good evening, everyone. thank you for comingout. tonight’s talk is sponsored by the college scholars program. this program providesa stipend to jcc faculty, both full and part time, for the development of two researchpresentations. and either a guest lecture in another instructor’s classroom or a facultyseminar on the topic of their choice. college scholars was started by dr. jim leiker toprovide a platform for jccc faculty to present their research projects. those of us who areinvolved in this program feel it is important for a number of reasons. first and most importantlyit gives community college professors a chance to do research, which is tough to do becausecommunity college professors are teachers first and foremost. but doing outside researchalso makes us better teachers because we can
bring new material and new enthusiasm to theclassroom and to our students. and then finally i think this college scholars program is awonderful way for the community to see what an asset it has in jcc and for us to interactwith members of the community and to share what we’re doing with all of you. so, onto tonight’s speaker. deb williams is a lifelong learner whose interests and degreesrange across the curriculum. she holds advanced degrees in law, counseling, biology and philosophyand she is right now adding indigenous studies and anthropology to that list. since 2006she has been a prominent member of jccc’s faculty, serving in numerous leadership positionsincluding president of the faculty association, chair of the department and environmentalscience and faculty advisor to a number of
student clubs. she has also received manyawards in her time here for excellence in teaching and service, including this award.this is the third time she’s been our college scholar. she has published and lectured ontopics such as sustainability, wolf ecology, medical ethics and kansas ecology. and finally,she is a world traveler who has been on safari in africa, has seen a kangaroo preserve inaustralia, embarked on a nearly 200-mile pilgrimage in spain and drove 9,000 miles from kansasto the northwest territories in canada. it is with great pleasure that i introduce debwilliams. >>well thank you so much, sarah. i feel likei need to certainly thank sarah for her warm introduction and also thank you all for beinghere tonight. i also think it’s important
to acknowledge how very vital this collegescholar program is from the faculty’s perspective so as a third-time recipient of this awardand this opportunity, i can’t emphasize enough how valuable it is to the faculty memberand hopefully informative to the public at large because these presentations are madeavailable to the public to kind of showcase the research and interests of the facultyhere at jccc. so i think i’ll just go ahead and jump into my presentation. as you cansee, bundles, pipes and mounds: exploring nearby indigenous cultural sites. what i’mdoing, hopefully do for you tonight, i’m gonna serve as your interpreter or your guideto these nearby cultural sites, kind of give you a heads up of what you can see and theplan is is to illustrate within only a day’s
drive, you can see these really interesting,you know, indigenous cultural research sites and enriching ecological sites and so sometimesi think we don’t understand how fortunate we are, living in kansas, how close we are,you know, to resources not only within our own state but nearby only a day away. so someof you have been with me throughout this three-lecture journey that started on november 21st witha very specific kind of talk about the sacred pipe: spiritual, cultural and political significanceof calumet ceremonies among the plains indians. this morning, i presented sort of a more generalizedresearch talk, "traditional ecological knowledge: indigenous perspectives on environmental problemsolving," and then this capstone experience is to really showcase what started it all,what inspired it all, which is these real
interesting visits to nearby cultural sites.they all were tied, it was created as a package, if you will, and so those of you who havebeen with me for all three events, maybe have a better glimpse into what was in my mindwhen i developed them but bundles, pipes and mounds, so i'll jump right into the story.hopefully you had a chance to pick up, i created a brochure, which may be helpful to you ifyou decide, if i inspire you to go to some of these sites, it might be handy to takethis along with you or at least read about what i have to say after the process, maybewhat you might experience. so in terms of the bundles part, the pawnee indian museumin republic, kansas is the site that i'll feature tonight and what you see featuredhere is the pawnee sacred bundle, which i'll
have several slides to discuss here when weget to that section. pipestone national monument in pipestone, minnesota, this was, as i referto it in my presentation, it all started with an intriguing day trip and what you can seeup front, by the way, i forgot to mention, there's some literature at the front tableand there are some pipes, some jewelry, some necklaces and other objects that's been craftedwith pipestone. if you get close enough to me, i'm wearing pipestone jewelry, earringsand a necklace so it's very interesting material for a lot of reasons and very special materialto native americans which is part of what i’ll feature in that part of the talk. sopipes is associated with the pipestone national monument in pipestone, minnesota. and thenfinally mounds for the bundles, pipes and
mounds piece is cahokia mounds in collinsville,illinois and the brochure, you know, you can see some of what i’ll do is feature materialthat’s in the brochure but there’s a lot of information there so i’ll go throughsome slides more quickly than others so that we can, i can have an opportunity to talkto you about some of the insights that i had and some of the experiences, i think, thatmight help inform, or shape possibly, your experiences if you opt to venture to any ofthese sites. so just out of curiosity, has anyone been to any of these places, pipestone?how many, just by a show of hands, how many of you have been to, you know, pipestone nationalmonument? awesome. how many of you have been to cahokia mounds? awesome. how many of youhave been to the pawnee museum in republic,
kansas? nobody, wow. and it’s one of theclosest, the sites that’s closest distance to you so hopefully i’ll inspire you togo. so this is kind of a variation of what’s in your handout or your brochure that givesyou probably everything you wanted to know about, as a tourist, as a person visitingthese sites, you know, the status of the site. pawnee indian museum happens to be a statehistoric site for kansas. the locations, their hours of operations, whether there’s a feeand things to see and do which i think is kind of important to kind of get a heads upbefore you go there. not that you, you know, you can have impromptu organic experiencestoo but it’s a very interesting site and it’s very worthy of its designation as astate historic site and one of the many things
