Thanks, Tommy Hudson, for the J. Loubser link you referred to. I have been trying to remember (for about 5 years!) the source of a story about a deer head on a serpents body ever since seeing the stone above, with no provence, other than it came from a stone wall (http://rockpiles.blogspot.com/2010/05/woodbury-man-claims-to-have-found.html). Turns out it was Mooney:
“At dawn, when the grandmother stared into the dark
âsĭ (Women's Moon Lodge), she saw that her grandson shape-shifted into a giant horned serpent, or
Uktena, curled up like a fetus within the cramped space. With human legs and deer head attached to a reptilian body,
the partly transformed snake boy slithered through the settlement to a deep
pool at a nearby bend in the river, where he disappeared under the water. Being
a medicine person like her grandson, the grandmother eventually entered the
pool too (Mooney 1900:304).”
Myths of
the Cherokee. Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology,
1897-98.
Part 1, Government Printing Office: Washington D.C.
J. Loubser
quotes the passage in:
The Socio-Economic and Ritual
Contexts of Petroglyph Boulders in the Southeastern United States.
Abstract:
Seemingly
unimportant stories that southeastern Indians have shared with ethnographers
often turn out to be critical in understanding the rituals and religious
experiences of the Indians. Recent research on petroglyph boulders and
ethno-histories in the region suggests that instead of being direct recounting
of specific mythological stories, the production of petroglyphs in the Southern
Appalachian Mountains is related to going-to-water purification rituals shared
by most southeastern Indians, regardless of language. Prior to any major
economic or social undertaking or personal event, such as planting, harvesting,
hunting, marrying, raiding, gambling, ball playing, and menstruating,
southeastern Indians felt obliged to contact or supplicate spirit beings living
beyond a thin "veil." To contact the beings in the spirit world, all
southeastern Indians did some degree of fasting, sweating, and washing in a
river or creek. Various Cherokee, Creek, and Yuchi stories mention this in one
way or another, ranging from myths to everyday events. What was said in these
accounts and what were portrayed in the glyphs had a feed-back on the
perpetuation of the Indians’ beliefs and practices. The socio-economic roles of
the slant-eyed master-of-game, the horned-serpent, and their spirit being
consorts are discussed in relation to depictions of them and their underworld
abodes. Generally speaking, the normally hidden underworld domain of these
spirit beings was made visible for all to see through the pecking of pertinent
designs onto rock surfaces; petroglyphs gave inner mental constructs an outer
physical expression. The correspondence between pecked motifs on the boulders
with prominent features on the surrounding landscape supports Indian claims
that the petroglyph boulders are three-dimensional picture maps of the
surrounding spirit world.
“Subsistence
and other aspects of everyday life among the southeastern Indians were closely
tied to rituals that they believed facilitated their communication with spirit
beings. The Indians believed that all of nature was animated as part of a great
whole from which they have not completely separated themselves. Although the
Indians viewed themselves as masters of animated things, they were nonetheless
dependent on rocks, plants, and animals for their livelihood and asked pardon
whenever they took and used these things for their sustenance. They believed
that like humans, all things survived after death in the spirit world, which
was located below the ground and beyond the sky vault (e.g., Mooney
1900:445-446). Cherokee and Creek hunters sung deer and bear songs on reaching
the hunting ground (Mooney 1900:435), which was often marked by a change in
landscape or altered features, such as petroglyph boulders (Parris 1950:37).
