People of the Morning Star (73 page)

Too much pain lies between us. And the way ahead is just as dark and foreboding.

She’d never forget the glimpse of him in Columella’s palace as he charged, screaming the Red Wing battle cry, into the midst of the Tula. How his body had been so warm and reassuring against hers in the canoe. But for him, she’d have died that day in the river. Here was a man worthy of her. If only she could step into his warm arms and revel in his …

She stifled a chuckle, amused at her foolishness. Power had twisted their lives, left an inseparable gulf between them, and the future? Best not to contemplate that.

Unaware of her thoughts, he gestured toward the crowd that passed below her palace; most pointed or paused in their passage and stared with awe. Cahokia pulsed with the story of how she’d vanquished her brother. “You’ve become another of Cahokia’s legends.”

“At what price?” she whispered.

“You had no choice.”

She nodded, images spinning through her of Walking Smoke as a young man, his smile crooked, his eyes fiery with insolence and challenge.

“I expected to die with him, down there. Probably would have if he hadn’t had his hands clamped on my throat. I couldn’t have sucked in water if I’d wanted.”

“I saw…”

“Yes?”

“A flash, Lady. The most incredible blue, like underwater lightning.”

She nodded, remembering. “That’s the moment Piasa arrived. The sheer violence of it, the blinding light and Power…” She shook her head. “You can’t imagine. You should have seen the look on Walking Smoke’s face. I doubt he’d ever felt such sheer terror before.”

“Maybe not. But I was in the canoe. An instant later I had lightning blasting the water all around me. I discovered a whole new meaning of the word.”

“The Thunderbirds. It isn’t often that they have such a chance to take shots at Piasa.” She swallowed another mouthful. “Can you imagine the chaos and warfare if my brother had succeeded? Spirit beasts battling among us, sundering the earth, throwing lightning bolts, blasting winds, fiery skies, and the burning forests?”

“He was your brother,” Fire Cat told her. “No matter what, that still has to hurt.”

She glanced sidelong at him. “We have no proof that he’s dead. If he survived…”

Fire Cat’s eyes narrowed to a bitter squint. “He will be back someday.”

To change the subject, she said, “Speaking of family, I hear you’ve somehow managed to entice the Keeper into Trading your mother and sisters away from the Morning Star.”

“I’ll sleep a little better because of it.”

She sipped her tea, hearing the cheers that rose from the crowd as Morning Star scored the winning point. She didn’t need to look to see his opponent dropping to one knee and offering his neck.

“You and I … We may be enemies, and our obligations to the dead remain…” She struggled to find just the right words. “Whether or not my brother survived, Piasa tells me something unpleasant is coming. Morning Star senses it. It will be dangerous, perhaps deadly…”

His chuckle was dry and humorless. “Just spit it out, Lady.”

Having finished her breakfast, she licked her fingers, then asked, “Do you intend to keep your oath to serve me?”

He stiffened, offended. “I have without fail, have I not?”

“Will you continue?”

His eyes had narrowed, suspicious and angry. “I swore then, I swear now.”

She laid the plate aside and gave him a wary smile. “I suspected as much.” Reaching into the cloth sack beside her she produced the little pot with the serpents engraved on its side. “Do you remember this?”

His wary gaze recoiled. “The pot with my flesh and breath in it?”

“The very same.” She handed it to him.

He took it reverently. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Rides-the-Lightning said to inhale when you open it to recapture the essence of your spirit. He recommended tossing the skin scraps into the fire so no one can use them against you.”

“I … thank you, Lady.” He frowned down at the pot. “But why?”

Her souls shivered. “Remember the time I awakened you in the night?”

“With the knife ready to plunge into my heart?”

“I was thinking of when I was seated at the side of your bed. The subject I tried so desperately to speak of, and managed so poorly, was respect. If Piasa is right about the future, you may be free of your obligation sooner than you might think.”

“I see.” His level brown eyes were boring into hers. “Anything else?”

She nodded, reaching into the cloth bag again and handing him Makes Three’s prized black chunkey stone. “Piasa says you might want to practice, Red Wing. He says our lives may depend upon it.”

She watched him heft the stone with a practiced hand. His eyebrow arched. “Did Piasa give you any hints as to what was coming?”

“Danger and death, Red Wing. It will fall upon us to stop it. You and me, the Keeper and the thief. Nor can we discount the Morning Star’s calculating intrigues.”

He nodded respectfully. “Then I’d best be prepared.” Somehow he managed the pot, stone, and her plate, before retreating to the house and leaving her with the half-drank tea.

She closed her eyes, exhaling wearily. “I’ll never have peace, will I?”

“You serve Power, Night Shadow Star. Among those who do, peace is reserved for the dead.”
Piasa’s faint whisper stirred through her souls.

Night Shadow Star laughed bitterly, a sense of lonely desperation filling her. She opened her eyes and stood. Then, tossing the last of her tea out, she turned, fully resigned to face the coming storm.

Historical Note

Did Cahokia Have a Written Language?

Did Cahokians have a written language? The question has long plagued archaeologists. For many, it is the final criterion that would make Cahokia a “civilization” in the classical sense. We think they did, and have traveled out on the limb again. Given the complexity of Cahokia and the distances over which it had to communicate, at least a form of recorded communication would seem to be indicated. Several clues lead us to suggest how Cahokian “writing” may have worked.