about our state we should be very proud of.so one of the things that may not be apparent to any of you since none of you have beento this site, is its significance and maybe you do or do not know much about the pawneeindians so i have some information here, lots of text on this slide but i’ll highlighta few things about the pawnee and why this location is sort of a celebration of thisparticular tribe in our state. so we know that historically the pawnee lived in centralnebraska and northern kansas and numbered about 10,000 or more members in four subgroups.they were semi-sedentary. in the spring, they lived in these dome-shaped lodges which youcan see a picture of here and you’ll see another in a moment and they planted corn,beans and squash. during the summer, they
moved into the high plains and lived in bowl-shapedshelters while hunting bison. in the late summer, they returned to their lodges to harvest,process and store their crops and in the winter, they returned to the high plains and livedoff of, in buffalo-hide tipis that were more mobile while hunting bison. and then anotherthing we need to realize is that the social structure of the pawnee, the basic unit ofthe pawnee social structure was the village and a band could include members of one tosix villages which is something that you’ll further appreciate if you actually visit thissite. each band was governed by a head chief and an important symbol of the chief’s officewas the communal sacred bundle, hence bundles, pipes and mounds, so bundle is very importantto this particular tribe which represented
the community’s history and it gave identityand validity to these tribes. the individual family lodges were arranged so as to representthe universe. the west side of each lodge included a raised altar adorned with a buffaloskull, over which was suspended the family’s sacred bundle. you’ll hear me talk abouttwo different kinds of bundles. the sacred bundle, the family sacred bundle and thenthere was the community tribal sacred bundle. so whereas communal bundles, i couldn’thave segued better, i think, the community bundle was derived powers from the sacredbeings of the heavens. family bundles derived their powers from sacred beings of the earthand some of you who were here this morning that heard my talk about the physical, metaphysicalnexus that traditional ecological knowledge
might bring us, i mean, maybe this might helpfurther elaborate on a discussion that i started this morning. so tirawa, the supreme being,or great spirit, was the creator of the world. his wife, the corn mother, who led the peoplefrom their original place within the earth to the surface. below tirawa and atira werethe sacred beings of the heavens and of the earth and you can see there’s some detailabout sort of the metaphysical or spiritual aspects of this relationship, this idea ofsacred beings and why this was important to this culture. so religion and concern forthe supernatural permeated, permeated pawnee life, and the bundle scheme was the foundationon which their social and ceremonial organization rested. so bundles are very important to thistribe. by the end of the 20th century, the
pawnee had been reduced to less than 700 memberslargely through violence and disease. the communal village life had been replaced byindividual farm life. traditional subsistence patterns had been replaced by agricultureand government rations. the authority of chiefs had been replaced by that of agents and religiousceremonies and the knowledge of sacred bundles were rapidly disappearing as to those whopossessed that knowledge often died without the knowledge being passed on and the carefor these bundles, the traditions being replaced. so, again, an image of the bundle. a littlebit more about the bundle. so physically, you probably can get a sense from that image,a sacred bundle is a collection of symbolic and ritual objects wrapped in buffalo hide.because each bundle has its origin in a different
supernatural encounter, the contents of aparticular bundle would vary but all contain the same types of objects. this becomes veryimportant to a question i’ll ask of you and a question i’ve been asking myself sincei visited this site. so one or more ears of the best specimen, if you think about this,i’ll come back to this, you know, this idea of corn and how they, kind of a sustainabilitymove when you think about it, particularly with that agricultural reliance, a communitythat relied on agriculture at some point in their experience, part of their annual yearwas sedentary. so one or more ears of the best specimen of corn were harvested, wereadded to the bundle and that gave it life. these ears were removed in the spring andused for seed and replaced after the fall
harvest so you see how that might be a goodpractice, i mean, essentially pick your best specimen, store it away. when the ritual bundlecontents were opened in the ceremonial way, the corn was planted and then you had thispractice perpetuate in this tribe. there are other common objects included, in fact youcould see, i’ll go back to this, you can see on the outside there, i mentioned thisthe first presentation, it’s very visible that there’s a pipe. there’s a calumetpipe on the external of this bundle so this was a tribe that very much participated incalumet ceremonies and you see that represented here. so these objects included things likearrows, arrow fragments, pipes or pipe bowls and often attached to the outer bundle asofferings to the bundle and its ritual openings.
so metaphysically, again, i used that termthis morning, essentially is a distinction between what we do in science when we thinkabout the physical and the natural world, there’s this other sort of way of knowingas i described it this morning so metaphysically, the sacred bundle is a source of power towhich the village can turn for assistance. so except during ceremonial rituals, the bundlehangs from the rafters and you can actually see this represented when you visit the site.it hangs from the rafters on the west side of the caretaker’s lodge over the sacredaltar and so this is kind of lifted from one of the publications i have up here at thefront, “when so hung, it was likened by the pawnees to a dead man in his grave. thespirit lived in it but slept. even when opened,
the bundle continued asleep until the mother-cornhad been placed in it. it then came to life and during the ceremony the corn and otherobjects represented, individually and collectively, supernatural beings.†so again, that publicationis up front if you want to see more or hear more about it. so here’s where it kind ofgets interesting in terms of how this bundle wound up in the museum, and again, i havethis question that i’ll pose to you and we can think about together. well in 1987,a pawnee woman donated a family sacred bundle to the kansas state historical society. thebundle remained unopened for over a century because in 1873, the u.s. government grantedthe pawnee permission to travel into western nebraska to hunt bison. during that time,approximately 250 men, 100 women and 50 children
made their journey from the reservation intocentral nebraska. the sioux had also been granted permission to hunt bison in the samearea so on the return journey, the pawnee were armed with bows and arrows, encounteredsioux and were attacked by approximately 1,000 sioux who were armed with firearms. so asit turns out, approximately 150 pawnee were killed, 11 women and children were capturedand during the battle, a pawnee man tied his young daughter to a pack horse, tied the family’ssacred bundle to the girl’s back, told her to take care of the bundle and sent the horserunning so that the girl survived even though her parents did not. so this bundle, you know,you can trace back to that historic event. so as we know, any special ceremonies belongingto the bundle were forever lost in this carnage
