Midwestern and eastern portions of the United States witnessed an extraordinary' flowering of culture between the years AD 800 and 1500. The mighty Mississippians, or Temple Mound Builders, recruited artisans to create small works of art that were at the same time badges of chiefly office and the tangible embodiment of popular belief. And it was these that their owners saw fit to take to the grave with them, perhaps to aid them in the afterlife.
To 20th-century eyes the objects are mysterious, sometimes eerie. So baffling are they, so ubiquitous are the themes and motifs observed throughout the Mississippians’ enormous domain, stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and from Florida to Oklahoma, that early scholars postulated the existence of a widespread religious cult. Yet, as far as can be determined, there never was such a cult. What the Mississippians shared instead was a challenging and bewildering natural world, one that required constant effort to explain the inexplicable and reconcile the irreconcilable. Obscure though their work may sometimes be, it expresses their beliefs in striking fashion.
Archaeologists studying that work have drawn upon the oral traditions of Indians postdating the Mississippians to understand and interpret it. They see the thinking of these vanished people rooted in the concept of a unit'erse consisting of three worlds. Two of them, the harmonious Upper World and the infernal Under World, were locked in perpetual conflict. Sandwiched between them was This World, the less-than-perfect habitat of humans. The marine-shell gorget above doubtless symbolizes the Upper World, with the cross standing for the four cardinal directions converging on the sun. Just who the figures represent with their large eyes and painted or tattooed faces no one knows.
World History
