I’ve never heard of any caves in Mississippi… Mississippi is not known for huge caverns festooned with stalagmites and stalactites, though there are a few medium-sized caves with some interesting formations. By the standards of a place like Mammoth Cave or Carlsbad Caverns, many Mississippi caves look, well, a little bit like mudholes. Some of them are interesting, though. There’s one cave in Mississippi that was formed by cows licking at a rock outcropping with a high salt content. I know, you’re picturing a shallow depression in the ground, but no. This cave is the size of my bedroom, and it was dug with cow tongues. Let’s all think about that for a moment…no, wait. Let’s not.
Nanih Waiya Cave is also unusual, in that it is located in a clay formation, instead of the usual limestone. I’ve been there, though I was alone and not brave enough to shinny into the tiny opening. We’ll leave that kind of foolhardy activity to Faye. First-person accounts of the cave tell us that it is quite extensive, with multiple chambers. It is said that some of them once held Choctaw artifacts, but very little archaeology has been done there.
With a novelist’s boldness, I supposed that if there was one cave in clay in the area, then there could be two, and Faye’s underground prison came into existence. Some people say that the Choctaws enlarged the real cave in antiquity. Some people say that they dug the whole thing. As you have seen, I left open the question of whether Faye’s cave was completely or partially manmade.
Are the Nanih Waiya mounds real? Absolutely. I’ve been there. And they are so evocative that I was compelled to set the first scene of my book there. One of them was built about two thousand years ago, and it was originally part of a complex that included several smaller mounds and an encircling set of protective earthworks. Sadly, almost all traces of the other mounds and the earthworks have been plowed until they no longer exist.
The other mound looks very like the manmade one, massive and flat-topped, but it is a natural geological feature—just a big hump in a flat country, if you will. It is honeycombed by Nanih Waiya Cave, and it’s in an incredibly scenic location on the bank of Nanih Waiya Creek. The state park where it’s located is closed these days, but I was able to visit it by borrowing the key from the owner of a nearby store—no, I don’t know why he had it—driving as close to the site as I could without driving my car into a crumbling culvert, then walking a half-mile into the woods. Writers generally sit alone at their desks all day, but this was an adventure I wouldn’t trade for anything.
What about Faye’s effigy mound? Is it real? Not that I know of. As I did with the cave, I presumed that many interesting things could lurk on private property where archaeologists have never trod. There are no undisputed effigy mounds in the Southeast, though many people say the great mound at Poverty Point is a bird. (I’ve heard that someone showed a picture of it to a group of school kids. They thought it looked like a mushroom. So there you go. Perhaps effigies exist mainly in the eye of the beholder.) At the end of Effigies, we are left with a mound that might look like an eagle. Faye doesn’t yet know its age, but she hopes that it is very old. And she believes that it might be part of a collection of mounds and earthworks—which we know existed nearby at Nanih Waiya. Is someone likely to find a site like that lurking in backwoods Mississippi? Who knows? But it’d sure be fun to try…
REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Armstrong, Army Major F.W., 1832. Correspondence from Army Major Armstrong on the Choctaw Removal. A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation. United States Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875. United States Serial Set Number 244. Senate Document #512. Correspondence on the Emigration of Indians 1831-1833. 1:412.
Atkinson, Jim. Personal correspondence to Gregg Keyes. 1997.
Blitz, John Howard. An Archaeological Study of the Mississippi Choctaw Indians. Jackson, Mississippi. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1985. Archaeological Report No. 16.
Brown, V., and Owens, L. The World of the Southern Indians: Tribes, Leaders, and Customs, from Prehistoric Times to the Present. Leeds, Alabama: Beechwood Books, 1983.
Carleton, Kenneth H., 1999. “Nanih Waiya (22W1500): An Historical and Archaeological Overview.” Mississippi Archaeology. 34:2:125-155.
Choctaw History, Culture and Current Events Staff of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. A Choctaw Anthology. Philadelphia, Mississippi: Choctaw Heritage Press, 1983.
Connolly, R., and Lepper, B. The Fort Ancient Earthworks: Prehistoric Lifeways of the Hopewell Culture in Southwestern Ohio. Columbus, Ohio. Ohio Historical Society, 2004.
Connolly, Robert, 1998. “The 1980-1982 Excavations on the Northwest Ridge 1 at the Poverty Point Site.” Louisiana Archaeology. 25:1-92.
Fitzpatrick, Marie-Louise. Long March: The Choctaws’ Gift to Famine Relief. Tricycle Press, 1999.
Jackson, A. President Andrew Jackson’s Fifth Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1833. Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States of America. 27:22.
Jahoda, Gloria. The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removals 1813-1855. New York: Wings Books, 1975.
Kappler, Charles, ed. 1904. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. Washington: Government Printing Office. 2:310-319.
Knight, E. Leslie. Caves of Mississippi. Hattiesburg: University of Southern Mississippi, in cooperation with Southern Mississippi Grotto of the National Speleological Society, 1974.
Lauro, J., and Lehmann, G. The Slate Site: A Poverty Point Lapidary Industry in the Southern Yazoo Basin, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi. Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1982. Archaeological Report No. 7.
Mann, Charles C. 1491. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Mars, Florence, with Lynn Eden. Witness in Philadelphia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
Morgan, William N. Precolumbian Architecture in Eastern North America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999.
Mould, Tom, 2003. Choctaw Prophecy: A Legacy for the Future. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003.
Mould, Tom, collected and annotated. Choctaw Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
Peacock, Evan. Mississippi Archaeology Q&A. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Purdy, Barbara A. How to Do Archaeology the Right Way. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996.
Swanton, John R. Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians. Choctaw, Mississippi: Choctaw Museum of the Southern Indian, 1995.
Swidler, N., Dongoske, K., Anyon R., and Downer, A., eds. Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira, 1997.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Map
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Guide for Teachers, Students, and the Incurably Curious
References and Recommended Reading
More from this Author
Contact Us
Effigies Page 30
