Pee Dee’s??????

Yes, it’s believed they were. They’re the people who occupied Town Creek Indian Mound, a great place to visit, especially during the pow wow held there annually.

I remember visiting it the same time I was reading about the Tutelo Spirit Adoption, which has been kept alive at Six Nations via Tutelo adoptees. It’s important that the door of the ceremonial house face the east, and the ceremony, which lasts all night, ends at dawn. Except . . . the dawn that the ceremony is built around is the dawn that occurs at a North Carolina latitude, not Canadian. The Canadians now observing the ritual open their east-facing door into the darkness. When I was at Town Creek it was pointed out that the doorway to the ceremonial lodge at the top of the mound faced the east. I realized that if the Spirit Adoption was held there, the timing would be right.

The Pee Dee were on the fringe of the Mound Culture (and Religion) so it’s uncertain if the Siouan we believe we are tied to, the Saponi/ Tutelo/ Monacan/ Occoneechee/ Eno/ Shakori et al were also involved in that religion, although there were mounds in Monacan territory along the Blue Ridge in VA. (Remember the mound Thoma Jefferson dug into, where Indian people were still stopping to grieve.)

There were elements of cultural stratification in the Mound cultures that don’t appeal to my own conceptions of an egalitarian tribal society, but it may just be my own vanity. These were rich, agricultural people, and rich, dense cultures do tend to stratify.

Another little detail I remember from the Town Creek museum. There were some very large earthenware vessels on display. They were used for infant burials. I thought, what a tender gesture, going to all that trouble to put an infant who’d just come from the womb back into a similar vessel.

Just google “Pee Dee Siouan” or “Town Creek Indian Mound”. There are a number of links, including at least part of the book by that name in pdf format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pee_Dee_(tribe)

Pappy, when I hear the term Pee Dee for some reason I think lower or southern North Carolina and into South Carolina. I do not recall where I was introduced to this term or tribe but that is my impression. Am I thinking correctly? Your post also seems to treat the PeeDee and the Catawba as the same tribe. Is that what you are saying ? I know so little about this group except familiar with the name but I have a large clay jar that is supposed to be Catawba. Ed

Ed Yancey wrote: Your post also seems to treat the PeeDee and the Catawba as the same tribe. Is that what you are saying ?

Nope, not what I’m saying. Mainly, what I’m saying is that Merrell’s book is a good locator of sources that can help explain (to someone with a deep interest in these intertribal relationships) some of the ways in which the Pee Dees (not spelled that way in his book, though the river is) — and many other small tribes, Siouan and otherwise — became in some sense lumped together with the Catawbas, for the (often nefarious) purposes of the several colonial governments that had dealings with them.

If one were on the Yadkin and floated downstream long enough, one would be on the Pee Dee… that is, if it still has any current. (Mostly it’s a bunch of lakes, now.) What that may tell us about the Indians of the name, I’m not so sure. Seems to me they were mostly in SC, and were separate from the Catawbas, at least before about 1715 — but lived quite near them.

Thanks for the clarification Pappy. I had time to do some searching and for the most part it seems the present bands connected with this tribe are all in South Carolina. I believe that link or another site gives a general land base to the coast of that state that was inhabited by them. On a site for the Pee Dee Indian Nation of Beaver Creek one statement identifies them as being Muskogeon. I just wanted to understand what or if their connection had been determined and apparently that band believes or has reason to say they are or were of the Muskogeon linquistic stock. Thanks again for your help. Ed

Where is this Beaver Creek located? I live next door to a Beaver Creek that was the location of a major archeological dig of a native american settlement.

Linda wrote: Yes, it’s believed they were. They’re the people who occupied Town Creek Indian Mound, a great place to visit

I think you described such a visit in a 2002 post about center seam moccasins that mentioned the “Saura woman.” Just now I was looking at a Town Creek page that was linked off a Pee Dee article posted today, I think by Ed Yancey. Anyway, this one:

http://www.nchistoricsites.org/town/pee-dee.htm

This page displays, in a cropped format, a “Pee Dee” female. Is it the Saura woman? Looks kind of like her, to me, though I haven’t gone back to check (and the easiest-to-find images of her are bronze statues). Anyway, this alleged Pee Dee lady is wearing a gorget with a symbol that would be familiar to the southern cult (Mississippian, mound builder, whatever), and also to present day (western) Siouan speakers.

In that regard, have y’all seen the movie “Hidalgo,” nominally about the career of an actual 19th century plains horse, that won an endurance race against various Arabians? Pretty good movie, kind of cheesy and exploitive at times, but well done within its genre. Catch it on cable TV. At the end of the race, Hidalgo’s rider carries a homemade banner with the symbol found on the Pee Dee lady’s gorget. Cosmic stuff, actually. Wish we understood it a little better. I’m not totally convinced the four points of the cross have to do with compass points — anyhow, the Saponi version only has three such points (but maybe there are fewer wind directions in North Carolina).

Having mentioned the Merrell book in this thread, I might as well also plug the recent museum catalog “Hero, Heart, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South.” I think Techteach actually saw the exhibit, at the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a beautiful picture book, but the greater value is in the excellent essays by specialists who come about as close as any of us moderns to understanding the Mississippian religion, cosmology and so on.

Occasionally we need these little reminders that our NC forebears weren’t all, or always, Baptists.

Mousini78 wrote: The gorget that the woman is wearing is a medicine wheel, with the four (of 7) directions represented.

Well, that’s one thing to call it — nowadays. But the original wearer had neither a compass nor the wheel, and none of us knows how many directions she may have perceived as useful. In many cultures, that’s a function of how many mountains you can see, or something equally site-specific. Anyway, it’s a symbol of something (probably, in some sense, the mythic universe), and it’s spiritually powerful.

Since I mentioned “Hidalgo,” I refreshed my memory of the movie via Wikipedia and its links. Found some reviews, good and bad (anywhere from one to five stars — people strongly liked or disliked it). Apparently it was not well received by the broader Native American community, if there is such a thing. Something about a white guy (either the writer of the screenlay, John Fusco, or his semi-historical model Frank Hopkins) using a largely faked or “wannabe” Native American identity, to make money. Unheard of — I’m shocked, shocked! Be that as it may, I personally got a kick out of the “medicine wheel” on his flag, at the end of the epic race.

Also, I got around to looking up the Saura woman, and she’s completely different from the Pee Dee woman. And is wearing a different kind of gorget. Both women are pretty cool, though.