture, is not reported by Smith (1995).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Carr, C. (2021). Underwater-Underground Creatures in the Cosmologies of Postcontact Eastern Woodland and Plains Indians as Told in Oral Narratives. In: Being Scioto Hopewell: Ritual Drama and Personhood in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44917-9_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-44916-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-44917-9
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)