When other chiefly polities emerged after 1400, none of these so-called Late Mississippian chiefdoms were able to replicate the success of their predecessors. The Late Mississippian Southeast—the world Zamumo inhabited and de Soto visited—was a more competitive environment than the one Moundville and Etowah had dominated. Wars flared more frequently and prestigious goods moved more abundantly, if also less widely.24 Leaders like Ocute might enjoy the tribute of other chiefs like Zamumo, but even these lesser leaders still used their own mounds to conduct ceremonies and perhaps cast a watchful eye for enemies and a hopeful gaze for new exchange partners. In their localism, their competitiveness, and their need for allies and exchange partners, these chiefdoms were the progenitors of Chekilli’s talwas.
The Spirit of the Late Mississippian Gift
Among these new dynamics, older patterns remained. Finely crafted objects, frequently of rare materials, still occupied the focal point of ceremonies of cosmological order, communal cohesion, and military strength. As the sites of chiefly residences and temples, the mounds continued to assert the authority of the men and (occasional) women who oversaw southeastern chiefdoms. One example of such mound-centered ceremonial power comes from a resident of South Carolina’s coast, Francisco Chicorana, who spoke with the Spanish imperial historian Peter Martyr D’Anghera in the early 1500s. He explained that the Duhares, a people neighboring his own, venerated two idols “as large as a three-year old child, one male and one female,” which “had their residence in the palace” atop the town’s mound. Twice a year, during sowing season and harvest season, the chief of Duhare displayed these idols for the necessary ceremonies of supplication and thanksgiving. Appearing atop his mound with the idols on the appropriate days, “he and they are saluted with respect and fear by the people.” During the two days of rituals, Duhare remained closely associated with these idols, which assured “rich crops, bodily health, peace, or if they are about to fight, victory.”25 Much as earlier invaders had recognized in their destruction of Etowah’s temple and Zamumo later proclaimed in his speech to de Soto, sacred objects were crucial to a town’s survival.
Broader access did not erase the power of these objects or the perils of acquiring them. Although most exchange probably occurred between near neighbors rather than over long distances, travel beyond the immediate protection of one’s kin and community entailed significant risk. Late Mississippian ceremonies of return acknowledged both the danger that a traveler faced and the prestige that accompanied success. In 1595, the leader of the recently converted village of San Pedro, just north of St. Augustine, returned from a journey. When the man, named Juan, and his wife entered the town, the entire populace greeted them by “wailing in a high voice as if they had dropped dead before their eyes,” and townspeople repeated these lamentations in Juan’s presence for “many days.” The Franciscan missionary who recorded this event did not allude to death accidentally. After the missionary reached St. Augustine, he learned that nearby mission Indians cried in a similar manner to honor a recently deceased leader.26 Chekilli’s own story of Cussita-Apalachicola union suggests a simple reason for this association between long-distance travel and death. It was only after many “fair persuasions” that Apalachicolas managed to calm their bellicose visitors enough to accept white feathers of peace. Beyond the norms and protections of their societies, travelers seeking peace and the goods that marked it remained vulnerable to the violence of strangers. The power of the objects that came home from these journeys, then, lay not just in their physical characteristics but also in the ways in which they were acquired.
Exchange also involved another relationship of power. Giving and receiving established relations of mutual obligation. Although a recipient acquired an obligation to reciprocate and a giver demonstrated power through generosity, a gift did not imply the unquestioned superiority of the giver. Context mattered. As Spaniards, British, and French would all learn later, when givers gave from a position of weakness rather than strength, Indians frequently accepted these offerings as tribute instead of gifts.27 But even tributaries had claims on their supposed superiors. De Soto and his followers had good reason to believe that their weapons certainly often cowed their hosts, but when the would-be conqueror of La Florida arrived in the chiefdom of Casqui near the Mississippi River, the chief, also known as Casqui, offered “to serve” the Spaniards because, according to de Soto’s chronicler Luys Hernández de Biedma, de Soto was “from heaven.” In return, the chief requested help in the form of rain for his parched fields. De Soto agreed, instructed him to make a cross of two pines, and promised to return the next day with the needed heavenly sign. Casqui did not wait on his supposed superior, though; instead, as Biedma recounted, he arrived the next morning, berating de Soto for his delays despite his people’s willingness “to serve us and follow us.” The Spaniards were moved by the chief’s devotion, but they might also have noticed that his fervor was born of a sense expectation of spiritual power the Spaniard had yet to provide. Mutual obligation confirmed the personal nature of all exchanges, but the exchange of people emphasized it more clearly still. In most instances, it is impossible to determine the motivations of the many peoples who offered men and women as burden bearers and sexual partners to the invaders, but Casqui at least acknowledged the power of human gifts when he offered captive women to the Spaniards and gave his daughter to de Soto out of his supposed “desire to unite his blood with so great a lord as he [de Soto] was.”28 Centuries later, Chekilli recounted how Cussitas had encountered a mountain where they acquired the sacred knowledge, fire, and medicines necessary to keep their world in balance. For Chekilli as well as Casqui, the capacity of a town to survive and prosper came from without. Casqui demonstrated how that survival and prosperity involved a delicate balance of generosity and obligation.
Leaders, Followers, and the Meaning of Late Mississippian Power
If it is difficult to understand this balance among towns, it is even more difficult to look within towns. To speak of the power of Mississippian towns usually implies speaking of the power of chiefs over towns. Although rare and sacred goods (and the mounds where many were buried) seem to justify this perspective, chiefs depended on the people who accorded them respect, provided them fine foods, manufactured their ornaments, and built the mounds atop which they lived and worshipped. Through the reciprocal relations of leaders and followers, of men and women, and of friends and relations, commoners negotiated the bonds that held their towns together. Such negotiations in turn influenced exchanges among towns. As much as Zamumo would have liked to convince de Soto otherwise, chiefs were not the only ones who exchanged things.
Common people, like their leaders, tended to live on their stored agricultural surpluses, especially corn, squash, and, after about 1200 c.e., beans.29 They supplemented this diet with nuts, berries, fish, water-fowl, and deer.30 Mississippians organized many of the tasks of subsistence along lines of gender. The men and women of pre-contact Tukabatchee, a prominent town on the Tallapoosa River, manufactured the tools necessary for their tasks in separate spaces in their homes. The stone flakes left over from men’s manufacture of arrowheads litter one corner while the broken pottery from women’s ceramic making lies in another. If the activities of their colonial-era descendants are any guide, Mississippian men probably cleared the agricultural fields and hunted while women cultivated the crops and gathered other seasonal foods that grew wild. Language reflected these divisions, with Muskogean grammar and vocabulary varying according to the gender of the speaker.31 Much to their chagrin, French traders among the Natchez learned about a similar linguistic divide, for “by chiefly frequenting the women, [they] contracted their manner of speaking, which was ridiculed as effeminacy by the women, as well as the men, among the natives.”32 Men’s and women’s complementary roles in family and social life carried into political life as well. Among elite families, men apparently had greater access to the chieftaincy than women, and those few commoners who earned burial in or near a temple mound were usually distinguished warriors.33 Women’s importance as the principal providers of food endowed them with significant influence in the household, and senior women could help shape the ideas of their clan members who dwelled with and near them.34 Bound together in relationships in which each provided and each received, men’s and women’s power depended less on control than interdependence.
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