#1817

A hiker in the landscape at Goke no Shō, Higo Province. Hokusai Manga, vol. 6. 1817.

Spectacles, American, 1815-17

Zilu from Limbus Company

"Do you still fail to realize which party among those present wields the sharpest blade? Shame that you do not understand the significance of the powerful choosing to engage in rhetoric over crushing others with sheer might in times of chaos…"

Etowah Mounds

Etowah Mounds (also known as Etowah Indian Mounds) is a National Historic Landmark and archaeological site near Cartersville, Georgia, USA, enclosing the ruins of a prehistoric Native American city whose original name is unknown. The present designation of Etowah means "town" in the language of the Muscogee-Creek Native Americans.

The city was built in three phases between c. 1000 - c. 1550 and the present site encloses three large and three smaller mounds surrounding a central plaza. The three large mounds were the chief’s residence (Mound A), the ceremonial site for religious rituals (Mound B), and the burial site for the nobility (Mound C); the smaller mounds are each attached or nearby the larger. Between the three was a plaza, which served for ceremonies, commerce, and as a ball field.

The city was built and flourished during the period known as the Mississippian culture (c. 1100-1540 CE) when many of the best-known mound sites in North America – such as Cahokia and Moundville – were also constructed. The city seems to have developed from a small village community of the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE) whose inhabitants were related to those who built Etowah and the later Creek and Muskogee Native American tribes of the region who lived in and near the site.

The Cherokee Nation arrived in the region from the north in the 15th century CE and settled at Etowah, but they, like many others in the area, had their numbers depleted by European diseases they had no immunity to. The Creek and Cherokee remained on the land, however, until gold was discovered in the region and they were forcibly removed to Oklahoma by order of President Andrew Jackson (served 1829-1837) in the 1830s, a tragic loss of land and heritage to the First Nations through the forced migration that has come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

The mounds were first noted by Americans in 1817 and test-sited in 1883 but no major excavations were begun until 1925 when the famous (or infamous) archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead (l. 1866-1939) arrived at the site. Moorehead’s work on Mound C – the most completely excavated area of the site to date – unearthed a number of significant artifacts which enabled the dating of the site to the Mississippian culture period. Excavations since Moorehead’s have been sporadic, but it is believed, based on what has been found and the general preservation of the site, that Etowah is the most intact of the Mississippian culture mound sites of the southeast built by the ancestors of the Muscogee-Creek Nation.

The Mound Builders & Mississippian Culture

The Mississippian culture is often cited as though it were the beginning of monumental mound-building, but mounds were built thousands of years before in North America. Watson Brake Mounds dates to c. 3500 BCE and Poverty Point to c. 1700-1100 BCE, with the Mississippian culture’s mounds following. The Mississippian culture has become the best known and most closely associated with mound-building, however, owing to the proliferation of mounds prior to that period and the skill of the people of the Adena culture (c. 800 BCE - 1 CE) and the Hopewell culture (c. 100 BCE-500 CE) who perfected mound-building and provided the model for later works such as the famous Mississippian Cahokia Mounds and Moundville.

Many mounds were constructed during the Archaic Period (c. 8000-1000 BCE) and the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE), but these differed from the later Mississippian culture sites, such as Etowah, in that those of the Adena were conical while those of the Hopewell were either effigy or flat-topped mounds. The Mississippian culture borrowed from both traditions in the creation of their mounds which were influenced, at least in part, by the religious beliefs spread throughout the region by the Hopewell culture.

"Cat and Mouse" Regency-era cobweb made by the English artist, Eleanor Green in 1817.

The original watercolor artwork depicts a calico cat, and when the upper layer of the cobweb is lifted, two cheeky mice are revealed to be scampering below.

~ Albert Edward Chalon, Portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817), Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1817-1819) (detail)