Mississippian stone statuary
The Mississippian stone statuary are artifacts of polished stone in the shape of human figurines made by members of the Mississippian culture and found in archaeological sites in the American Midwest and Southeast. Two distinct styles exist; the first is a style of carved flint clay found over a wide geographical area but believed to be from the American Bottom area and manufactured at the Cahokia site specifically; the second is a variety of carved and polished locally available stone primarily found in the Tennessee-Cumberland region and northern Georgia. Early European explorers reported seeing stone and wooden statues in native temples, but the first documented modern discovery was made in 1790 in Kentucky, and given as a gift to Thomas Jefferson.
History
Archaeologists have divided what is known about Mississippian culture religious practices into three major "cult" manifestations. The Chiefly Warrior cult, the Earth/fertility cult, and an Ancestor cult. The stone statues found seem to represent different aspects from each of these 3 major divisions of Mississippian religious life. The Cahokian-style pieces represent figures from the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex and earth/fertility goddesses. The Tennessee-Cumberland statues seem to represent venerated ancestors, and a third variety represents Old Woman or Spider Grandmother, a creator and fertility goddess. Early European explorers describe stone statues as being kept in mortuary temples or shrines, frequently on top of platform mounds. Over the next several hundred years the statues disappeared from history, many of them hidden by Native Americans to protect their sacred objects. The statues began to surface again during the 18th and 19th centuries as European American farmers began plowing the fertile river valleys of the south and midwest, and later as looters and then archaeologists began to dig into the burial mounds.Cahokia style
This style of statuary is found at Cahokian sites in western Illinois and eastern Missouri, at Spiro and other Caddoan Mississippian sites in eastern Oklahoma and northwestern Louisiana, and various other sites throughout the American southeast. For many years the statues were thought to have been produced locally at the sites in which they were discovered, but recent scientific analysis has shown all of the statues to have been produced from a flint clay only found in the vicinity of St. Louis, Missouri. The particular pipestone used by the artists of Cahokia has a distinctive combination of a lithium bearing chlorite, abundant boehmite and a heavy-metal phosphate mineral suite. It is believed that the objects were considered to be valuable trade and religious objects, and spread far and wide from their place of production in the American Bottom. Many of the figurines depict mythological characters from the Chiefly Warrior cult and the Earth/fertility cult. Most flint clay figurines found outside Cahokia represent male figures from the Chiefly Warrior Cult, as opposed to items found near Cahokia which mostly represent female figures from the Earth/fertility cult.BBB Motor Site figurines
The BBB Motor Site, a major second tier ceremonial site of Cahokia during the Sterling Phase, has produced two notable examples of this style. The first, the "Birger figurine", depicts a kneeling woman wearing a pack on her back and using a hoe to till the back of a feline headed serpent on which she is squatting. The tail of the serpent splits and transforms into gourd flowers, vines and fruit. The Underwater Serpent, with its associations with the Underworld, is thought to represent the fertility of the Earth. The second example from the site is the "Keller figurine", which depicts a woman with long straight hair and cranial deformation, wearing a wrap around skirt and kneeling on a platform. The platform is divided by sections and covered with striations that are thought to represent ears of maize. The women's hands rest on a box like object which may be a basket. A maize stalk rises on the right side of the basket, through the right hand and along the arm and around the back of the figures head. This figurine is also thought to represent the connection of vegetation and fertility, female deities and the Earth. The Keller figurine is in height.Sponemann Site figurines
The Sponemann Site, another Sterling Phase second tier ceremonial site of Cahokia, has produced three flint clay figurines, although these had been ritually broken or "killed" before burial. The "Sponemann figurine", at, is only partially recovered. What remains is the head, upper torso and arms of a female with detailed facial features very like those of the Birger figurine. The figure's outstretched arms hold vegetation, which curls up onto the head. The "Willoughby figurine" is also incomplete, with only parts of the head, torso and lower body surviving. The figure, obviously a female from the surviving anatomy of the torso, wears a wrap around skirt and holds plants and woven cane baskets. The presence of the vines and baskets may connect the figure with rites from the Green Corn Ceremony. The surviving fragments of the "West figurine" show a female with a rattlesnake coiled around her head as a turban. Not much else survives of this specimen, although enough of the torso exists to tell the figurine is female.The Spiro pipes
