Page 532 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

which are limited in their viewpoints toward the organization of social life to understand
native cultures. Although they are rich in action southeastern religion.
and adventure, missing are indications of reli- Settled village life centered around what has
gious life, town architecture, political organiza- been loosely called a temple, but was in reality a
tions, crafts, trade, and the visual arts. With the shrine dedicated to the veneration of the town's
help of archaeology these and other features of ancestor-founder. Closed to all except the chief
native life emerge to fill out our portrait of this and his priests, the chosen few, this shrine occu-
high culture. pied a conspicuous place in the center of the
This cultural landscape goes back to around town. It frequently stood on a platform mound
A.D. 1000, when a transformation took place in oriented in a ceremonially prescribed direction.
the social, economic, and political realities of Within burned the sacred fire, carefully nur-
native life. Broadly speaking, the scattered, tured by ritual guardians. Important objects
independent, single-village social communities kept there included the bones of the ancestors of
that formerly predominated were replaced by the elite family, tokens of wealth, and some-
interdependent multivillage communities. The times even armaments. In generalizing about
result was the development of the social and southeastern religion El Inca placed the temple
political means of integrating larger groups of squarely in the center of indigenous religious
people, which became the basis for cultural life practice:
of southeastern tribes established from then on. The Indians are a race of pagans and idolaters;
So marked was this change in many interdepen- they worship the sun and the moon as their
dent aspects of cultural life that archaeologists principal deities, but, unlike the rest of hea-
have distinguished pre-Columbian history after thendom, without any ceremony of images,
the year 1000 as the Mississippian period. sacrifices, prayers, or other superstitions.
Although some of this shift in organization was They do have temples but they use them as
a consequence of local population growth, in sepulchres and not as houses of prayer. More-
certain places the change was accomplished by over, because of the great size of these struc-
the political union of formerly autonomous vil- tures, they let them serve to hold the best
lages. The result was a new institutional basis and richest of their possessions. Their
on which variations and elaborations could take fig. i. Funeral Procession for Tattooed Serpent in
for the
temples and burial places,
place. veneration is not profound. On the doors of 1725. At rear is a mortuary shrine that stood on one
therefore,
The principal architectural features of Missis- of the mounds at the Grand Village of the Natchez
sippian towns were the platforms of earth them they place the trophies of victories won
9
over their enemies.
erected to support the houses of chiefs, the
shrines of the ancestors, and the sacred fires. The most spectacular ancestor shrine known testimony of native American craftsmanship
Some of these towns achieved considerable size. was the temple of the Cofitachequi located in (cats. 428, 429). 11
As the period progressed many settlements the center of present-day South Carolina. 10 Clearly the ancestor shrine was the physical
were walled for defense. A shift toward increas- According to the detailed description provided center of religious life. Two centuries later the
ing reliance on corn agriculture likewise charac- by El Inca, who relied on the direct testimony of Natchez espoused beliefs that once were prob-
terized this period. This development was members of Soto's expedition, carved wooden ably more widely held in the southeast.
accompanied by the rise of distinct traditions in giants were stationed at the doorway, each The chiefs were regarded as spirits descended
artifacts that continued until the sixteenth brandishing different kinds of weapons. Inside from a kind of idol which they have in their
century. were masses of marine shells and strands of temple and for which they have a great
From the perspective of material culture pearl beads, headdresses of multicolored feath- respect. It is a stone statue enclosed in a
archaeologists have identified broad groupings ers and furs, and different kinds of armaments. wooden box. They say that this is not prop-
of traditions. The more complex of these were In the center were wooden chests filled with the erly the great spirit, but one of his relatives
the South Appalachian Mississippian (re- bones of the ruling family and carved images of which he formerly sent into this place to be
presented by the Apalachee, Coosa, and Cofita- individual dead. Although this account may be the master of the earth; that this chief
chequi), the Middle Mississippian, the Caddoan exaggerated or a fusion of separate instances, became so terrible that he made men die
Mississippian, and the Plaquemine Mississip- the kinds of objects described are ones that are merely by his look; that in order to prevent it
pian (represented by the Natchez). Less com- known from archaeology and other historical he had a cabin [shrine] made for himself into
plex social and cultural life to the north is accounts to have been important in native life. which he entered and had himself changed
divided into the Oneota and Fort Ancient Pearls, marine shells, and copper beaten into into a stone statue for fear that his flesh
cultures. shape were items of value in the southeast. would be corrupted in the earth. 12
In place of a universal pantheon, each tribe Armaments were sometimes stored under the
had its own deities who defined their origin and same roof as wealth and ancestral bones. Thus The Natchez called this deity "The/' He was the
social identity. Although there seemed to be the essentials of this splendid example are bearer of arts and technology as well as the
great similarity among southeasterners with objects that can be attested to independently tribal forefather. This founding deity gave
respect to worship and belief, the overwhelming from other sources. Furnishings that dominate direction and coherence to society. So imbued
authority of local custom prevented any drive the shrine are caskets and images. Images of with life force were these stone (and wood) per-
toward syncretism. Therefore, one must look at this type have survived to provide a remarkable sonifications that they were thought to be in

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