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Vulpine Outlaw

Mar 26 • 9 tweets • 6 min read

The Mississippian Cosmos

The Mississippians had many familiar things in their cosmos: a firmament above, a world tree or axis mundi, an underworld. But some aspects were also very distinctive.

The Underworld was considered an underwater realm, associated with the night sky, and associated with the piasa. The piasa had several variants, one of which was the underwater panther.

(I have a completely unfounded theory that this partly refers to giant otters.)

The winged, horned serpent variant may be distantly related to Quetzalcoatl.

Note, however, that it usually has a rattle.

Several symbols that appear on art let us pinpoint the scene as occurring in different parts of the cosmos. A, surrounded by feathers, represents the Above World. B is a solar image and associated with the Middle World. C swirls like a whirlpool, pointing to the Below World.

Different versions of the "eye-surround" motif, D and E above, also tell you whether a figure is from the Above or Below World.

The ogee, 7f above, is a portal between worlds.

The striped pole, G above, is an axis mundi, just like the cedar tree.

With all this in mind, we can return to the picture we started with, prepared to understand it much better.

We see the symbols for the three levels, creatures with appropriate eye markings, watery/starry Below world, and the axis mundi. There is also a path of souls.

Once again, this comes from Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand. Specifically, this is from F. Kent Reilly III's essay.

Definitely worth owning.

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Vulpine Outlaw

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Mar 23

A Paper on Clan Origins

A "clan" in anthropology is traditionally a group of people which share a totem, may not marry one another, and are considered descended from a common ancestor--usually the totem animal.

In 1971, Elizabeth Tooker wrote a paper asking why the clan system arose in eastern North America.

Some writers take it for granted that such things have existed for countless ages, but she does not.

She begins by noting two odd facts:
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2. Eastern North Americans have not usually been very concerned, compared to other societies, with tracing actual descent.

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Vulpine Outlaw

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https://twitter.com/d08890/status/1638170254109995009

This is why I get very annoyed at flat statements of "so-and-so is smart." No he's not! He's dumber than a sack of hammers! He just memorizes obscure facts!

https://twitter.com/d08890/status/1638170254109995009

Alternatively, there are people with brilliant minds for calculating and problem solving, but absolutely no curiosity. They never learn anything new--and wouldn't notice if they did--but they're great at what they do.

Some people can't handle abstract thought, and aren't that curious, but they're very attentive to practical matters and can easily show up the memorizer and the calculator in common sense.

And some people don't have a lick of common sense, but just "get" people.

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Confucius say:

Since civilization literally depends on it, let's make sure to define our terms.

Many people use the word "history" to refer to any kind of study of the past. While not entirely wrong, can also be said to have a more narrow focus.

History is about documents. It studies written records of past events, comparing and arranging them into a meaningful narrative--creating a new written record. Anything before written records, then, is prehistory.

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The Coming of the Bow

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Yet the bow is a relative latecomer to North America.

In an older article, John Blitz details its origin and spread while making a larger point about how technology disperses across wide areas.

Before we can reckon with its history, we have to familiarize ourselves with what came before: the atlatl, or spear-thrower.

This handheld dart launcher used enough force to punch a hole in Spanish armor. Used rightlt, it was certainly enough to fell a buffalo.

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Vulpine Outlaw

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The Dark Tent Ritual

It is night in the taiga of the frozen north. The shaman has been bound and left alone inside a tent. You gather around it in the darkness. Sounds emerge.

Animal sounds.

They want to talk.

A paper last year examined this "dark tent ritual," which is found from western Siberia all the way to the American plains.

It combines new genetic studies with old methods to give a history to what some consider timeless--a shamanic ritual.

The author, Charles Stépanoff, believes it emerged in Siberia and crossed the Bering Strait with the Paleo-Eskimos.

This is the second wave of migration to America, which brought the Dorset and Saqqaq cultures, and very likely the Na-Dene language family.