Archaeologists believe several pipes found at the site may be heirlooms that made their way from Cahokia to Spiro in the late 13th century as the cultural center collapsed. Several large flint clay pipes were found in the "Craig Mound" or "Great Mortuary" mound at Spiro in the 1930s. The "Lucifer pipe" shows a nude man with an oversized head holding a deer head in his left hand and a fringed object of some sort in his right. The pipe has a hole in the back for the insertion of a tube so it could function as a pipe. It is tall. Another intriguing find from the Craig Mound is the "Resting Warrior" or "Big Boy pipe". Archaeologist have argued that the figure may represent Red Horn, a mythic demigod from many Native American stories. The figure sits cross legged, with his hands on his knees. He wears a cape of feathers on his back, similar to actual examples found in the Craig Mound during excavations. He has Long-nosed god maskette earrings, strings of beads around his neck, and strapped to his head is a sacred bundle incorporating what is thought to be a copperplate with an Ogee motif at its center. The hair is done up in a bun on the back of the figures head and a long braid over the left shoulder. The earrings and the braid are the reason many archaeologist identify the figure as Red Horn. The "Conquering Warrior" effigy pipe shows the more brutal and militaristic side of Mississippian culture. The figure depicts a warrior in ritual regalia leaning over a crouching victim and either hitting him in the face with a war club or decapitating him. Another effigy pipe from Spiro depicts a crouching man smoking from a frog effigy pipe, and is tall and long. While most of the pipes from the Spiro site depict males, the "Figure at mortar" seems to show a female. Although the figure lacks definitive sexual characteristics, the fact that it is grinding maize and details of its costumes suggest it is indeed a representation of a female. The figure is shown kneeling on an oval base and has its hair pulled back behind its ears. The figurine is thematically very close to the Birger and Keller figurines found in the American Bottom. This pipe is on display at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C.Gahagan
Similar examples have also been discovered at other Caddoan Mississippian sites, most notably the Gahagan site which had two effigy pipes. Several of these pipes are on display at the Native American gallery of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma.Other examples
Other sites have produced single examples of the Cahokia flint clay statues and pipes, in locations scattered throughout the American South.East St. Louis
A frog effigy pipe was found in East St. Louis, St. Clair County, Illinois. It measures in height by in length.Exchange Avenue figurine
The most recent addition to the corpus of Cahokian flint clay figurines. It is a in height female figurine found during a massive archaeological dig at the old National Stock Yards in National City, Illinois in the summer of 2010. The dig was being done in preparation for a new $670 million Mississippi River bridge project. The sitting figure has long hair which winds down her back, a skirt, and is holding forward a conch shell that is believed to have connections with the watery underworld of the Mississippian cosmology. The back of the figurine shows charring from a fire.Guy Smith Village site
A in height effigy pipe known as the "Crouching warrior". The male figure has his head cocked to the right and has a large rectangular shield like shape on his right arm. It was found at the Guy Smith Village site in Jackson County, Illinois.Hughes Site Chunkey player
The "Chunkey Player" is a high by wide effigy pipe found at the Caddoan Mississippian Hughes Site ; north of Muskogee in Muskogee County, Oklahoma. It is now part of the Henry Whelpley Collection at the St. Louis Science Center. The pipe depicts a kneeling male who is slightly leaning forward and in the process of rolling a chunkey stone with his right hand and holding two chunkey sticks in left. He is wearing large ear spools, has a necklace around his neck with a large bead attached, and an elaborate hat or hair style.Keesee figurine
A in height figurine that depicts a kneeling upright male figure who grasps a cylindrical object thought to be a rolled up sacred medicine bundle in his right hand and connected by the base there is a freestanding ceramic vessel placed in front of him. It is the only Cahokian flint clay figurine with such a detached element not directly connected to the human figure of the piece. Stylistically it is very similar to the "Chunkey player" pipe found in Muskogee County, Oklahoma; having very similar anatomical proportions, facial details, hairstyles, and pose. They are thought to possibly represent the same mythological figure and are considered to have been made by the same artist. It was found in the early 20th century during the plowing of a cotton field south of Helena, Arkansas. The figure shows some damage; including a missing left arm, part of the left leg, and the left side of the head. This damage is thought to have happened when the figurine was "ritually killed" and deposited and not during its discovery during the plowing of the cotton field.Shiloh Indian Mounds site
In 1899 Cornelius Cadle, chairman of the Shiloh Park Commission, excavated Shiloh Indian Mounds Sites Mound C. He had a trench dug into the conical burial mound, and amongst the discoveries was a large stone effigy pipe in the shape of a kneeling man. It has since become the site's most famous artifact and is on display in the Tennessee River Museum in Savannah. The pipe, now known as the "Crouching Man pipe" is in height.Starr Village and Mound Group site
