The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (48 page)

Burial 15 of this mound has been described by archaeologist Robert S. (“Stu”) Neitzel as “easily the most important individual buried in the mound.” Given his importance, this adult male may have been a Great Sun rather than a War Chief. Since his bones had never been gathered up and placed in a hamper, he may have died just before the village was abandoned in 1730.

The sumptuary goods that accompanied Burial 15 remind us that the Natchez had been trading actively with the French. For one thing, this man’s ear ornaments were coiled wire springs of European manufacture. For another, his weapons included a flintlock pistol, three penknives, and an iron axe. His burial offerings included a brass oven, an iron pot, a tinned brass pan, an iron hoe, and strings of glass beads. Some of his arrow points were of native flint, while others were of copper. Perhaps his most indigenous possessions were two lumps of galena, a lead ore prized by earlier Native American societies.

The Natchez were an impressive people during the colonial period and are believed to have been even more powerful prior to 1682. We should stress, however, that the Natchez were hardly unique to the southeastern United States. Beginning with the evolution of Eastern Flint corn 1,200 years ago, the Southeast became an incubator for chiefly societies. More than 100 flamboyant, expansionist, individualizing rank societies took over the lower Mississippi, dozens of its tributaries, and scores of rivers flowing to the Atlantic from Virginia to Florida.

All these chiefly societies arose in our backyard. And, sadly, each year we see more of their remains bulldozed away, covered with tract homes and shopping malls, or submerged by the waters of hydroelectric dams.

THE HISTORIC NATCHEZ

The Natchez, like most rank societies of the southeastern United States, reckoned descent in the mother’s line. This meant that, just as with the Crocodile clan of the Bemba, the chief’s son could not succeed his father. When a chief or Great Sun died, his title passed to the son of his most important sister, who was called White Woman. This was not a reference to fair skin but to the color that symbolized peace.

In the cosmology of the Natchez the first Suns were a man and woman from the Upper World. The male member of this primordial pair was the actual younger brother of the sun. He ordered the Natchez to build a temple. Once it had been built, he brought down fire from the sun and asked that it burn forever in the temple. According to French eyewitnesses, an attendant was charged with making sure that the temple fire would never go out.

After explaining to the Natchez how his successor should be chosen, the younger brother of the sun turned himself into stone rather than having to endure earthly death and putrefaction. Similar stories of self-petrification may have been widespread in the cosmology of southeastern Indian societies. At the ancient chiefly center of Etowah, discussed later in this chapter, archaeologist Lewis Larson recovered a pair of stone statues that may represent a petrified couple from the Upper World.

By analyzing colonial accounts, historian Charles Hudson has reconstructed the Natchez system of rank. The Natchez cosmology just described was used to justify the Suns’ right to rule. A Sun was required to marry a woman from another lineage in order to avoid incest; since he was already a member of the highest lineage, that meant marrying down. The children of female Suns were Suns, but the children of a male Sun who married down were only regarded as Nobles. It was for this reason that the next Great Sun had to be born to White Woman. White Woman, like women of the Bemba Crocodile clan, was allowed to be promiscuous and to marry and divorce husbands at will. After all, she outranked them all.

Just as the children of male Suns were only Nobles, the children of male Nobles were only Honored People. While they could not become chiefs, both Nobles and Honored People could rise in prestige through their exploits in war, like the “nobles by command” of Colombia’s Cauca Valley. Some could even work their way up to the office of War Chief, who was second in command to the Great Sun.

At the bottom of the ranking system were commoners known as Stinkards. Honored People were allowed to marry Stinkards, which provided some flow of genes and privileges between ranks, preventing the Stinkards from becoming a separate social stratum. Additional exchanges of genetic material resulted from the fact that unmarried Natchez girls were encouraged to be generous with their sexual favors. If her favors led to a child out of wedlock, a girl was allowed to perform infanticide. The child’s father, however, was not allowed to participate in its death. He would have been killing a member of another clan, which could precipitate a feud.