at massacre canyon. so according to the donor,the bundle had not been ritually opened and is therefore intact as it was left in thecanyon in 1873. and as it turns out, there is a practice or a caretaker role that femalemembers of the tribe play so the bundle was cared for by female members only in familyuntil none remained who were willing to accept the responsibility, at which time it was donatedto society so over that century, this bundle had been passed down through the family andto the women who were receiving of the bundle until this woman decided, you know, “i’mgoing to donate this to the museum.†the bundle, you know, is generally cylindrical,approximately, did i go back? yes, didn’t sound right. i thought i already said that.so this bundle came to the museum, the donor
gave permission to open the bundle and examinethe contents and undertake necessary conservation action and so that kind of raises, maybe,the first red flag in terms of again maybe some of what may or may not have been, sortof, a violation of this historic cultural practice. metaphysical significance, at least.so without treatment, the leather straps were too brittle, you know, to survive the processof untying it so the semi-tanned leather would not also survive traditional conservationmethods and so the scientists or the museum caretakers decided to forego opening the bundlefor purposes of conservation so instead, they attempted to regulate the decay by controllingthe conditions of exhibition so it’s hung in a specific place. the picture that yousaw is one of, it’s the only picture that
i didn’t take that’s in the slide setand in your brochure because flashing and the camera itself could interfere with thepreservation process so this is very much, there’s attempts to restrict access to thebundle but here’s where it gets interesting. so it was decided, again, that they wantedto open it because they had permission to open it. decided to use currently available“non-invasive†techniques to study the bundle’s contents. so specifically, thebundle was initially subjected to x-ray radiation to produce four sets of radiographic imagesof its contents and then a set in each direction along its short axis and along the longitudinalaxis so that you have this, sort of, x-ray, kind of blueprint of what’s inside. andthen it was followed up by a cat scan process
which produces images in slices and you thinkabout, if you’ve seen medical programs, this is to kind of to get an image of morespecific about, in locations within the bundle. so we have this non-invasive procedure thatkept the bundle intact but it also revealed the contents within. so analyses of theseimages indicated the presence of an inner liner which may have been some type of grassmaterial, grass mat. other contents included rocks, sticks, possibly sweet grass, possiblya simulated, possibly either a simulated or a real human scalp, animal or bird bones,bird skins, arrow fragments, bells and a pouch of, possibly, paint. so the image, though,and this is interesting for what i said earlier about corn, the image failed to reveal anear of corn. and so, as mentioned, the ear
would have been removed in the spring andplanted and then replaced in the fall after a harvest but the massacre occurred, the massacrein which the bundle opening ritual was lost occurred in august after the spring plantingand before the fall harvest which explains why you didn’t have a sample of the bestcorn included in the bundle which may explain why it didn’t contain corn. so it’s unclearwhether this means that the bundle is dead or simply dormant and whether, and this iswhere, this is my question, i’m leading you up to this, whether we have issue here.an ethical issue, you know, a-- you know, is this research or, on one hand it’s forthe sake of science, for the sake of, you know, understanding the culture. let’s usea non-invasive way. another side of the story
may be that it could be regarded as a desecrationso ethical considerations are raised about the treatment of the bundle and we know that,historically, researchers have opened bundles to satisfy scientific curiosity includingfive bundles that were opened by research in the field museum in chicago and all thesebundles were opened upon their arrival. information as to the exact contents of each bundle wasnot recorded and, at present, all of the contents are stored together so, again, if you feel,during q & a, or even now, if you want to comment, you know, is that a worry for usas scientists or as museum curators in terms of regarding the metaphysical significancein honoring the culture. so the behavior is sometimes referred to as colonial science,it’s science carried out under different
standards for indigenous peoples than forcolonial peoples because of different political, economic and social standings. and so as theargument goes where the question is posed, had this been, you know, christian ratherthan indigenous sacred artifacts, would they have received much greater respect or differentkinds of respect and so i’ll just leave that out for consideration at the end. sonow we’ll transition to the pipes part of the talk, the pipestone talk and, again, thoseof you who attended the first presentation heard and saw some of the slides that i includedalthough i have some new ones. i’m going to read this because i think it’s powerfuljust to kind of make this point about the metaphysics of native views and how the pipehad significance. i talked about the sacred
pipe, and so why is it sacred? well here’s,you know, one story that explains how that came to be. so the dakota sioux tell the storyof two men hunting. far away they saw something white and shining coming towards them. theyfirst thought it was a white buffalo calf. as it approached, they saw it change intoa young beautiful girl, a young girl dressed in white buckskin. she was carrying a highly-decoratedpipe. one of the men was filled with desire for the maiden. because his thoughts offendedthe powers above, his flesh withered away and his flesh fell off in a heap on the prairie.the other man, his mind filled with awe and respect for the maiden, was given the pipewith instructions for its care and use. the maiden then turned and walked away, finallychanging into a white buffalo calf and disappearing
over the horizon. the young man returned tohis camp with his people and then lived out his days greatly respected as the keeper ofthe sacred pipe and it’s believed that a pipe, closely guarded and cared for is saidto be the original pipe is preserved by one tribe of the dakota sioux. i had a differentimage the first time i shared the story, i’m gonna share this image which is, i’d sayhot off the press but i’d say, then i guess i’d say it’s hot off the canvas. thiswas painted by a good friend, brent learned, who is an arapaho artist and it is his renditionof a pipe, the buffalo calf woman story. you can see a person here with a pipe and in thedistance this maiden appearing so he does really cool, abstract art and i have quitea few of his pieces in my own collection.
