Mark of the Mississippians e-book

Cahokia Mounds worth the visit—even if it's virtual

By Paul WoodYou should see the real thing in person, but new digital projects can help you explore Cahokia Mounds in the digital world.

There were tens of thousands of American Indians in a lost civilization on both sides of the Mississippi, centering on Collinsville, which is 165 miles southwest of Champaign.

You can interact with their virtual life in "Mark of the Mississippians," the first in a three-volume interactive e-book series about North America's past, now available for iPad users.

The new interactive book examines four Mississippian culture centers: Cahokia; Moundville, Ala.; Etowah, Ga.; and Spiro, Okla.Comment:  For more on Cahokia, see Half-Naked Drummer Dressed as "Indian" and "6 Ridiculous Lies" About Indians.

Half-naked drummer dressed as "Indian"

A Facebook friend brought this video to my attention:



The caption originally said:Kevin Lucas, Tribal Prayer for World Peace, Cahokia Winds by the Kevin Lucas Orchestra

Kevin plays his heart out, dressed as a Native American, in a cave in Southern Illinois.Ghostcat76 had the following debate with Lucas in the comments section on YouTube:



Click on the image to read it enlarged.

Some Facebook comments on this YouTube exchange:I'd like to see his list of endorsements.

I am so sick to death of being deeply respected and appreciated.

Tell me about it, I was told by someone that he respected me and the native americans as "children of nature." That was his apology after first insulting me.

As a Choctaw person, the "fact" that whomever dressed him is "blood" Choctaw embarrasses the shit out of me. And what does he mean by "blood" Native friends. Opposed to the "Indian in spirit," or even better, the reincarnated variety?

He seems to be misinterpreting your comment as a complaint against his message -- dude, if you want to bring attention to all the things you've spent time researching, ditch the offensive art project and actually do something productive.Comment:  My take on the exchange:

Well, Lucas articulated his reasons better than most racists or stereotypers. But he's not much different from the typical mascot supporter or hipster in headdress. How about making a statement in one of a hundred ways other than stereotyping Indians as primitive people of the past, bright boy?

The original offense is obvious: dressing up with no shirt in warpaint, feathers, and beads. This doesn't represent any real Indian in the past, and certainly not an Indian today. Yet he has the temerity to describe himself as "dressed as a Native American."

From which of the hundreds of tribes, Lucas? From what era in their 10,000-year history?

Oh, wait...it isn't from any of those sources. It's from movies, TV shows, sports mascots, advertisements, and Halloween costumes. I.e., from our culture as filtered through the media. Fail.

Conclusion

Play your percussion instruments without the stereotypical costume, Lucas. That would be a great way to honor Cahokia, tribal people, and world peace. Dressing up as an phony Indian doesn't honor Indians, it mocks and belittles them. Whether you realize it or not.

Note: Lucas disabled the video's comments and changed the caption to eliminate the tribal references. It now says:Kevin Lucas, solo, Cahokia Winds by the Kevin Lucas Orchestra Your music and sentiments are fine, dude, but the costume is still objectionable. Think twice before you do something like this again.

For more on the subject, see Anthropology Students Dressed as "Indians" and Debauched "Indians" on Caesarian Sunday.

"6 Ridiculous Lies" about Indians

A recent one of Cracked.com's entertaining lists was about Indians. People shared it widely on Facebook and Indian Country Today did a whole series elaborating on the "lies."

I've covered most of these points before, but the article is a fun read. I'll summarize the "myths" and "truths" here, but check out the source.

Note: The six points below state the truth, not the lies. That's a bit confusing.

6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America

By Jack O'Brien, Elford Alley#6. The Indians Weren't Defeated by White Settlers

The Myth:

Our history books don't really go into a ton of detail about how the Indians became an endangered species. Some warring, some smallpox blankets and ... death by broken heart?

The Truth:

There's a pretty important detail our movies and textbooks left out of the handoff from Native Americans to white European settlers: It begins in the immediate aftermath of a full-blown apocalypse. In the decades between Columbus' discovery of America and the Mayflower landing at Plymouth Rock, the most devastating plague in human history raced up the East Coast of America.

#5. Native Culture Wasn't Primitive

The Myth:

American Indians lived in balance with mother earth, father moon, brother coyote and sister ... bear? ... If the government was taken over by hippies tomorrow, the directionless, ecologically friendly society they'd institute is about what we picture the Native Americans as having lived like.

The Truth:

One of the best examples of how we got Native Americans all wrong is Cahokia, a massive Native American city located in modern day East St. Louis. In 1250, it was bigger than London, and featured a sophisticated society with an urban center, satellite villages and thatched-roof houses lining the central plazas.

#4. Columbus Didn't Discover America: Vikings vs. Indians

The Myth:

America was discovered in 1492 because Europeans were starting to get curious about the outside world thanks to the Renaissance and Enlightenment and Europeans of the time just generally being the first smart people ever.

The Truth:

A bunch of Vikings set up a successful colony in Greenland that lasted for 518 years (982-1500). To put that into perspective, the white European settlement currently known as the United States will need to wait until the year 2125 to match that longevity. The Vikings spent a good portion of that time sending expeditions down south to try to settle what they called Vineland--which historians now believe was the East Coast of North America.