The first tantalizing clue lies in Khipu, the system of knotted cords used by the Inca to record and send messages. While discussing the problem of writing, our longtime archaeological colleague, Brian O’Neil, suggested that Cahokians might have used something similar. Then we seriously considered the Iroquoisan practice of “writing” in wampum. The best synopsis can be found in Bruce Johansen and Barbara Mann’s
Encyclopedia of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy)
, pages 326–329.

Wampum could be anything from a string of different size, color, and shape beads that communicated a simple message, to a complex two-sided, blanket-like “belt” in which entire treaties, political agreements, and all the participant’s speeches were recorded. (European settlers and their governments were instrumental in the destruction of these great documents since they told a different story than the paper documents in places like Albany.)

How does wampum relate to Cahokia? We refer you to Melvin Fowler’s
The Mound 72 Area: Dedication and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia
, pages 132–136. Note the description: “No evidence of stringing material was found, but the arrangement of the beads indicated a pattern of stringing in two directions as one would get in a woven shell-bead mat or blanket.” This sounds very similar to two-sided “treaty” or record-keeping wampum. And it may have been a great deal more sophisticated than the Iroquoisan system, since the size and shape of the beads, as indicated on pages 134–135, would have added a great deal of complexity to the meaning of the patterns. And that’s without the addition of color.

Finally, consider the bead cache under 72Sub1. Three strings of large beads. Strings I and II each have fifty-one, and String III contained fifty-seven beads. “The strings are 60 to 70 cm long, and the beads are of such weight that it is highly unlikely that these strings would have been worn as necklaces.”

And finally we refer the reader to Feature 236, a cache of over 36,177 beads of all shapes and sizes. Again, “No evidence of stringing material was found within the bead pile.” It had rotted away. “In some areas of the pile however, beads were aligned in such a way as to indicate that they had been strung in series. Some of the larger beads had seed beads stuck in each end, indicating that some of the larger beads were strung with seed beads, and perhaps with other kinds in between. Apparently the pile was made up of many strings of beads that had been mixed well before placement in the pit.”

Our hypothesis is that Burials 13 and 14, known as the “beaded burials,” are lying on a great falcon-shaped wampum belt, one that probably related either the great mythical stories of the Morning Star, or perhaps the exploits of the two individuals buried there.

Like all hypotheses, this one, too, awaits the research to prove or disprove it. Perhaps a clue can be found in some of the surviving Iroquoisan wampum, or like Linear A, it will remain indecipherable.

Bibliography

Alt, Susan.

“The Invisible War: Structural Violence and Fear in The Cahokian World.” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Beahm, Emily, and Kevin Smith.

“Hero Twins and the Old Woman Who Never Dies: Mythic Themes in Middle Cumberland Iconography.” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Bendon, Danielle, Robert Boszhardt, and Timothy Pauketat.

“To ‘The Mountain Whose Foot is Bathed in Water.’” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Benson, Larry V., Timothy Pauketat, and Edward Cook.

“Cahokia’s Boom and Bust in the Context of Climate Change.”
American Antiquity,
74:3 (2009): pp. 467–484.

Byers, A. Martin.

Cahokia: A World Renewal Cult Heterarchy
. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.

Birmingham, Robert A., and Lynne Goldstein.

Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town.
Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2005.

Brown, James.

“The Architecture of Cosmic Access at the Spiro Great Mortuary.” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Dalan, Rinita A., George R. Holley, William I. Woods, Harold W. Watters Jr., and John Koepke.

Envisioning Cahokia: A Landscape Perspective
. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003.

Dye, David.

“Mississippian Warfare and Soul Capture.” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Fagan, Brian.

Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent
. New York and London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.

Fowler, Melvin.

“The Ancient Skies and Sky Watchers of Cahokia: Woodhenges, Eclipses, and Cahokian Cosmology.”
The Wisconsin Archaeologist
. Vol. 77 (1996): Nos. 3–4.

The Cahokia Atlas: A Historical Atlas of Cahokia Archaeology
. Studies in Illinois Archaeology. No. 6, Springfield, Il: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 1989.

Fowler, Melvin L., Jerome Rose, Barbara Vander Leest, and Steven R. Ahler.

The Mound 72 Area: Dedicated and Sacred Space in Early Cahokia
. Illinois State Museum Reports of Investigations, No. 54, Illinois State Museum Society; Springfield, Illinois: 1999.

Goldstein, Lynne.

“Mississippian Ritual as Viewed through the Practice of Secondary Disposal of the Dead.”
Mounds, Modoc,
and Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Melvin L. Fowler
. Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, Vol. XXVIII; Springfield, Illinois: 2000.

Hall, Robert.

“Sacrificed Foursomes and Green Corn Ceremonialism.”
Mounds, Modoc, and Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor Of Melvin L. Fowler.
Springfield, Illinois: Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers, Vol. XXVIII, 2000.

An Archaeology of the Soul
. Urbana and Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Hally, David, John F. Chamblee, and George R. Milner.

“Macro-Regional Analysis of Mississippian Mound Site Distribution.” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.

Heckewelder, John.

History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States.
The First American Frontier Series. New York: Arno Press and
The New York Times
, 1820.

Hewitt, John N. Brinton.

“
Wampum.”
Handbook of the American Indians North of Mexico
. Fredrick Webb Hodge, ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1965.

Holt, Julie Zimmerman.

“Was Cahokia the Center of a Theater State?” Paper presented at the 77th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Memphis, Tennessee, 2012.