so the origin stories reveal a lot about howthings come to be and how the meaning comes to be, to, in this case i’m talking aboutplains indian tribes but we also have other sources of information as i emphasized inthe first talk. there’s various ethnographic accounts of european contact with tribes thatreference certain calumet ceremonies. so what i did in that first talk is talk about howthe pipe is more than what maybe you think it is from popular literature or popular communications.it’s more than smoked after an agreement. it’s more than a signing of a treaty and,kind of, sealing a deal. it has a spiritual, it has a political, it has a social significanceand we know that in part through ethnographic accounts and we also know a lot about theorigin of the materials used for the pipe
which is part of my story, too, is the geologyis really rich at the pipestone national monument. that we can trace, when we find, you know,in the archaeological record, materials that were parts or pieces of pipes that were likely,if not, like known to be quarried at particular locations so it says something about maybethe political significance and how these pipes might have been used to build alliances withina tribe and between visiting european settlers that kind of kept the peace, in a way, ona broader scale. so as i said, it all began with an intriguing day trip. and as i saidof you out when we were having our reception, technically every one of these, these sitescan be visited within a day’s drive of johnson county community college. this one is thelongest route, it’s about six hours from
here. so if you get up early in the morningand you leave and you go to this site, you can hang out there for a while, go throughthe area that’s part of the tourist experience, you can go to the, see the reception area,you can go to the museum and then get back home by midnight. we did that. i would recommendthat you take a more leisurely look and as you read through this maybe you’ll be inspiredto do so but i always tell my students when i’m talking about a place maybe they’venever been, look at the map and figure out where you are. well you are here in kansas,you want to go here, here’s some routes that you can take to get there but where you’regonna wind up is this, kind of, southwest corner of minnesota, in this case. when youget there, you’ll be overwhelmed, in fact
i’ll give you an excerpt from a journalof george catlin who describes it for you and some of you, many of you sound like you’vebeen here so you maybe are agreeable that it’s a very beautiful place, the geologyis beautiful. the vegetation’s beautiful. i mean it’s just a place where you reallywould, it’s a great destination site just to experience the natural beauty. so here’sa couple of other images so you can see and kind of appreciate some vegetation, i’mpointing to some lichen that’s growing on, that’s a sioux quartzite. this isn’t thepipestone itself and then you also see along sort of the guided part of the, there’sa little trail that you can follow, there’s places where you can break out and look andthis happens to be the oracle. so there’s
a little sign that you look through and thenwhen you kind of look through the peephole you see this etching, well it kind of, itlooks like a face of a native person that’s been eroded, you know, really into the geologyso it’s kind of a cool feature. another thing if you look down and around, you’llsee evidence of others who’ve been there before you and i know this was really, reallypowerful because if you, i’m not sure you can read the dates but you know there’sdates of people who’ve been here in 1790 and 1908 and so it’s like graffiti of theday only nicely etched into the rock that tells you that there’s others that havebeen here before you quite a while ago and you’re walking a similar path. there’swaterfalls, there’s prairie, there’s lots
of things that would appeal if you are a naturelover and ecologist like i am. so pipestone, for centuries pipestone has been an item ofceremonial importance as well as an object of trade as i mentioned before. the processof extracting the pipestone though is where it gets kind of interesting. so it’s very,very difficult as the next image will reveal. the quarry process is slow but it representsan important part of the pipestone tradition. and so we know, again, from a gentleman i’llintroduce to you in a moment here, george catlin, that certain tribes are known to believe,there was a belief to be the first to quarry the site but it was a site that numerous tribesin this region accessed for the pipestone itself. so here’s a cross-sectional viewand this happens to be a natural, a national
park service sketch. and it’s, i guess aplace to orient yourself is you know you’re up here, you might of start up here, you’reover here but this is what you’re trying to access. so these guys are like, you know,chipping away and you’ll see that sometimes because of the delicacy of the material, you’reusing wheelbarrows and sort of hand tools because you don’t want to destroy the verything that you’re trying to access and a lot of times you can secure pieces of fairlylarge chunks so that you can carve something as ornamental, decorative as you see in frontof you. so it’s a tedious process that i think this sketch helps reveal. so dependingon the specific quarry, experience has shown that quarrying time can be estimated at twoto six weeks. so there’s really motivation
and really dedication to accessing this material.and so, again, by using shovels, wheelbarrows, you know, soil layers removed, set aside andthen these rubble piles are there and i had a couple of images coming up that shows youwhat that kind of looks like. we also know that there are other quarry sites. there’sone in wisconsin, there’s one in utah, there’s canadian quarries. as it turns out, the pipestonenational monument in minnesota is still actively quarried by native americans. and it’s,you know you had a good question the first time i presented on this topic. it’s like,well, how does that work because wouldn’t it be, you know, it’s too much access maydestroy the material, you know we might run out if you will. it’s, you know, nativeamericans, there’s a permit system and i
believe it’s something between like 48 and53 permits per year but it is pretty well regulated and monitored and not anyone canaccess. you couldn’t go out and start accessing this unless you were native american and wentthrough and navigated the process of, allowed for access. so here’s some pipestone, justkind of raw pipestone and this happens to be from wisconsin. this is, again i mentionedthat you can see that we’re trying to access this stuff down here but look how thick thelayer of quartzite is above it so it took some time to get to this site but this ispipestone from pipestone, minnesota, as we say in science, in situ. it’s not a chunkof material on the table, this is what it would look like if you, from a kind of birds-eyeview above a site that’s being quarried.
so pipes, there are many different kinds andstyles of pipes and again i have a couple up here that you can peruse after the talk.the ceremony we know is important. it’s practiced by american tribes across the greatplains in the 17th and 18th century. but as i mentioned, you know, we know it’s rootedin historic past because archaeological evidence supports that. we have ethnographic accounts,it takes us back to times before some of the actual engravings as you’ll see here ina moment on some museum specimen. but ceremonies consisted of singing, dancing, chanting, smokingand, again, it was through these ceremonies it’s believed that peace and alliances wereformed. the kinds of pipes varied as did the ceremonies performed. again, the archaeologicalevidence helps us make this case that the
ceremony extended a kinship connection tothe visiting group so you can have a ceremony within a tribe for various reasons but thenas we had contact with european visitors, it became this way of extending kinship andconnection to these visiting groups and sort of stabilizing maybe a potentially chaoticor uncertain relationship. so again it developed bonds of reciprocity, mutual obligation andit was believed that the pipes were used to promote stability, were widely distributed,as i mentioned, was found in the archeological evidence. i just included a couple of pieces,i didn’t include this on the first talk but this happened to be collected by georgecatlin and you’re gonna say, “boy you hear that name a lot and who is this guy?â€well you’ll see here in a moment. he collected
this in the 1830s and this is a museum object,the number’s there, the university of pennsylvania museum of archeology holds this in its collection.this is another image and this was actually inspired by one of the questions that i gotin the first talk about, you know, the stems you see up here, there’s one that’s woodbut there are, you know, examples of the pipes itself with longer extensions that are stemlike or complete stems which are really, really kind of cool and so this is more of an extendedbowl so this is piece that was engraved and so we know, it looks like we have an 1860inscription by a member of the yankton sioux tribe. so we have the origin of this and ibelieve this is in, yeah, the british museum. so there’s artifacts all across the world,really. so this george catlin guy, who is
he? well, by the way, i’m featuring himat the pipestone location but when you go to the pawnee museum, when you walk in thedoors, there’s like, usually there’s a guide that greets you and along the wallsyou’ll see some of catlin’s art. one piece, i actually include here in a moment in myslide set. so he’s everywhere. and you’ll see he traveled far and wide because he wasvery, very interested in native american culture. i thought this was kind of an interestingtake on his bio because he’s born in pennsylvania, as a child, he was interested in natural history,science, and the arts. he was homeschooled and later trained as a lawyer. he gave uphis law career when a group of native americans visited philadelphia which sparked his interestso much that he dedicated his life to painting