#3. Everything You Know About Columbus Is a Calculated Lie

The Myth:

Columbus discovered America thanks to a daring journey across the Atlantic. His crew was about to throw him overboard when land was spotted. Even after he landed in America, Columbus didn't realize he'd discovered an entire continent because maps of America were far less reliable back then.

The Truth:

The myths surrounding him cover up the fact that Columbus was calculating, shrewd and as hungry for gold as the voice over guy in the Cash4Gold ads. When he couldn't find enough of the yellow stuff to make his voyage profitable, he focused on enslaving Native Americans for profit. That's how efficient Columbus was--he discovered America and invented American slavery in the same 15-year span.

#2. White Settlers Did Not Carve America Out of the Untamed Wilderness

The Myth:

The Pilgrims were the first in a parade of brave settlers who pushed civilization westward along the frontier with elbow grease and sheer grizzled-old-man strength.

The Truth:

In written records from early colonial times, you constantly come across "settlers" being shocked at how convenient the American wilderness made things for them. The eastern forests, generally portrayed by great American writers as a "thick, unbroken snarl of trees" no longer existed by the time the white European settlers actually showed up. The Pilgrims couldn't believe their luck when they found that American forests just naturally contained "an ecological kaleidosocope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory and oak."

[In short, the Indians "tamed the wilderness" before the Europeans arrived.]

#1. How Indians Influenced Modern America

The Myth:

After the Natives helped the Pilgrims get through that first winter, all playing nice disappeared until Dances with Wolves. Even the movies that do portray white people going native portray it as a shocking exception to the rule. Otherwise, the only influence the Natives seem to have on the New World and the frontiersmen is giving them moving targets to shoot at, and eventually a plot outline for Avatar.

The Truth:

The fake mystery of Roanoke is a pretty good key for understanding the difference between how white settlers actually felt about American Indians and how hard your history books had to ignore that reality. Settlers defecting to join Native society was so common that it became a major issue for colonial leaders--think the modern immigration debate, except with all the white people risking their lives to get out of American society. According to Loewen, "Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando De Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies." Pilgrims were so scared of Indian influence that they outlawed the wearing of long hair.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Descendant Excuses Columbus's Crimes and Europeans Hated Indians' Virtues.

Trying to ignore Cahokia

America's Forgotten City

By Glenn HodgesCahokia was the apogee, and perhaps the origin, of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture—a collection of agricultural communities that reached across the American Midwest and Southeast starting before A.D. 1000 and peaking around the 13th century. The idea that American Indians could have built something resembling a city was so foreign to European settlers, that when they encountered the mounds of Cahokia—the largest of which is a ten-story earthen colossus composed of more than 22 million cubic feet of soil—they commonly thought they must have been the work of a foreign civilization: Phoenicians or Vikings or perhaps a lost tribe of Israel. Even now, the idea of an Indian city runs so contrary to American notions of Indian life that we can't seem to absorb it, and perhaps it's this cognitive dissonance that has led us to collectively ignore Cahokia's very existence. Have you ever heard of Cahokia? In casual conversation, I've found almost no one outside the St. Louis area who has.

Our ignorance has deep roots. The first person to write a detailed account of Cahokia's mounds was Henry Brackenridge, a lawyer and amateur historian who came upon the site and its massive central mound while exploring the surrounding prairie in 1811. "I was struck with a degree of astonishment, not unlike that which is experienced in contemplating the Egyptian pyramids," he wrote. "What a stupendous pile of earth! To heap up such a mass must have required years, and the labors of thousands." But newspaper accounts of his discovery were widely ignored. He complained of this in a letter to his friend former President Thomas Jefferson, and with friends in such high places, word of Cahokia did eventually get around. Unfortunately it was not word most Americans, including subsequent Presidents, were very interested in hearing. The United States was trying to get Indians out of the way, not appreciate their history. Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, which ordered the relocation of eastern Indians to land west of the Mississippi, was premised on the idea that Indians were nomadic savages who couldn't make good use of land anyway. Evidence of an ancient Indian city—one that rivaled the size of Washington, D.C., at the time—would have mucked up the story line.Comment:  For more on Cahokia, see Human Sacrifice "Prevalent" Among Indians? and Touring America's Indian Heartland. For more on what Americans of the time thought, see Vanished Mound Builders in The Prairies and Empty Land in The Gift Outright.

Human sacrifice "prevalent" among Indians?

Gruesome Practices of Ancient AmericansCivilization arose independently in the new world, evidence that the trajectory of human development was firmly pointed in that direction. I wonder why mass human sacrifice was so prevalent in Native American cultures. I note that the adolescence of human civilization was marked by despotism and bloodshed everywhere and always. It took a long time for us to mature, if indeed we have or ever will.

