Alabama and the Borderlands: From Prehistory To Statehood

3 Bruce D. Smith - Mississippian Patterns of Subsistence and Settlement

3 Mississippian Patterns of Subsistence and Settlement Bruce D. Smith Extending from around A.D. 850 until the Soto entrada of I539-43, the Mississippian or "temple mound" period spans the final seven centuries of prehistory in the Eastern Woodlands. During this 700-year span the major river valleys of the East, from Illinois to north Florida and from North Carolina to Oklahoma, were occupied by Indian groups who shared a number of similarities in material culture, as well as the common practice of building earthen mounds to support public buildings and the houses of their leaders. Because of similarities in their tools of bone and stone, in their pottery vessels and houses, and in their villages and "temple mounds," these prehistoric groups have been lumped together under the generallabel "Mississippian." These Mississippian groups were similar in another, very fundamental way: they all lived in essentially the same environmental setting or habitat-river-valley floodplains. This river-valley floodplain habitat was much the same throughout the wide geographical range of these Mississippian groups. Although no two river valleys (or even different segments of the same valley) were exactly comparable , all contained the same general landscape of opportunities, obstacles, and challenges. And it was, of course, the muddy waters of the rivers that shaped floodplain landscapes into a characteristic, if ever changing, pattern. Most major rivers of the East are aggrading streams, whose MISSISSIPPIAN SUBSISTENCE AND SETTLEMENT floodplain slopes down and away from the river toward the valley edge, rather than toward the river. This seeming impossibility-that a river can be higher than much of the valley through which it flows-is due to the differential deposition of soil during floodstage. The velocity of rushing floodwaters suddenly drops as the waters rise and overflow the river bed, and large amounts of suspended silt, sand, and nutrients are deposited. The lighter sediments, such as clay, are carried greater distances away from the river, toward the valley edge, before they settle to the bottom. This deposition of large amounts of soil along the edges of the river bed forms natural levees-low ridges that parallel the river and confine it during the long seasonal intervals between floods. Periodically, rivers break through these naturally formed low levees of sand and silt at various points along their courses, abandoning some channel segments as they cut new ones. Over time, as a result of this continual meandering process of channel formation, a river becomes flanked by a wide zone or belt of superimposed and coalesced abandoned channel segments and their associated natural levees. This meander belt, with its undulating hill-and-swale topography of oxbow lakes, canebrakes , and low sand ridges, is in turn bordered on either side by lower-elevation back swamps. In these areas the floodwaters of spring become the shallow, stagnant, and slowly shrinking backswamp ponds of summer and early fall, forming a seasonal barrier of sorts between the meander belt and the uplands. This, then, is the natural setting, the environmental backdrop, that Mississippian groups shared. Even though they were distributed over a wide geographical area, the settlements and way of life of these temple mound builders were narrowly restricted to the sinuous meander belts of major rivers (figure 3-r). What attractions did these riverine landscapes hold for Mississippian groups? Why did they seek out and settle in these meander belts, rather than in the vast, intervening expanses of upland forest? One of the most important attributes of these floodplain meander belts was their levee soils. Sandy, well drained, and easy to work, these soils were ideal for growing the corn, beans, squash, and other cultigens of these Mississippian groups. Annually, in addition, these soils received "natural fertilization" in the form of new soil and nutrients deposited by floodwaters. The floods of spring also carried nutrients of another sort, so that catfish, bullheads, and suckers moved out of the main channels to feed and spawn in the shallow oxbow lakes and back swamps. 65 Bruce D. Smith I I I I I I I I I I I I I I \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ I I I MAIN CHANNEL I I I I I I I I I I I I \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ I I I I I I I FIGURE 3-1. The Main Features of a River-Valley Floodplain (Illustration by G. Robert Lewis) 66 MISSISSIPPIAN SUBSISTENCE AND SETTLEMENT Because the receding floodwaters of late spring trapped these fish in the...