indians in their native land and oh, by theway, it seems to be that he was a self-taught artist. so he abandoned his law career andkind of ventured out to sort of celebrate and preserve these landscapes and these imagesof native peoples. so from 1830 to 1836, and you notice that first museum piece was collectedby catlin in the 1830s, he traveled thousands of miles from missouri to the southwest. heproduced 470 portraits and portrayals of indian life including one that i feature here ofhis rendition of pipestone national monument. so this basically talks about sort of a riverboattrip that he went and accessed different tribes and that’s part of a collection which, bythe way if you google his name, the smithsonian has an online gallery where you can see manyof his images. so it was during his travels
that he noticed that some of the chiefs andwarriors had pipes made of how he described it as a richly colored red stone. so anyway,when he asked about the stone, he was told about this single quarry, you know, in a dividingridge between missouri and mississippi rivers and the indians claimed it was a sacred siteand many tribes met in peace at the quarry to secure the stone which was, “the colorof human blood.†so catlin was so fascinated with this, he wanted to go to the site andso despite some objections by certain members, certain indigenous groups, he insisted ongoing, he accessed the site and he took a small sample of the pipestone and sent itoff to be analyzed and as it turns out, this material had not been previously describedand recorded and so the geologist that recorded
it analyzed and catalogued it gave it thename “catlinite†so the specific kind of, as they mention here metamorphic mudstonethat we know geologically represents pipestone generally, this particular type is calledcatlinite, in honor of the man who took a sample and sent it off and had it analyzedand now it’s honoring his discovery. this sometimes comes up, what do they, what didthey smoke in the pipes? like, i included this, we spent a little bit more time talkingabout this the first session but it depended on the tribe because some tribes actuallygrew tobacco but there’s this term that represents a blend of leaves stems and barkfrom a variety of different kinds of materials that were available in the area with particularsignificance to the tribes and kinnikinnick
is a term and as it turns out, you know, whenyou go into the museum you can see, sort of, areas that kind of depict different aspectsof the ceremony and there’s one that actually speaks to this very issue. so i included this,just kind of a, this is the tribes or these are the, this is the area we’re talkingabout. i mentioned plains tribe although when we get to the cahokia, it’s more appropriatereally to refer to that group as mississippian but we’re talking about groups that yousee a lot of the names represented here, probably too small for you to read but i mentioneda couple that are represented here that were depicted in some of catlin’s research. we’retalking about the swatch of the u.s. including kansas that is well represented in these sites.so catlin was an early explorer, he wasn’t
the first as it turns out. in fact, this guynicollet was, there’s a, i didn’t include it in my images but there’s a location ona pipestone site that’s featured because this guy was a french scientist and geographerwho came to the site over three expeditions to map the upper mississippi area so it’sactually sort of a place that you’re guided to see and it shows his etching on rocks inthat area. so what i thought was interesting about thislist is they were there for different reasons. you had le seur, who was a french trader,you had philander prescott who’s, again, he’s there to get beaver but he’s accessingthis site, makes sense it’s in this nexus between the mississippi and missouri riverso good place, maybe, to find beaver and so
while he’s there, you know, there’s evidenceof his presence and so, in dates, you know, that predate, if you will, catlin. so thisis catlin and, again, he painted a lot, he traveled throughout a large area and paintedmany portraits of chiefs and native americans kind of in their environment, if you will,but one of his most famous that is representative of this pipestone area is this that maybeyou’ve seen before because it is pretty, i’ve actually seen it in documentaries andon native american, i didn’t know what it was until i visited the site. it’s alsoprominently featured at pipestone national monument but, you know, look at this and youcan see some things that, you know, maybe will make a little more sense here in a momentbut you have this rock wall, this winnewissa
falls, there’s this three maidens whichis these geological formations, a different kind of rock. it’s igneous rock that’sbelieved to have washed in or kind of glided in if you will on ice sheets so this is kindof sedimentary, this is igneous, different kind of rock so it’s distinct enough thatthe natives revered it, regarded it, revered it and so it’s honored and celebrated. solook at this and kind of capture that in your mind and then this is what i was referringto, this is from catlin’s journal. so there’s a lot there and i bolded some, you know, termsof key parts of it that i think make the whole point. so he’s, you know, embarking on thisexpedition. he encounters something that looks like this and he represented it in his paintinglike this but he describes it as follows:
“the principal and most striking featureof this place is a perpendicular wall of close-grained compact quartz, of 25 and 30 feet in elevationrunning nearly north and south with its face to the west exhibiting a front of nearly twomiles in length which disappears on both ends into a prairie.†so pretty fair, maybe,description of what you just saw. “at the base of the wall there is a level prairiea half mile in, parallel to it any and all parts of which the indians procure the redstone for their pipes by digging through the soil and several slaty layers of the red stoneto a depth of four to five feet. from the very numerous marks of ancient and moderndiggings or excavations, it would appear that this place has been for many centuries resortedto for this red stone and it would seem as
well as from their actual traditions, thatthe indian tribes have long held this place in high superstitious estimation,†whichis important for part of what i’ll say at the end. so that’s catlin’s first-handaccount in 1836 of what he saw and then represented in this famous painting. so here’s someother images i mentioned. you’ll see if you go into the pawnee museum, you’ll seethis first one because it’s a pawnee chief and then you have an osage and a blackfootplains indian tribes represented there. so we’re now ready for the mounds part of thebundles part in mounds and, again, some of you, seems like there were several hands thatindicated that you had visited cahokia. so this is a variation of what you have in yourhandout, in your little brochure that describes,
again, the status which is a unesco worldheritage site. it’s a national historic landmark, it’s a state historic site forillinois and you’ll maybe get a better appreciation for that here in a moment. it’s a fascinatingplace. so lots to see and to appreciate that’s well represented when you go to the site itselfbut again, this has hopefully given you a heads up of things to look for maybe inspirationto go. so this is an image of one of the kiosks that describes cahokia as the city of thesun. one of the great cities of the world, it was larger than london was in 1250 a.d.,there was not a larger city in the u.s. until 1800 when the population of philadelphia grewto over 30,000 so just imagine that. in fact, back here i was gonna point that out. it’sbelieved at its highest population, some accounts
indicate like 40,000, sometimes you see 20,000and so this morning when i was thinking about this, what can we relate that to? so i madea list. i’m thinking, “well what’s in kansas that’s about…?†so hays is about,according to the most recent census, 21,038. garden city, my hometown, 26,966. leavenworth,35,251. and these are, you know, when you think about if you’ve been to any of theseplaces, it might give you a… oh, hutchinson was the other one there, i couldn’t readmy writing. hutchinson’s 42,080. so those are ones that were approximately between thisrange of an upper limit of 20 or 40,000. if you can kind of feature in your mind if you’vebeen to any of those places, that was the size of, relatively speaking, of cahokia atthis time. and what is also pretty interesting
is that it was condensed, you know, withina pretty small area so you had a lot of activity and a lot of, as you might guess, necessarysocial structure in order to have that many people living together in that tight a proximityin this location. so another mural that’s at the site. so preserves, what does cahokiaachieve in terms of something in terms of something where why we would go there andappreciate it? well preserves are remains of the central section of this largest prehistoricindian city north of mexico. it’s been recognized as a unesco world heritage site. it’s believedto be first inhabited around 700 a.d. by prehistoric indians of the late woodland culture and in800 another culture emerged. as i was referring to earlier, you sometimes see regarded asthe mississippian culture, around 800 a.d.
