The Headpots of Northeast Arkansas and Southern Pemiscot County, Missouri

INVENTORY AND DESCRIPTIONS OF CLASSICAL HEADPOTS [Includes Image Plates]

and ears. They most often occur in the Janus, or twofaced variety, but single-faced vessels are also encountered . One striking example is Hodges Engraved type, and it may be a Caddoan version of a classical-form headpot that the potter/artist had seen from northeast Arkansas. All of these styles are late in the archeological record, generally dating from A.D. 1550 to 1700 for Hodges, A.D. 1200 to 1500 for Means Engraved, and A.D. 1400 to 1700 or later for Keno Trailed. Several headpot-like vessels defied conventional classification. One was encountered at the Gilcrease Museum that was found near the town of Advance in Stoddard County, Missouri. Stirrup-neck bottles are not uncommon in this part of southeastern Missouri, but this is the only known example where the body of the vessel is in the shape of a human head. Another unique vessel was located in the British Museum, London, England. Accessioned in 1854, it was reported as being found at “Deer Creek Mississippi.” Phillips, Ford, and Griffin (1951:57) list a Deer Creek site in Washington County, Mississippi, that is described as a village site with small mounds, and this may be the same site. This bottle form has well-executed three-pronged “forked eye surrounds.”* (See glossary for this and other technical terms.) A last category to briefly acknowledge is the trifaced vessel. Three faces are applied to the surface of a bottle, or the heads may project outward from the vessel. Most have been found in northeast Arkansas, several in southeast Missouri, and single examples in Georgia (Mills 1968:Figure 9) and Tennessee. In 1820 Caleb Atwater published what was called “a Triune Idol” that was discovered near Nashville, Tennessee.* In a study of headpots, Lawrence Mills (1968:11) used it as an example of “the use of 3 heads on a tripodal vessel.” At the time, Mills was unaware of its location, but I became suspicious that a threefaced vessel in the Museum of the American Indian in New York City might be the original Atwater vessel. However, the museum specimen was buff in color, and the Atwater three-faced vessel was illustrated in 1820 as being painted. Dr. Frederick Dockstader, a previous director of the museum, confirmed to me that indeed George Heye, founder of the museum, had purchased the Atwater vessel many years earlier.* When I asked him why this tripodal headpot was now buff, he replied that George Heye was more than a collector, he was THE STUDY OF THE HEADPOTS 8 Fig. 26 Deer Creek, Mississippi. H: 4" The British Museum. Department of Ethnology. 54.6–6.1. Accessioned June 6, 1854. Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum. *The terminology “forked eye surround” is derived from Phillips and Brown’s Spiro shell descriptions in Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma, Part 1, page 151, Peabody Museum Press, 1977. *Caleb Atwater (1778–1867) was a lawyer, postmaster, and member of the Ohio Legislature from Circleville, Ohio, a town that was laid out on ancient earthworks. *The card catalogue from the Museum of the American Indian, 23/6734 states: “Triple-headed clay water bottle; ‘The Triune Vessel.’ Found before 1833 in an excavation near Caney Fork of The Cumberland River. (See “American Antiquities and Discoveries in the West,” by Josiah Priest, Albany, N.Y. 1833; pp. 262–264) Chestnut Mount [sic] Smith County Tennessee Purchased from Forrest G. Read” 1CHERRY_pages_i-86.qxd 4/15/09 10:16 AM Page 8 Fig. 27 Fig. 30 Fig. 28 Fig. 29 Fig. 27 Crosskno site, 3MS18. Mississippi Co., Arkansas. H: 8" Private collection. Fig. 28 Three-faced bottle. Chickasawba, 3MS5. Mississippi Co., Arkansas. H: 7" Private collection. Fig. 29 1820 image of the Atwater “Triune idol.” Fig. 30 Smith Co., Tennessee. Museum of the American Indian, New York City, New York. 23/6734. 1CHERRY_pages_i-86.qxd 4/15/09 10:16 AM Page 9 an amasser. As artifacts poured into the museum, it was the curator’s job, Mr. William Orchard, to clean the artifacts of dust, mud, and dirt. He probably did not notice the faint painting on the vessel and scrubbed it to its present buff condition. Also, Mills’s Figure 38 is the cast of a head that he encountered at the University of Pennsylvania. He remarked that its history was elusive and unknown and that “the whereabouts of the original...