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Thanks Linda, Pappy and Joseph for your replies…I am not looking to wear the gorget, just have been curious for some time as to its symbolic meaning. At first glance it looks like the swastika, but it appears to have an extra piece??? I looked up the whirlwind symbol and it means infancy or youth; if these were found in burial mounds this would make sense. I may be way off, just a hunch.
Joseph, I am not sure what tribe they belonged to, but wasn’t it found at the Occoneechee dig? I have not done a lot of research in the area of Occoneechee Island, but I can tell you I felt an overwelming peace, when we stayed at the park last summer.
I wish I had the time to spend researching the VA/NC tribes, I have a feeling that when the westward push began and these tribes were few in number that they came together as protection agaist larger tribes as well as the Europeans.
Shirley
PappyDick wrote: Not all that recently, but it wasn’t on this thread — I recommended the essay by George Lankford, in the catalogue cited at post #39 in the following thread:
http://www.saponitown.com/forum/showthread.php?p=21464
That has to do with reconstructing native cosmology (in this case, of the mound builders about a thousand years ago, but, hey). There are many sources, including much more recent oral traditional creation myths, etc. But gorgets a good bit like this, specifically including the whirling woodpeckers design (shown above in post #136), are cited and interpreted.
Techteach actually went to see that exhibition (Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand), in Chicago. I just got the catalogue, a couple of years later.
Anyway, in broad terms, there is a three part universe; we’re in the middle, and there’s a sky world above and an underworld below us. Heroes, gods, shamans, some totemic animals, et al have had the ability to visit between worlds. One route to the above world is via the whirlwind, and one route to the below world is via the whirlpool. (There are other routes, such as flying, climbing rainbows, swimming, entering deep caves, etc. And, most notably in the case of shamans, trances.)
Since I’ve always thought this particular Occaneechi Town example is meant to be a spinner, that would fit in with the cosmological concept. But ours is several hundred years newer than those Cox Mound style gorgets, with the ivory-billed woodpeckers chasing each other around the perimeter. Our people had lost a lot of the shell-working skills, by 1700; but they hadn’t necessarily lost the myth and cosmology these designs appear to have been evoking. It just took a graphically simplified form.
Thanks for the link Pappy, I will check it out 🙂 The whirlwind and whirlpool routes make sense. I always appreciate your wisdom 🙂
Shirley
Ga-Nc Collins wrote: Here is how my gorget looks.
I like your gorget…would you want to share how you made it? Thanks for sharing your creativity and knowledge.
Shirley
Yes, there’s a replica of this gorget at the museum at Occoneechee State Park. I believe it was recovered from the Hillsborough site.
Well we originally made up one of the 4 groups of Cahokia.
All the siouans was 1 of the 4 groups…the iroqious made up another one of the 4 groups also.
To make the gorgets….the easiest way is to go to wal mart…in the area that has sunglasses and jewlery…look for the panama jack necklaces…you should find Conch shell discs….about 4 bucks I think.
then you go to the hardware section and get the smallest drill bits….it should be either .98 cents or 1.98….it will have 2 in the pack.
Then you need a drill…..then you drill indentures into the shell. Do not breath the dust in…..
Now for filling in the holes….the historical way was to use Blue pigment made from indigo plants or blue berries…..the red pigments was made from a plant root however that pigment is not very safe.
There is no real symbolic thing about what colors are made with….only the color itself. If you want the color to stay in and stay bright then you could use a dull blue or dull red nail polish……just make sure you have nail polish remover to wipe the shell off.
Don’t forget to make the 2 holes in the center before you do anything else with the shell.
Now if you go to walmart’s crafts section…you will find “MOP” which is mother of pearl….these discs are smaller but only cost about 1.50.
For the orange county area….the occaneechi and Eno was not the only tribes known for living in that area.
The occaneechi would have had a serpant design on their gorget.
there is a old record about the piedmont natives….that description said the emblems was woren on the right shoulder blades and on shell necklaces. That record also went on to say how in virginia the most common design found was the Arrows…each group had their arrows pointed different directions….so there was several combinations of the arrow directions with the 3 arrows. It was going by that record that I started looking for emblem sketches…and thats when I came across the emblem that was found on the Orange county NC gorget.
[Quote] Well we originally made up one of the 4 groups of Cahokia.
All the siouans was 1 of the 4 groups…the iroqious made up another one of the 4 groups also.
Thanks Collins, do you know the time line of the splits of these four groups and the paths they took? I am sure this is complicated.
I was just reading one of Ed McGaa’s books again…I thought it was Red Cloud and Chief Crazy Horse where he talked of the circle migration from the piedmont, but he speks in more detail in “Native Wisdom.” Which, by the way is a great book:)
Shirley
There is a documentary out on Cahokia. “Cahokia – America’s Lost Metropolis”
it existed from 850-1400 CE
It was from Collinsville, Illinois to Saint Louis Missouri.
America’s first city….largest
The inhabitants left no written records other than symbols on pottery, shell, copper, wood, and stone. The city’s original name is unknown.
The name “Cahokia” also refers to an unrelated clan known as Illiniwek
people living in the area when the first French explorers arrived in the 1600s, long after Cahokia was abandoned.
At the high point of its development, Cahokia was the largest urban center north of the great MesoAmerican cities in Mexico. Although it was home to only about 1,000 people before ca. 1050, its population grew explosively after that date. Archaeologists estimate the city’s population at between 8,000 and 40,000 at its peak, with more people living in outlying farming villages that supplied the main urban center.
If the highest population estimates are correct, Cahokia was larger than any subsequent city in the United States until about 1800, when Philly’s populated reached over 40,000.
Cahokia was abandoned a century or more before Europeans arrived in North America in the early 1500s. Scholars have proposed environmental factors such as over-hunting and deforestation as explanations. Another possible cause is invasion by outside peoples, though the only evidence of warfare found so far is the wooden stockade and watchtowers that enclosed Cahokia’s main ceremonial precinct. Due to the lack of other evidence for warfare, the palisade appears to have been more for ritual than military purposes. Diseases transmitted among the large, dense urban population are another possible cause of decline. Many recent theories propose political collapse as the primary reason for Cahokia’s abandonment.
The best way to find where these groups went..is by finding the mound building tribes in the South east and midwest.
phyllis;35211 wrote: Are you guys selling copies of this necklace?
The guy who made them had his contact info in post #31 (on Page 3) of this thread. I don’t know if he still makes or sells them.
As long as they are Muslim you can call them brothers.Most of the Iranians Ive come across are anything but decent. :
Linda;13421 wrote: There’s a museum reproduction at the Occoneechee State Park museum of a necklace with a shell with this design worked into it:
This is the design that was found at Gaston [correction Hillsborough] , is attritubed to the Occoneechee, and therefore, perhaps the closest piece of artwork to the ancestry we’re trying to honor. I’ll try to get a photo of it on the shell. It really looks very nice.
I was contacted today by a shell jewelry maker. I’ve asked him what kind of price he could give us for a quanity of them.
Hi Linda: I’m very new to this website so I’m sorry to be responding to such old posts. My mother and aunts used to sleep under quilts made by the old mothers in our family that had this symbol on them. It looked a little like a swastika in a circle. Is it still possible to get one of these shells you guys were talking about? Also, is this the emblem of our saponitown site?
Thanks for such great work! Syd
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