so these people developed an agriculture systemwith corn, squash, sunflower, you know, food crops if you will. may grass, barley and thenthat was supplemented by also hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. so in this way,they were able to develop a large complex community with a highly social, politicaland religious organization. so what about that social structure? so look at this, thisis another image from the site itself and you see you have this great sun chief hereat the top. oh, i should be using my pointer. can you guys see when i… yeah, you can see.so there’s great sun chief here at the top sitting in the sun. and so this was sort of,in the social structure this was the highest, most elite, i guess, in the group. he andhis family lived this life of privilege and
everyone down the ranks sort of worked forhis need and comforts and his family’s. and then below that you have this elite classof priests and chieftains which counseled the great sun and leader in matters of religionand government. and then you see there’s another tier here. the leaders and then downthere you have the commoners which their primary job was to pill these mounds that i’ll talkabout here in a second. so when i saw this, i was saying, “huh, that looks, remindsme of something.†it reminds me of our org chart so you know maybe joe sopcich is thegreat sun chief and maybe, you know, the leaders are members of the cabinet and maybe the idcover here, our dean’s council were the leaders and then down here the commoners, that wouldbe the faculty. so i actually thought about
constructing a hierarchy and just superimposingour little faces but, maybe not. so it turns out the commoners were very important to theconstruction of these mounds and this is what it entails and i mentioned hand tools. here’san example from the exhibit that shows you, just have in mind what this looked like. soi mentioned it’s kind of a very highly developed kind of densely packed area with people butsix square miles and had a population estimate, you know, one estimate is 10 to 20,000 butat its peak, you know, we see 40,000. so houses were arranged around this open courtyard.agriculture was, fields were right outside the city. it’s believed that there was originally120 mounds but only 109 have been recorded and of these, 70 are preserved right on site.the mounds are entirely made of earth. soil
is dug using the tools like the one i justshowed you and carried on the backs, in baskets, by the commoners. so again, go back to myteacher, dean, cabinet analogy. maybe it may or may not apply but they were doing, a lotof their life experiences was dedicated to building these mounds. “so, what’s thepurpose of the mound?â€, you might be asking. well it’s primarily used for ceremonialactivities of the living although there were certain times that were associated with burialand i’ll show an image coming up of one that’s pretty famous, associated with thissite. so the most common type at cahokia is the platform mound which is square or rectangularwith sloping sides. these conical or ridgetop mounds are also prevalent in the 109 thathave been identified and they’re believed
to be used for burials or to mark significantlocations although most of the people when they died were buried in cemeteries. so thisis sort of a replica of what archaeologists found at mound number 72 which is a, you know,very well documented excavated site that was excavated in ’67 through ’71 and so i’mnot sure it’s clear, well, you can kind of see there’s arrows and there’s theselittle structures are shells so somebody counted. they found this, the remains with obviouslysomeone pretty prominent in status on this bed of these shell pieces. 20,000 shell beads.and several people were buried near him and included many grave offerings, including 800perfectly crafted arrow points. so that kind of gives credence to the idea that this guywas probably pretty important in this society
and so they have this as a replica of thaton site. there’s some other, kind of, images from the museum itself that kind of givesyou an idea of what they try to reconstruct the culture. well monk’s mound is a siteand it’s believed that the sun chief lived at the top of monk’s mound and what’svery apparent if you’ve ever visited the site are the stairs and they weren’t madeof this kind of steel material with guardrails at the time, it was mostly wood but it wasterraced in two layers and this is a view, this is kind of looking at the, so this islooking down from, if you start from the roadway here and walk up, you have to walk all ofthose stairs and then you get to this kind of platform area and then you turn aroundand you walk up these stairs and then you
get to this kind of open area that you can,you know, look around and kind of see various, a really good view of the horizon and youcan also look, if i remember, you look to your right and you see st. louis. so again,one of these things you can do if decide to go to the site is know that in very, veryclose proximity, you can go visit the site and take in all that is there to see and thenyou can go hang out in st. louis if you wish. so woodhenge is another featured part of thisexperience and that’s too small to read but you get the, hopefully get the impressionthat this was reconstructed or something about the circular appearance, well, it’s believedto be a prehistoric solar calendar so, again, it kind of gives you an idea of how maybeadvanced, if you will, these peoples were.
