Mississipian

The Mississippian period lasted from about 1000 to 1600 A.D. During this time each Woodlands region developed in a slightly different way. In the Adena and Hopewell areas the Ft. Ancient culture emerged.

Mississippian era peoples relied much more heavily on agriculture, with the main crops being corn, beans, and squash. While they continued to hunt, fish, and gather, the farming lifestyle resulted in settlements that were more permanent and larger in size. Pottery became much more elaborate with both animal and human effigies. Pipes were also carved in human and animal form.

An important game was Chunkey, which was played by rolling a stone disk on the ground and throwing a stick, with the object of the game being to land the stick as close as possible to where the disk stopped. Chunkey stones were carefully carved from a variety of polished stones. Chunkey players wore protective gear and are sometimes depicted as having a forked pattern around their eye. This same pattern can sometimes be found on depictions of warriors.

chunkey player

Both Chunkey players and warriors are depicted on shell gorgets that were worn as pendants suspended from leather thongs around the neck. These were carved from conch shells from the Atlantic and Gulf Coast. Some gorgets, as well as whole shells, were carved with images of creatures that combined snakes with birds, and birds with men. These “bird men” also are found on copper ornaments and may be representations of warriors. Other gorgets have symbols representing the sun or characters from Woodlands stories such as the water spider, who brought fire to all the animals from an island.

spider gorget

Snake imagery is common in the Mississippian era. Serpent Mound, a Ft. Ancient earthwork located in Adams County, Ohio, is an unusually large example. This effigy mound measures 1,400 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 5 feet high. The serpent’s curvatures mark the winter solstice sunrise, the fall equinox, the summer solstice sunrise, and the spring equinox sunrise. Its head points to the summer solstice, and a line drawn from the tail to the base of the head points to Polaris, true north.

Mississippian peoples also built flat-topped mounds on which they constructed temples and other buildings. The largest of these earthworks is 100 foot-high Monks Mound at Cahokia, near present day St. Louis at the confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. With over 100 mounds and spanning an area of six miles, Cahokia was the largest city built north of Mexico before contact. The Cahokian people were socially stratified into a working class and elite, lead by a chief who probably was both a secular and religious leader. Large work forces would have been required to complete building projects on this scale.

As with Hopewell earthworks and Serpent Mound, those who built Cahokia understood the movements of the moon and stars. Circular configurations of cedar poles, now called Woodhenges, marked the solstices, while the plazas and mounds at Cahokia also seem to have been planned to align with astronomical cycles.