The Great Sun possessed impressive quantities of life force; according to Hudson, however, he “reigned more than he governed.” He shared power with a council of advisers, and much of his actual administration was carried out by lower-ranked overseers.

The Great Sun wore a special headdress of white feathers set in a red diadem. No commoner could eat with him or touch the vessels from which he had eaten. Anyone approaching him had to show deference, shouting “hou” three times to announce his or her arrival. Upon leaving the chief’s presence, one had to walk backward and continue to shout “hou.” These acts make the chief seem almost as sacred as the temple, to which one also had to shout “hou” as he or she passed.

Despite his life force, even the Great Sun could not enter the temple of the Grand Village without performing a preliminary ritual. First he stopped in the plaza before the temple and bent down low in a position of obeisance. He then turned slowly to all four of the great World Directions and, while facing each, humbled himself by throwing handfuls of dirt on his head. This was the Natchez equivalent of a Tikopian chief’s offer to eat his deity’s excrement. It tells us that even for a man with the authority of a Great Sun, the invisible celestial spirits still were the alphas in his dominance hierarchy.

While he may have humbled himself to his deity, the Great Sun was virtually above the law when it came to his fellow humans. Neither women, nor children, nor Stinkards could enter his house. His people were expected to supply him with large quantities of food, and he in turn was expected to be generous to them when they were in need. To finance his largesse, his leading warriors cultivated a special field of Flint corn for his chiefly storehouse.

Food for the Natchez came from the floodplain of the Mississippi and its tributaries, where the Indians intercropped corn, beans, squash, gourds, and sunflowers. They hunted deer in large groups, surrounding the animals in a U-shaped formation that gradually closed to a circle. The deer were presented to the Great Sun as tribute; he in turn showed generosity by distributing the meat to the organizers of the hunt. The Natchez also ate wild turkeys, fished in the rivers and bayous, and gathered hickory nuts, persimmons, and other wild fruits. They smoked a specially grown variety of strong tobacco and drank a caffeine-filled ritual tea brewed from holly. Visitors were treated to the Natchez’ favorite comfort food, hominy mixed with chunks of venison.

War Chief was an important office for the Natchez, because chiefly rivalries and intergroup revenge triggered endless cycles of raiding and peacemaking. Envoys made tentative offers of payment for casualties. If an offer was judged insufficient, the War Chief tied a flag to a pole painted red—the color of war—and pointed it in the enemy’s direction. Armed with arrows and war clubs, the raiding parties returned with scalps or entire heads. The Natchez kept some captives as slaves, while others were tortured to death.

Burial ritual reflected the differences in rank. The corpses of Stinkards were exposed on wooden platforms until only the bones remained. The corpse of the Great Sun, on the other hand, was carried around on a litter, much as the chief had been carried in life. Dozens of people might be sacrificed to accompany him in death.

In 1725 du Pratz witnessed the funeral of his old friend, the War Chief Tattooed Serpent. Such was the grief of the Great Sun that he threatened to kill himself at his brother’s funeral. All fires in Natchez territory were extinguished in anticipation; they were rekindled once the Great Sun had been persuaded to go on living.

Dressed in his feather headdress, his face painted red and his feet placed in the moccasins he needed for his journey to the other world, Tattooed Serpent lay in state for three days. His guns, war clubs, and bows and arrows were tied to his bed. Surrounding him were his ceremonial tobacco pipes and a chain of 46 cane hoops symbolizing the enemies he had killed.

Finally, a priest in elaborate costume began the burial ritual. Tattooed Serpent’s corpse was placed on a litter and carried by six guardians of the temple. They followed a looping course toward the temple, with each successive loop bringing them closer. This circuitous route provided time for the sacrifice of numerous people, all of whom had volunteered or been chosen to accompany Tattooed Serpent in the afterlife.

Dressed for sacrifice were two of Tattooed Serpent’s multiple wives; one of his sisters; his most prized warrior; his leading servant and that servant’s wife; the craftsman who made Tattooed Serpent’s war clubs; and two ritual healers, described by du Pratz as the War Chief’s “doctor” and “nurse.” Some people of lesser rank volunteered for glory by giving their own lives. Other people, reluctant to die, offered their children as substitutes.