and so these inserts are just kind of blownup, they’re not that--- you don’t see it, i see it, presenter view. sort of, there’sat least five large post-circular monuments were built and there’s some informationdown here about basically where they’re positioned, it catches the sun in a certainway and it was marked so most important alignments were the winter and summer solstices markingthe southernmost and northernmost sunrise and so city of the sun, you know, think aboutthe science or the local knowledge or whatever we want to call it that went into making thoseobservations and noting where the sun fell and when they fell and how this, kind of,turned out over time to be a way of, like they described it, a prehistoric sun calendarso it’s really kind of a cool notion. well
it led me to ask the question, “well sowhat happened?†i’m talking about this city that was very, very advanced and socially,politically structured so what happened because it’s not thriving today and we know therewas a period of, essentially, collapse so well there are some different ideas, the causeof the end of cahokia is really not completely known but one theory is they depleted theirresources in this area and had shortages of needed materials. another is climate changebecause so much of their existence was dependent upon sort of an agriculture, food presenceand so changing climate may have interfered with their food supply. conflict in warfarewas believed to have increased during this time and so maybe you had warring groups thatled to enough upheaval that you had sort of
splitting off and that because kind of, it’san interesting question from a cultural anthropologist view. we know that there’s a gradual declinein the population during a particular time frame but it’s not clear where these peoplemight have gone or what tribes they might have become so this, what happened and wehave this sort of success story with all of these elements of identification of thingsthat could go wrong. i’ll give you a shameless plug because i know i see some students inthe room, i’m gonna be teaching an honors forum in fall of 2017 that’s called causesand consequences of ecosystems collapse because this is not a unique story. particularly ifit was over-exploitation of resources like, essentially, we see that all the time in situationswhere non-human species outstrip their resources
and that leads to some kind of collapse sowhether it’s an ecosystems collapse or whether it’s a political-induced collapse, i mean,these things kind of converge into an interesting story to contemplate and there’s many examplesi’ll explore in this honors forum and i’ve invited other faculty members. it’ll bevery much an interdisciplinary experience to look at it from a political science andfrom an anthropology and from an ecological point of view. so it won’t be me as theonly person talking and then students will have an opportunity to explore examples oftheir choice. so stay tuned. so this is very, a lot of detail here and so i always feellike kind of to bring it all home, here’s some of my final thoughts but, certainly,you’ll have your own and hopefully some
of what i’ve said will prompt you to lookfor things and maybe to go in armed with the information i’ve shared tonight but whenyou look at, and i am gonna use my pointer here if i can find it because i’ll turnaway from this and can you guys hear me from this one? this one on? so, oops. he told menot to do that. so pipestone pawnee indian museum, cahokia, so that’s where we’vebeen. so one thought i had is you know we’re really fortunate that we live in a state withsuch rich ecological cultural history as represented by the pawnee indian museum. also the factthat we are living in close proximity to these sites you can get to in just a day. and i’veseen my discussion around indigenous cultural resources but i could very much have donea presentation on ecological resources and
again, you can see a lot and do a lot if youare so inclined to explore. so pipestone national monument, we know it’s a national park butit’s also a sacred site. significance of the site, it can extend beyond the functionof the objects that you might find there or this is where i kind of blend this idea ofmetaphysical and symbolic importance which is really heavy on my mind these days becausemy most recent degree was ethics and i think about, sometimes, particularly the intersectionof science and ethics, there’s a lot that we do and there’s a lot of good intentionsabout, like we saw with the sacred bundle but it also begs the question, you know, arethere some ethical dimensions to this ought we do? some of what we do for the sake ofunderstanding that may, in some respects be,
as you’ll see here with the bundle, arguablya desecration if it’s disrespectful to the culture. do we really need to know what’sin a bundle? and i asked before the talk, if i could quote a member of the audience,that i had this conversation afterwards and the quote is is that, “the sacredness isin the mystery of not knowing the contents.†so what makes it sacred? and is an x-ray reallynon-invasive? is a cat scan really non-invasive? do we really need to know what’s insideand, in doing so, did we trade off something that is forever lost in doing that procedure?the cahokia, again, is a unesco world heritage site has rich geology, rich ecological, anthropological,archeological, i mean the list goes on. there’s something there probably for everyone in theroom. but it’s also the final resting place
of members of this particular tribe, thisparticular culture. so cahokia offers an intriguing look into the past of the conflicts in a highlycomplex city and a look back at its collapse so i say, and this is kind of my final thoughtson this, i inserted again something that’s actually at the cahokia site. “this siteand its mounds are sacred to american indians. please treat them with respect.†so explore.go visit these sites armed with my brochure, armed with some of the ideas and the thoughtsmaybe that i’ve inspired today but explore respectfully and realize that sometimes you’rewalking on ground that’s sacred to some or you’re, the idea, what comes to mindwith cahokia is that monks mounds site with the stairwells is frequently, there’s joggerson the stairwell and i guess it makes sense
because it’s a good workout. is that respectfulto the site? you know, is bringing dogs onto the site of pipestone, you know, while maybetechnically allowed, is that respectful of the site? and is this search for knowledgethat we are invested in as scientists, is it worth it if you irreversibly invade, potentiallydesecrate, something that has for centuries as we saw in this particular case was unopenedand you really can’t go back so points to think about and at this point i guess i’lltake questions. i have a list of references but i’ll go back if you have questions andi mean this sincerely, at the back i have brochures and i actually have my businesscards. i like these dialogues to continue and i know sometimes people don’t like tospeak up in class or in public lectures but
if you have thoughts or you want some of myresources, citations and so on, contact me. there’s multiple ways of doing that. cometo my office, you know, call me, email me, take my class, this can be a continuing experiencefor both of us that lasts way beyond one college scholar talk on a wednesday evening so withthat i’ll take questions if you have any. sure.>>(inaudible) >>let me make sure i understand the question:what’s in it for the researcher? >>no.>>okay. >>indigenous american people. (inaudible)>>well, it’s a really interesting question and i know i have at least one member of theaudience that is native american, i would
open up any kind of dialogue if anyone feelsso inclined to share but what comes to mind immediately is just understanding, is appreciationmaybe of having a place like we have with the pawnee museum where you have sort of areplication of the location where they lived and you have information, historic information,sort of a showcasing if you will of a culture that might otherwise not be so, made so clearor abundantly clear to local peoples so there’s that. and i guess it’s, you know, in somecases with regard to the quarry, i mean, you have, there’s a lot of presence, there’sa lot of, people go to the site because it’s a national monument and it’s beautiful butthere’s revenue generated that preserves the museum, so a place where native americanartists can sell, you know, everything that’s
up here was hand-crafted by native artists.there’s that. so i mean it’s hard for me as a non-native person to answer otherthan to say probably the biggest contribution i would think it makes is it just educatesa public about peoples that may not otherwise be on the radar or sites that may not be onthe radar unless you know something about or live near the area or have a brochure thatguides you and tells you the things that you could look and know and learn at a place.yes? >>(inaudible)>>yeah, i don’t, no, that’s not mine, that’s ed smith’s public-->>(inaudible) >>yeah, that was something that was not partof my presentation but we wanted to make available
that, yeah, i don’t know what that’s about.>>(inaudible) >>yeah but i know nothing about what wentbehind the creation of that other than there’s a space provided to make it available. anyother thoughts or comments? yes? oh, i’m sorry.>>(inaudible) >>okay.>>(inaudible) >>it may be on a list now to go see it buti don’t, personally i’ve not been there and i don’t know. yeah, i’ve actuallyheard of it in some of the research that i’ve done, i know, you know, that there are certainlyindigenous and cultural aspects to explore but it’s not a place that i can speak firsthandof as visiting.