When Judaculla, the Master of Game, was invoked in hunting prayer songs, the
hunter first prayed to the fire, from which he drew his omens; then to the
reed, from which he made his arrows; followed by prayers to Judaculla; and
finally to the very animals he intended to kill (ibid. 342). Mooney (1900:455)
noted that even when everyday Indians went digging hematite for red paint or
chert for arrowheads, they first had to make a prayer beside the outcrop and
hang a small gift upon a nearby bush or stick before quarrying. The
southeastern Indians believed that spirit beings resembling humans and talking
animals, lived both in mounds and in mountain tops and at bottom of river pools
from which they enter and exit the everyday world through portals. Among these
Indians, isolation, prayer, and fasting were prime requisites for obtaining
clearness of spiritual vision of the spirit world and its beings. Fasting
normally only lasted one day, from midnight to sunset, but on occasions of
communal importance specialist religious functionaries fasted for longer
periods (Mooney 1900:480). To become a medicine person among the Creeks,
students had to fast in isolation for 12 days within a winter house and chew on
the bitter-tasting root of the Sou-watch-cau plant for inducing visions
(Hawkins 1982:78-79). To obtain a vision of the spirit world within the
mountains and river pools was to obtain a spirit guide and protector (Mooney 1900:321,
470). Even though the southeastern Indians did not incorporate vision questing
as a rite of passage into adulthood, hunters and medicine people seemed to
develop close relationships with specific rocks, plants, or animals. The
importance of altered states in southeastern Indian religious experience should
not be underestimated. According to Mooney (1900:492), every Indian ritual was
supposed to be in accordance with “direct instruction from the spirit world as
communicated in a vision” or dream. A story of how dreams and so-called
going-to-water ritual ensured success in the hunt illustrates the link between
altered state encounters and hunting success. The story recounts how an
unsuccessful hunter had a strange dream “so vividly that it seemed to him like
an actual happening” (Mooney 1900:323). Upon waking up the hunter found a
single stalk of corn, Selu, telling him to wash in the river before everyone
was awake, and then to go out again into the woods, and he would kill many deer
and from that time on would always be successful in the hunt.
Tightly
constructed and generally dark and warm structures used during going-to water
rituals all contained centrally-located fire places, and came in different
sizes, ranging from the small private
âsĭ through medium-sized family winter houses to large communal townhouses
(Adair 1930:453). Among the Muskogee Creeks, a round big-house always stood
west of their square ground, and was known as the tcokofa or town “hot house”
(Swanton 1928a:59). The Indians viewed such structures as places of re-birth,
where transitions from one state to another occurred. For instance, communal
Green Corn rituals marked the annual summer-end harvest, monthly rituals
celebrated the appearance of the new moon, menstruating and pregnant women
regularly secluded themselves in an âsĭ, warriors purified themselves in
townhouses prior to and after raids, medicine men retired to such structures
preparing their teams for ball games or to make rain or heal patients. The predominantly domed roofs of hothouse
structures were equated to the back of a turtle and the fire at its center as
the turtle’s head. Amy Walker, a Cherokee medicine woman from North
Carolina, says that entering an âsĭ lodge is returning to the mother’s womb and
crawling out is being re-born (North Carolina Museum of History 2011). The turtle allusion is a reference to the
animal’s natural ability to move between dry land and water; contrasting
physical locations are apt metaphors of changes in bodily and mental states.
Yuchi stories of transformation have medicine people riding turtles (Wagner
1931:77) and terrapins (Speck 1909:147) across rivers, normally at the edge of
settled areas. Center and periphery within settlements and built structures
are spatial metaphors for changes in states. It is worth noting that the
periphery is defined by the angle from which the structure is approached or
viewed. When approached from the side, the east-facing entrance and dark
western end marked the points of transition, while when viewed from the bottom
or top, the smoke vent in the roof and fire place on the floor were the
portals. Being located on one side of an inhabited settlement, the structures
in turn were in liminal positions. As will be seen in the discussion below,
petroglyph boulders typically occurred at transition points on the landscape
that surrounded the settlements, marking boundaries and associated changes when
crossing into the sacred terrain of spirit beings.
As “places
of passage,” âsĭs, winter houses, tcokofas, townhouses, square grounds, and
nearby rivers were mentioned in stories associated with physical
transformation, commonly referred to as shape-shifting. Stories mentioning
shape-shifting range from those told by everyday people to those sacred myths
recounted by ritually pure priests and medicine people. It is everyday stories
of medicine people who shape-shifted into animals that particularly highlight
the hot house and a nearby river as a transformative space. A dramatic example
of such a transformation is a Cherokee story of a hermit boy who changed into a
giant snake while spending the night in his grandmother’s âsĭ. At dawn, when
the grandmother stared into the dark âsĭ, she saw that her grandson
shape-shifted into a giant horned serpent, or Uktena, curled up like a fetus
within the cramped space. With human legs and deer head attached to a reptilian
body, the partly transformed snake boy slithered through the settlement to a
deep pool at a nearby bend in the river, where he disappeared under the water.
Being a medicine person like her grandson, the grandmother eventually entered
the pool too (Mooney 1900:304). The Creeks also believed that the horned
serpent was once a human who shape-shifted while encamped within a structure or
around a fire near a river (e.g., Grantham 2002:25, 211-220).