But I also note that this gruesome confirms, in an odd way, the natural human inclination to think in terms of justice and reciprocity. What were the ancient Cahokians trying to do, by slaughtering so many men and woman, and sacrificing so much bounty? Increase the aura of their upper class, to be sure. But they were also trying to bargain with the gods. In return for all this virgin blood, you big spirits need to make the crops grow and our enemies diminish. It is terrible to say so, but only a basically moral animal could think that way.Some responses by me and Al Carroll:"Absent for the most part from the religions of the American Indians was the near universal practice of animal and human sacrifice to placate the gods. 'North America had almost no sacrifice, even of animals. Mother Earth did not demand it.'"

--Lewis M. Hoppe, Religions of the World, 1976 (quote from Ruth Underhill, Red Man's Religion, 1965)

Posted by: Rob Schmidt | Aug 7, 2009 7:41:48 AM

I wonder where you got the idea that "mass human sacrifice was so prevalent in Native American cultures." Can you cite a source for this claim?

Besides the Aztecs, Maya, and Cahokians, which Native cultures practiced human sacrifice? These are only three of the thousands of cultures that existed in the Americas. Unless you can list several hundred Native cultures that practiced human sacrifice, your argument fails.

Posted by: Rob Schmidt | Aug 7, 2009 7:47:19 AM

You point to a grand total of two sites. Imagine pointing to Auschwitz and Buchenwald and making the same claim, "Why was genocide so prevalent among Europeans?"

I also didn't see any sign that these sites were of sacrifices. They could've been executions of criminals or captives seized in war. (Which doesn't justify them. I'm personally opposed to the death penalty for anything other than the most heinous war crimes.)

But obviously you think in stereotypes. Indian dead = human sacrifice. Never mind that human sacrifice was common in Europe during the Spanish Inquisition. Never mind that lynching has every feature of human sacrifice except cannibalism, including the collecting of body parts for trophies.

Any good scholar would look at all possible explanations. Obviously you want a reason to imagine Indians are barbaric.

Posted by: Al Carroll | Aug 8, 2009 9:53:50 AMComment:  Go to the original posting to see the whole debate. Feel free to post your thoughts there as well as here.

For more on the subject, see Were the Aztecs Murdering "Animals"? and Uncivilized Indians.

Touring America's Indian heartland

A travel article notes that you can Indian history throughout the Midwest--in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio--if you know where to look for it.

Ancient MidwestMILE 9: CAHOKIA Inside the museum at this 2,200-acre site, a single sentence on a placard stopped me in my tracks: “One of the great cities of the world, Cahokia was larger than London in A.D. 1250.” More than 10,000 people—estimates range as high as 20,000—are thought to have lived in the settlement between 1050 and 1200. Its most impressive feature now, Monks Mound, is the largest prehistoric earthwork in all of the Americas, covering more than 14 acres at its base. It stands 100 feet high and was built in a series of stages over a period close to 200 years. That’s probably more than 15 million basket loads of soil—dug out with clamshells, in case you were wondering.

MILE 223: EVANSVILLE, IND. The luck of Angel Mounds, where 1,000 people lived between 1050 and 1400, is that it escaped extreme looting. Some of the millions of artifacts that have been uncovered there—including graceful reddish-brown painted pottery and delicate earrings and nose rings made of bone—are on display in the large museum. I was fascinated by a replica of Kneeling Man, an eight-inch-tall figurine carved in the translucent yellow mineral fluorite, unearthed from the site’s temple mound. Outside, as you walk the area and gaze at the large mounds, beneath your feet are the buried remains of a town that thrived for about 400 years.

MILE 506: SERPENT MOUND This effigy mound, an enormous earthen sculpture of a snake, is nothing short of astonishing. Walking the footpath that circumnavigates the undulating body or gazing down from the 35-foot platform, it’s hard to wrap your head around this ancient accomplishment. The serpent measures 1,348 feet long, 10 to 15 feet wide and roughly 3 feet high. It is the largest earthen effigy in North America, constructed around 1070. “It’s not an art project built by a bunch of bored people,” said Keith Bengtson, the site manager. “It has a very specific design and intent.” The serpent was documented by surveyors in the mid-19th century, but it was not until the late 1980s that scholars realized its astronomical purpose: its head and coils are aligned to mark the solstices and equinoxes. During the summer solstice, the setting sun descends in perfect alignment with the snake’s head.

MILE 556: MOUND CITY Walking from the visitors center at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park to the Mound City Group’s 2,000-year-old cemetery is magically disorienting. A lush green field of huge curvilinear mounds of varying shapes and sizes conveys the sense of stepping into a page from a high school geometry textbook. In all, 23 mounds are enclosed by a low earthen wall at this site—one of five in this sprawling park. The artifacts found in the mounds help tell the story of the people buried there. The Hopewell must have been traders—they had materials like obsidian from the area of Yellowstone National Park, shells from the Atlantic Ocean and copper from near the Great Lakes. Gifted artisans made beautiful creations like copper parrots, human hand shapes cut from sheets of mica and whimsical clay effigy pipes in the shapes of woodland creatures.Comment:  How many Americans have even heard of Cahokia? One in a hundred? How would guess that Cahokia was larger than London in A.D. 1250? One in a thousand?