The "Macoupin Creek figurine" measures in height and depicts a shaman kneeling with a gourd rattle in one hand and a snake or snakeskin wrapped around his neck. The figure also has conch shell and bead ear ornaments and a raccoon skin headdress. The pipe was discovered in a stone box grave at the Starr Village and Mound Group site in the Macoupin Creek Valley sometime late in the nineteenth century. Because of the age of the burial and the time of the statues believed manufacture it is posited that the figure was a curated heirloom, buried long after its manufacture and in a region not normally associated with Mississippian settlements. It is now in the collection of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.Twin Mounds site
A kneeling male figure pipe was excavated from the Twin Mounds Site in Ballard County, Kentucky.Westbrook figurine
Once known as the "McGehee figure pipe", and now as the "Westbrook Figurine" after its current owner Dr. Kent Westbrook, it depicts a female figure kneeling on her knees with a basket behind her. The figure has sunflowers on her back and two maize plants sprout from her outstretched hands. The effigy pipe is by by. It was found during amateur excavations in the late 1960s at a site close to the mouth of the Arkansas River known as the DeSoto Mound in Desha County, Arkansas In July 2003 archaeologists from the Midcontinental Archaeometry Working Group of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign conducted portable infrared mineral analyzer and Hunter color analyses on the figure to determine its origins. Their analysis determined that the pipe was made from a cookeite-boehmite phosphate flint clay from Missouri that may have come from a quarry as near to Cahokia as St. Louis County.Gallery of Cahokian flint clay statues
Tennessee-Cumberland style
This style of statuary is found in northern Georgia, the Tennessee River Valley area around Nashville, Tennessee and on into western Tennessee and Kentucky, and southern Indiana. Examples of this style are also known from wooden and ceramic versions. The function and symbology of this statuary seems to have been fundamentally different from the Cahokian flint clay pieces. Three different types are identified, a pair with a male and female example and an old woman/fertility goddess. It is theorized that the couple may represent the primordial ancestral couple from which a group claimed descent. Males are often represented without obvious clothing, sitting crosslegged with their hands resting on their knees. Some examples are resting on one leg with the other drawn up before them. Their hair is done up in a bun on the back of the head, and shows qualities in common with other depictions of warriors. The females are usually shown with small breasts, wearing a wrap around skirt, sitting with their legs tucked under them and with their hair pulled back and falling down their backs, sometimes with braids. The third example is very similar to the female of the first examples but has 2 additional characteristics. This figure usually has her hands resting on its projecting stomach and has its sexual organs defined. All of the figures show a general concentration of refinement on the heads and upper torsos, with some even going so far as to barely have the lower body represented at all. The earliest documented piece known to have been found was near the Cumberland River southwest of Lexington, Kentucky in 1790. An unknown farmer discovered the kneeling figure while plowing. It was obtained by Judge Harry Innes, the first United States federal judge in Kentucky, who made a gift of the statuette to Thomas Jefferson in July 1790. This example was the first of five that Jefferson eventually collected and kept on display at Monticello. Jefferson also owned and displayed in Monticello's entrance hall a male and female pair. They were found in Tennessee on a high bluff overlooking the Cumberland River and in 1799 sent to Jefferson by Morgan Brown, a lieutenant during the Revolutionary War. Although they were sent from Palmyra, Tennessee, it is unclear if they were found there. Brown informed Jefferson that:Another of the statues was a "head", approximately by, purchased by Captain Stockton in the estate sale after Jeffersons death. One of his descendants sold the head to Dr. William C. Dabney and it eventually was made a gift to the Smithsonian Institution in 1875. After Jeffersons death and the sale of his home, the other statues passed through several more hands before disappearing from history.
Middle Tennessee region
The most numerous examples of this style are found in the Middle Tennessee region, mostly within the area between the Tennessee and Cumberland River Valleys, with more than fifty currently known. Three of the most productive sites in this area have been the Sellars Site, the Castalian Springs Mound Site and the Beasley Mounds Site, with examples also being found at the Mound Bottom site and a unique cache of ceramic figurines at the Brick Church Pike Mound sites.The most well known statue from this region is the "Sandy" statue, the male half of a pair dug up in 1939 from the Sellars Mound in Wilson County, Tennessee. Now in the Frank H. McClung Museum in Knoxville, it has been used on numerous book and magazine covers as well as on a U.S. postage stamp as part of the Art of the American Indians series.
A paired set of male and female sandstone statues was disocvered in March 1895 at the Link Farm Site at the confluence of the Duck and Buffalo Rivers south of Waverly in Humphreys County, Tennessee. The site is also famous for being the location where the "Duck River Cache" of chert artifacts was discovered in December 1894 in a low hillock at the site. The statues were found in the same but slightly deeper location. They were nicknamed "Adam" and "Eve" by their discoverers. The male statue is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the female statue has been lost.