The
Cherokees believed that thunder was a horned snake within the rain which
connected the sky vault, the human-built houses on earth, and the underground
or underwater townhouses (Mooney 1900:481). Mythical stories like this
portrayed a tiered cosmos in which similar structures and deities were nested
at different levels, but yet interconnected via portals, such as sweat lodge
entrances (including front doors, smoke vents, and fire pits), river pools, and
caves leading into mountain tops (Figure 2).”
Representation
of nested townhouses on the southeastern Indian landscape.
One of the
petroglyph boulders at the confluence of the Hiwassee River and Brasstown Creek
succinctly shows how its placement amplifies its significance. A pecked mammal
with a curly tail resembles Mississippian period depictions of water panthers
on mollusk shells (e.g., Fundaburk and Fundaburk Foreman 1957:plate 26), while
the juxtaposed coiled snake with horned head is most likely a horned-serpent
(Figure 7). As already mentioned, the horned serpent was a reptilian version of
a feline, both in Cherokee (Zeigler and Grosscup 1883:22) and in Creek (Swanton
1928a:70-71, Swanton 1929:21-22) traditions. Numerous southeastern Indian
accounts mention that the favored abodes of water panthers and horned-serpents
are river pools, very much like the one in which the petroglyph boulder is
located. In Muskogee Creek traditions, both the water panther (Swanton
1928a:70-71, Swaton 1929:21-22) and horned-serpent (ibid. 71- 72) caused the
square ground and townhouse of Coosa Town to be flooded. Ever since the
flooding event, the medicine woman spouse, medicine person offspring, and
medicine people affiliated to the water panther and horned-serpent have made
the submerged townhouse their home. Across the southeastern woodlands powerful
and qualified medicine people went to the edges of river pools that contained
submerged townhouses similar to that of Coosa in order to make a water panther
or water-serpent to appear (e.g., Grantham 2002:26). Bones that these medicine
people allegedly collected from water panthers or horns cut from horned-serpents
were considered to be war medicine with great potency (e.g., Hawkins
1982:78-80, Mooney 1900:300, 396). The belief that panthers and snakes see well
at night or below water probably has something to do with their potency in
war-time conjuring. According to Mooney (1900:458- 459), the name Uktena is
derived from akta, or eye, and implies being a “strong looker,” as everything
is visible to it (i.e., it can see thoughts). From the same root is derived
akta'tĭ, “to see into closely” which is also the Cherokee word for a magnifying
lens and telescope. So the name Uktena implies that it sees thoughts and it
does so in an accurate way; knowledge that comes in useful to predict enemy
tactics. The horns and crystal on the Uktena’s head are called ulstĭtlĭ',
literally “it is on its head,” but when they are in the hands of the medicine
person it becomes ulûñsû'tĭ, or “transparent.” So considered together, the
changing names and contexts for Uktena horns and crystals imply that the
thoughts on the head of the snake became transparent to the person who
possessed it.
Concluding Remarks:
Southeastern Indians viewed painting or incising their own bodies as a sacred
act, one which was normally accompanied by prayers, often also involving
fasting and going to water in a fairly isolated setting (Mooney 1900:469).
Knowing that the Indians did the same when quarrying rock for ocher or chert
(ibid. 455), the act of pecking or even visiting select boulders was
accompanied by a similar set of ritual observances (see Parris 1950:36). That
the southeastern Indians conducted their petroglyphs at transition points on
the landscape, normally along old trails or river corridors (Loubser 2009a),
re-enforces other transformative acts associated with such liminal locales.
Whereas imprints of feet and vulvas at Track Rock signified fecundity and
abundance, an imprint of Judaculla’s hand in Judaculla Rock warned hunters that
they should properly fast and go to water before entering his domain farther up
the mountain. Depictions of water panthers and horned-serpents signified the
potentially destructive side of the spirit beings, the places where they lived,
and the objects they were associated with. Similar to powerful medicine people
and menstruating or pregnant women, things such as panther bones, serpent horns
and crystals, and places such as petroglyphs and associated mountains and
pools, were only beneficial to those who had proper training, experience, and
observance of proper ritual conduct. It is for this reason that these powerful
people, artifacts, and places were usually kept slightly apart, lest they come
into contact with everyday people and wreak havoc.
Enhanced photo showing water panther and
horned-serpent at the Hiwassee-Brasstown confluence (Scott Ashcraft).
Overall,
the normally hidden underworld domain of the potent spirit beings was made
visible for all to see through the pecking of pertinent designs onto rock
surfaces; petroglyphs gave shifting inner mental experiences a fixed outer
physical appearance.”
No comments:
Post a Comment