Early Art of the Southeastern Indians: Feathered Serpents and Winged Beings

Early Art of the Southeastern Indians is a visual journey through time, highlighting some of the most skillfully created art in native North America. The remarkable objects described and pictured here, many in full colour, reveal the hands of master artists who developed lapidary and weaving traditions, established centres for production of shell and copper objects, and created the first ceramics in North America.

Presenting artifacts originating in the Archaic through the Mississippian periodsfrom thousands of years ago through A.D. 1600Susan C. Power introduces us to an extraordinary assortment of ceremonial and functional objects, including pipes, vessels, figurines, and much more. Drawn from every corner of the Southeastfrom Louisiana to the Ohio River valley, from Florida to Oklahomathe pieces chronicle the emergence of new media and the mastery of new techniques as they offer clues to their creators widening awareness of their physical and spiritual worlds.

The most complex works, writes Power, were linked to male (and sometimes female) leaders. Wearing bold ensembles consisting of symbolic colours, sacred media, and richly complex designs, the leaders controlled large ceremonial centres that were noteworthy in regional art history, such as Etowah, Georgia; Spiro, Oklahoma; Cahokia, Illinois; and Moundville, Alabama. Many objects were used locally; others circulated to distant locales.

Power comments on the widening of artists subjects, starting with animals and insects, moving to humans, then culminating in supernatural combinations of both, and she discusses how a pieces artistic language could function as a visual shorthand in local style and expression, yet embody an iconography of regional proportions. The remarkable achievements of these south eastern artists delight the senses and engage the mind while giving a brief glimpse into the rich, symbolic world of feathered serpents and winged beings. See more