When French explorer La Page Du Pratz lived with the Natchez tribe in southern Mississippi he witnessed the last surviving remnants of the Mississippian culture. He lived with the tribe throughout the 1720s and recorded their traditional way of life, which stretched far back into prehistory. Among his recordings of the Natchez, he left a curious passage that has revealed another intriguing facet of the Mississippians customs and culture which, most likely, would have been lost to the ravages of time if not for this account.
“The Natchez make a declaration of war by leaving a hieroglyphic
picture against a tree in the enemy’s country, and in front
of the picture they place, saltierwise, two red arrows. At the upper
part of the picture at the right is the hieroglyphic sign which designates
the nation that declares war; next, a naked man, easy to recognize,
who has a cassetête in his hand. Following is an arrow, drawn
so as in its flight to pierce a woman, who flees with her hair spread
out and flowing in the air. Immediately in front of this woman is
a sign belonging to the nation against which war is declared; all
this is on the same line. That which is below is not so clear or
so much relied upon in the interpretation. This line begins with
the sign of a moon (i. e., month) which will follow in a short time.
The days that come afterward are indicated by straight strokes and
the moon by a face without rays. There is also a man who has in front
of him many arrows which seem directed to hit a woman who is in flight.
All that announces that when the moon will be so many days old they
will come in great numbers to attack the designated nation.” (Powell
1893)
He writes that the Natchez people carved a “hieroglyphic sign
which designates the nation that declares war” on the bark
of a tree near the enemy’s territory. This passage brings to
light an important practice that could possibly tie into the iconography
of previous Mississippian sites such as Cahokia. This paper will
attempt to connect these two ideas and form the basis as to delve
deeper into the iconography and cosmology of the Mississippian people.
The Commerce Quarry Petroglyph site is located on the Mississippi
River about 150 miles south of Cahokia. The site sits on the banks
of a stretch of the Mississippi River known as Thebes Gap, which
is well known for being quite hard to maneuver nau-tically (Dubcovsky
2014). The actual petroglyph (Fig. 1 left) has been theorized to
represent a map by Terry F. Norris and Timothy R. Pauketat (Norris
et al., 2008). Depicted on the large flat boulder is a meandering
line possibly representing the Mississippi River, with its twists
and turns, and many other smaller details such as small circles pecked
into the stone also theorized to have represented certain mound sites
which dotted the sides of the river of which the map depicted. Most
intriguingly is a representation of a large predatory bird, most
likely a falcon (Fig. 1 right), which has been hypothesized to have
been a “glyph” that represented Cahokia’s looming
presence in the American Bottom at the time.
A third piece of evidence relating to picture writing
used by Native Americans comes from yet another historic
source. In 1884 Chief Red Cloud of the Dakota Indians
directed that a “pictorial census” should be
taken of his tribe’s people. In the census over 200 members
of the Dakota tribe wrote their names the only way they
knew how, in the form of pictures. This is extremely important as
it is.... |
