Copper, CREATURES, Mask gorgets, Native American art, Seeing Red, Shells, United States
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Long-nosed god maskettes are artifacts made from bone, copper and marine shells

A map showing the distribution of finds of en:Long-nosed god maskette, artifacts of the en:Mississippian culture.

Long-nosed god maskettes are artifacts made from bone, copper and marine shells (Lightning whelk) associated with the Mississippian culture (800 to 1600 CE) and found in archaeological sites in the Midwestern United States and the Southeastern United States. They are small shield-shaped faces with squared-off foreheads, circular eyes, and large noses of various lengths. They are often shown on Southeastern Ceremonial Complex representations of falcon impersonators as ear ornaments. Long and short nosed versions of the masks have been found in ten different states, with the majority found at sites in Illinois. Many archaeologists now associate them with the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) stories of the mythological being Red Horn.

An artist’s reconstruction of a Mississippian era depiction of what archeologists and historians believe to be Redhorn or possibly someone dressing up as Redhorn for a ceremony.

Red Horn is a culture hero in Siouan oral traditions, specifically of the Ioway and Hocąk (Winnebago) nations. He has different names. Only in Hocąk literature is he known as “Red Horn” (Hešucka), but among the Ioway and Hocągara both, he is known by one of his variant names, “He Who Wears (Man) Faces on His Ears”. This name derives from the living faces on his earlobes (Hocąk), or earbobs that come to life when he places them on his ears (Ioway). Elsewhere, he is given yet another name, “Red Man” (Wąkšucka), because his entire body is red from head to toe. Red Horn was one of the five sons of Earthmaker, whom the Creator fashioned with his own hands and sent to earth to rescue humanity. During his sojourn on earth, he contested both giants and water spirits, and led war parties against the bad spirits who plagued humanity. As Wears Faces on His Ears, he is also said to be a star, although its identity is a subject of controversy. Under the names “One Horn” (Hejąkiga) and “Without Horns” (Herok’aga), he and his sons are chiefs over the small hunting spirits known as the herok’a and the “little children spirits”. Red Horn, as chief of the herok’a, has a spiritual and sometimes corporeal identity with the arrow. Archaeologists have speculated that Red Horn is a mythic figure in Mississippian art, represented on a number of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (SECC) artifacts. The adventures of Red Horn are set out in a set of stories known as the “Red Horn Cycle”. The Red Horn Cycle depicts his adventures with Turtle, the thunderbird Storms-as-He-Walks (Mą’e-manįga) and others who contest a race of giants, the Wąge-rucge or “Man-Eaters”, who have been killing human beings whom Red Horn has pledged to help. In the episode associated with this name, Red Horn turns himself into an arrow to win a race. After winning the race Red Horn creates heads on his earlobes and makes his hair into a long red braid called a he, “horn”, in Hocąk. Thus he becomes known as “Red-horn” (he-šucka) and as “He who Wears (Human) Faces on His Ears” (įco-horúšika). According to legend, Red Horn is one of the five great soteriological spirits fashioned by the Creator’s own hands, sent to earth to make the world safe for the least endowed of Earthmaker’s creation, the “two-legged walkers”. Unlike all the other soteriological spirits, Red Horn is not assigned a paradise over which to rule; and the Medicine Rite omits any mention of Red Horn from its account of the sons of Earthmaker. These facts indicate that Red Horn may have been a recent addition to the role. Meeker even suggested that a certain notable Piegan contemporary of the same name may have simply been elevated to divine status. More recently, Lankford held a similar view: “… Red Horn was a recent addition to the Winnebago pantheon diffused possibly from the Blackfoot tribe.”

  • “6. Wąkx!istowi, the Man with the Human Head Earrings,” in Skinner (1925) 457–458. He also appears in a Twins myth, where his is called Wankistogre, “Man-in-the-Earring”. Small & Small, in Skinner (1925).
  • For the ethnology of the Hocągara, conducted between 1908 and 1912, see Paul Radin (1923).
  • Radin (1948) 124. In Harrison, 112–114, he is called Wągíšjahorùšika, Archived 2008-10-05 at the Wayback Machine “Wears Man Faces on His Ears”. Radin, “Intcohorúcika,” 65-67; Foster, (1876–1877) vol. 1, #3: p. 3 col. 1; Danker and White (1978) 24-25; McKern 1929).
  • Danker & White (1978) 24-25. Informant: Felix White, Sr. – Danker, Kathleen, and White, Felix, Sr. The Hollow of Echoes (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978).
  • Jipson (1923) 410-411. – Jipson, Norton William. Story of the Winnebagos (Chicago: The Chicago Historical Society, 1923).
  • Meeker (1901) 161-164. – Meeker, Louis L. “Siouan Mythological Tales,” Journal of American Folklore, 14 (1901): 161-164.
  • Lankford (2007) 124. – Lankford, George E. Reachable Stars: Patterns in the Ethnoastronomy of Eastern North America (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2007.

