Southeastern Mound Builder Culture from Spiro Mounds to Contemporary Art By Kristin Gentry
Connecting the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World exhibition and the Chickasaw Nation’s Exhibit C Gallery’s Music for the Great Sun exhibition
Human Face Effigy with Deer Antlers, AD 1200–1450, wood, Le Flore County, Oklahoma, Spiro site, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Photo Credit: Kristin Gentry
Both exhibitions held the concept that the descendants of the Mound Building peoples are a living culture here in the present day through language, customs, traditions, art, and more. The Spiro exhibition at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum displayed the actual historical objects from the Spiro Mound site (Le Flore County, OK); whereas the art pieces at Exhibit C Gallery showed the contemporary work based on the objects important to Marcus Amerman’s Chahta (Choctaw) culture found at the Spiro Mound site. Viewing both exhibitions we see the direct interpretation of the historical objects on Amerman’s work. Some of the Mississippian and or Caddoan peoples in the contemporary parts of the exhibitions
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Marcus Amerman (Chahta) & Preston Singletary (Tlingit), One Star, blown and sand carved glass, 8” x 7.5” x 7.5”, Copyright Preston Singletary. All Rights Reserved.
were from tribes removed to present day Oklahoma during Indian Removal from the southeastern part of the United States. Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World and Music for the Great Sun art exhibitions both display the Southeastern, Mound Building culture of the Mississippian peoples from historical and contemporary lenses. The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum’s curator, Dr. Eric Singleton, worked closely with the Caddo Nation, Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, and countless other Nations. It was important for him to let the tribes dictate the direction. From the museum’s website, “The Spiro people, and their Mississippian peers, are nearly forgotten in the pages of North American history, yet they created one of the most
Margaret Roach Wheeler (Chikashsha (Chickasaw)/ Chahta), Minko Regalia, mixed media with handwoven and loomed textiles, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Photo Credit: Kristin Gentry
exceptional societies in all of the Americas. What makes Spiro truly unique, however, is that it contained the largest assemblage of engraved, embossed, and carved objects of any presently known Mississippian site.” The exhibition was displayed chronologically starting with the historical found objects, and progressed in time as viewers moved through the space into the art created today by the same Mississippian descendants in the section entitled, Cultural Continuation. In his interview for Art Focus Oklahoma, Dr. Singleton expressed he wanted both the art and the artists to speak for themselves at the museum. Through ethnology, he wanted the study of comparative cultures to be used for viewers to understand some of the meanings and motifs found on the historical