>>(inaudible)>>okay. no, i don’t know. i have not. >>(inaudible)>>yes. >>(inaudible)>>seismic event. and that’s what’s, you’d think there would be some evidence, i meanso geological evidence or some, but not that it’s, you know, a one-dimensional thing,it could be multiple sources but that’s certainly one that i haven’t seen itemizedon the list of materials that i’ve perused but, you know, lots of different-->>(inaudible) >>oh, absolutely. that was the appeal to meand that was the plan in kind of constructing these three talks in the way that i did andto really take, embedded throughout all three.
some of you have attended all three, was ethicsand science and anthropology. so you get, you know, absolutely and i can look thesesites through maybe multi-disciplinary lenses but, you know, a geologist that goes to thesesites can look with very, very crisp view things that may escape me because it’s onlyone aspect of my understanding so absolutely very interdisciplinary. oh, and did you havea comment? >>i started to say two things: one, duringthat time of about 1,400, there was a 45-year drought that they discovered so that is oneof the main causes of what with that, they’re buying resources for a huge population anddisease is kind of a lead theory as to the decline of the cahokian, but we don’t talkabout it in forms of, we talk about
it as declining rather than collapsing. peoplethat were at cahokia have descendants today. >>absolutely.>>and i’m one of those people. our osage folks, our link to cahokia, we have our worldhistories and we also have archaeological evidence from dr. (inaudible) at unc chapelhill (inaudible) and leaving it with our osage people in our stories. it’s important tonote that those hopes, while there was a great amount of death that occurred, they also disbanded.>>yeah, that’s kind of featured in some of the literature and we can trace with certainfidelity, i guess, to try but there’s kind of this global idea of well, we know we startedout with a very successful, highly populated city and it’s not completely, entirely clear,you know, how many and what different other
than you mentioned the osage. you can giveaccounts of that trajectory of understanding but was it a case of people just sort of splitfrom this area because the climate got too rough for growing needed resources or deathto disease and those kind of things. as an ecologist when i see that lineup of possibilities,i teach in my classes something about density dependent factors that no matter what organismyou are, when you live in close proximity, certain things can lead to declines in populationthat have to do with just the number. density is number over unit area so if you have, inthis case, if the upper limit’s right, 40,000 people living in a six-mile radius, that’sa pretty cozy environment. 20 even 20,000 or so if you think about some of the citiesthat i’ve listed, pretty contained area
so that if there was a communicable diseaseor if there was a drought that led to decimation of food supplies, you can see how that manifestsin non-human species in ecological terms is crowding, stress, disease, famine, war. allthese things kind of fall out of situations when you have a lot of any species togetherin a compact area that’s running out of resources for whatever reason. so i thinkto your point, there’s things that we know, there’s things that we can speculate basedon what we can view from existing kinds of examples but there’s a lot of unknowns that’sstill being researched and i think a lot more work to do what with the site for anthropologistsand others from disciplined lenses that, as you mentioned, are very multi-faceted. yes,jay.
>>(inaudible)>>yeah, i mean i’d love to, thanks for the question because i can be inspired by youas much as you can be inspired by me so loving to explore things, i think that might be ona list of a place to go so stay tuned, i guess, or email me and i’ll share or give me youremail and i’ll share if i visit the place and have things to share with you. any, goahead. >>(inaudible)>>this is fun. this is like exactly what i want is a dialogue.>>(inaudible) >>cahokian? absolutely.>>(inaudible) >>collinsville.>>(inaudible)
>>there’s been some work done, they’reactually trying to make cahokia a southern state of illinois but (inaudible) but cahokiaactually stretched out (inaudible) that shows that it’s just like you would think of kansascity, there’s the city that we call cahokia which was actually named after a later tribethat we have in the area. but there’s also suburbs and they go up and down all sidesof the river, in fact st. louis at one time was called mound city. the only thing that’sleft of the great mounds is the street they call great mounds. it was demolished to buildst. louis. but there are other mounds there. we actually, our tribe just bought a halfof a mound, in downtown st. louis, called sugarloaf mound. half of it was destroyedthrough mining but there’s houses up there
now and somebody lived up there, kind of likemonk’s mound there in cahokia but there are suburbs all up and down the river evenas far west as columbia, missouri and just sitting the state capitol is built on, themissouri state capitol. so it really spans a great length and it was like a, it wasn’tjust a city, it was a trade network so there’s stuff from the west coast, the east coast,the gulf of mexico, (inaudible) from the great lakes was found there (inaudible).>>by the way, i mentioned this honors forum, causes and consequences of ecosystems collapse.ed has agreed to be one of my guest speakers and, by the way, it’s honors forum but it’sopen broadly to, it prioritizes enrollment with honor students but it will be open toa broader audience and you’ll hear more
from ed because cahokia happens to be a siteof interest in research from him so we’ve had some conversations and i look forwardto hearing his discussions in that forum as well. so any other thoughts or questions?how many of you are inspired to go to these sites that you haven’t been? awesome. soas i said in my first talk, i think i missed my calling as a tour guide. so i get to livevicariously through these opportunities and make my presentations and share my storiesand in this case, share my brochure so hopefully it inspires and informs you beyond this hourwe’ve spent together but again don’t hesitate, pick up a business card, call me, email me,i enjoy that follow up thought process, too. thank you.