Each sacrificial victim was given six balls of tobacco to swallow. This dosage stupefied them, after which they were garroted by a pair of executioners. Tattooed Serpent and his two wives were buried in the temple, while other dignitaries were buried nearby. Any Stinkards who had been sacrificed were placed on scaffolds at a greater distance. Eventually, the bones of Tattooed Serpent, his wives, and most noble associates were exhumed, cleaned, and stored in the temple near the remains of previous Suns.

While the Natchez were unrelated by language or history to the chiefly societies of Panama, the burials of their most highly ranked citizens show striking convergence. In both cases hereditary chiefs were so infused with life force that many of their closest supporters volunteered to accompany them in death. A special treat, in fact, awaited noble Natchez women who were sacrificed: in the afterlife, there would be no prohibitions that kept them from sharing meals with the Great Sun.

MOUNDVILLE: PROVIDING AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCENARIO FOR AN ANCIENT CHIEFLY CENTER

In 1904 anthropologist Frank Speck traveled to Oklahoma Territory to visit a Native American group called the Chickasaw. The Chickasaw had lived in Mississippi before the U.S. government forced them to move to Oklahoma. They had a rank society with a hereditary chief called a
minko.
Their matrilineal clans were ranked relative to one another, and within each clan the various lineages or subclans were ranked as well.

Like many southeastern Indian societies, the Chickasaw spent much of the year dispersed in farmsteads and small villages. From time to time, however, all subclans convened at a common campground for the purpose of holding a strategic council. At these periodic encampments, the leaders of each subclan took up positions that reflected their relative ranking.

A Chickasaw elder named Ca’bi’tci drew Speck a diagram showing the layout of a traditional council camp. The drawing began with a rectangular plaza, at the center of which was a sacred council fire. A north-south line divided the camp into two opposing divisions, called the Intcukwalipa and the Imosaktcan. The six house groups of the Intcukwalipa lay to the west of the line; the seven house groups of the Imosaktcan lay to the east. The most highly ranked subclan of each division occupied the most northerly position, then came the second most highly ranked subclan, then the third, and so on. The most lowly ranked subclan occupied the most southerly position. The layout of the council camp is shown on the left in
Figure 46
.

Upon reading Speck’s report, archaeologist Vernon James Knight Jr. realized that the diagram of the Chickasaw council camp would be useful for interpreting the arrangement of earthen mounds at the prehistoric chiefly center of Moundville.

Moundville is a 185-acre archaeological site on the Black Warrior River near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Founded 1,100 years ago and still occupied when Spanish explorers arrived, Moundville was naturally defended on its north side by the bluff of the river. Its southern border was fortified with a palisade of wooden posts. Bastions with watchtowers were placed 100 to 130 feet apart along the palisade.

Like so many chiefly centers, Moundville went through cycles of expansion and contraction. During its first two centuries, from 1,100 to 900 years ago, it was still relatively modest in size. After that it began to grow rapidly, reaching its heyday between 800 and 700 years ago. For the next 150 years its leaders struggled to retain power in the face of competition from rival groups. Moundville society collapsed 550 years ago but had managed to reorganize itself by the time Hernando de Soto reached Alabama in 1540.

During its peak, perhaps 800 years ago, Moundville may have controlled more than 30 miles of the Black Warrior floodplain. Its hinterland included seven or eight villages important enough to build mounds of their own, plus a greater number of farmsteads without public architecture. Archaeologists consider this pattern diagnostic of a society with three administrative levels, like that of the Bemba—a chief’s village, smaller villages run by subordinate nobles, and still smaller settlements occupied by people of low rank.

Excavations indicate that Moundville’s palisade was built some 800 years ago. The area inside the palisade incorporates at least 29 artificial mounds. Many of these mounds outline a plaza running more than 1,600 feet from north to south.