Archaeology

Long-nosed god maskette, marine shell, grave good excavated from the Yokem Mound Group, near Rockport, in Pike County, Illinois, now in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian

The first long nosed god maskette was found next to a skull in a grave in Big Mound in St. Louis in 1870. Since then over twenty of these artifacts have been discovered in an area encompassing at least ten states. They have also been found in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wisconsin, but the majority have been found in Illinois. Excavations at the Gahagan Mounds Site in Louisiana in 1939 produced a matched pair of copper maskettes. The largest examples yet found were a pair of copper masks dug from a mound in Calhoun County, Illinois by William G. Fecht. One is 22.4 centimetres (8.8 in) and the other 22 centimetres (8.7 in) in length. Clarence Bloomfield Moore found two copper examples when he excavated the St. Johns culture Grant Mound in Duval County, Florida in 1894 along with two biconical copper covered ear-spools similar to ones from Cahokia.

Long nosed god horizon

Archaeologists have long used the maskettes for dating different phases of the Mississippian culture. In the 1950s Stephen Williams and John Mann Goggin proposed the existence of an early Mississippian Long nosed god horizon based on the distribution and chronological positioning of the finds. In 1989 Jon Muller of Southern Illinois University proposed reorganizing the classification of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex into five horizons, with each as a discrete tradition defined by the origin of specific motifs and ritual objects. The first horizon he defines for his Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere is the Developmental Cult Period which went from 900 to 1150 CE and is marked by the appearance of the Long nosed god maskettes.

Theories about uses

A Missouri flint clay effigy pipe called “Big Boy” or “Resting Warrior” with short nosed god maskette earring, found at the Spiro Mounds site.

The long-nosed god maskettes may have functioned in the Early Mississippian Period of the eastern United States within an adoption ritual much like that of the Calumet ceremony of the historic period.—-to create fictions of kinship between the powerful leader of a large polity and his political clients in outlying areas.

Timothy R. Pauketat, (2004). Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-521-52066-9.

Some archaeologists, including James B. Griffin of the Smithsonian Institution, at first believed that the Long-nosed god masks were evidence of contact with Mesoamerica. They identified the masks as possible representations of the Aztec deity Yacatecuhtli, an aspect of Quetzalcoatl whose name means “The Lord Who Guides”. Yacatecuhtli was worshipped by the pochteca, a class of professional long-distance traveling merchants. In the 1990s anthropologist Robert L. Hall proposed that the maskettes were used by Mississippian peoples as part of ritual adoptions in which important leaders extended fictive kinship to visiting leaders in order to cement political alliances and trade relationships. Hall, an expert on Native American belief systems, theorised that the maskettes were used to identify individuals involved in the adoption rituals with the figures of Red Horn (who was also known as “He-Who-Wears-Human-Heads-As-Earrings”) and his sons. Many of the myths of Red Horn and his sons, found amongst the Chiwere Siouan-speaking people including the Ho-Chunk and Ioway, involve instances of kinship and adoption. In his guise as “He who Gets Hit with Deer Lungs”, Red Horn is also associated with the Calumet ceremony, which is another fictive kinship/adoption ritual. The differing shapes of the noses found on earpieces, including long, bent and short varieties, are explained by the myths as differing stages of the ritualized adoption process. In one Caddoan myth, the “wild brother” of the Hero Twins possesses a long nose which is magically shortened by a medicine man. This has led some researchers to think the masks start as the long nosed variety, denoting the first stage in the initiation process. As the individual progresses through the rituals, the nose is symbolically bent and eventually trimmed in the final phase, denoting full acceptance into the kinship system.

See also

References

  1. “Native American:Prehistoric:Mississippian”. Illinois State Museum. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
  2. Bostrom, Peter A. (2005-09-30). “Long & Short Nosed God Masks”. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
  3. Dye, David H. (2009-02-16). War Paths, Peace Paths: An Archaeology of Cooperation and Conflict in Native Eastern North America. AltaMira Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-7591-0745-8.
  4. Duncan, James R.; Diaz-Granados, Carol (2000). “Of Masks and Myths”. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology. 25 (1): 1–26. JSTOR 20708122.
  5. “Tejas”. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
  6. Ashley, Keith H. (2002). “On the periphery of the Early Mississippian world : Looking within and beyond Northeastern Florida” (PDF). Southeastern Archaeology. 2 (2).
  7. “CORRECTED PROVENANCE FOR THE LONG-NOSED GOD MASK FROM “A CAVE NEAR ROGANA, TENNESSEE””. Southeastern Archaeology. 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
  8. Muller, Jon (1989). “The Southern Cult”. In Galloway, Patricia (ed.). The Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, Artifacts and Analysis:The Cottonlandia Conference. University of Nebraska Press. pp. 11–26.
  9. Pauketat, Timothy (2004). Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippians. Cambridge University Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-521-52066-9.
  10. Fuller, Michael (2008). “Indian Hill Mound in St. Louis County, Missouri”. Retrieved 2010-08-01.
  11. “Aztalan – Wisconsin’s Middle Mississippian Outpost”. Milwaukee Public Museum. Archived from the original on 2010-05-27. Retrieved 2010-07-30.
  12. Hall, Robert L. (1997). An Archaeology of the Soul: North American Indian Belief and Ritual. ISBN 978-0-252-06602-3.
  13. Dieterle, Richard L. “Redhorn (Wears Faces on His Ears)”. Encyclopedia of Hočąk (Winnebago) Mythology. Retrieved 2010-08-19.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Native American shell art.

Mississippian and related cultures
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