OU Electronic Media and Photo Services—Gilbert A. Jain
As certain Spiro inhabitants became political and religious leaders, they also became commercial entrepreneurs. To help identify their growing status in the community, these leaders accumulated exotic goods which they wore as status markers or used in special ceremonies. Among the most favored exotic goods were conch shells from western coastal Florida, copper from the Southeast and other regions, lead from Iowa and Missouri, pottery from northeast Arkansas and Tennessee, quartz from central Arkansas and flint from Kansas, Texas, Tennessee and southern Illinois. Spiro artisans fashioned many of these materials into elaborately decorated ornaments, ceremonial cups, batons and other symbols of status and authority. Among the prehistoric societies, such objects were a sign of wealth, and Spiro’s priestly leaders were among the most affluent of the time. Elaborate artifacts of conch and copper were more numerous at Spiro than at any other prehistoric site in North America.
The Spiro site reached its peak as an inhabited ceremonial center between A.D. 900 and 1200 when the village and public buildings covered nearly 100 acres, with a sizeable village occupying an upland ridge and portions of the adjacent bottomlands. During this time, two sets of earthworks were constructed: one on the upland ridge which contained a ring of eight mounds erected over the remains of burned or dismantled special buildings, and one on the bottomlands where three mounds were built.
In contrast to other mound centers along the Mississippi, Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, the Spiro site was never fortified by either moat or palisade. Despite their wealth and influence, the Spiroans apparently had little fear of outsiders. Archaeologists assume that they felt secure with their military control of a most strategic site. The Spiro inhabitants depicted themselves as fierce warriors in engraved images on shell cups and gorgets (pendants worn at the throat). It is clear that Spiro was the most powerful of a group of at least 15 political-religious centers in northeast Oklahoma. All of these centers were located at strategic frontier points along navigable waterways in the area, thus allowing Spiroans or their allies to monitor all traders, travelers, or potential enemies coming into their sphere of influence. These northeast Oklahoma natives could easily launch forays into neighboring regions from these sites. Utilizing canoes, parties were sent out to hunt, trade, raid or complete diplomatic missions.
Between A.D. 900 and 1350 Spiro was clearly an important political/religious center. It was also the home of artisans who influenced the ideas and works of many southeastern peoples. Conch shell and copper were favored materials for Spiro artisans. They used a variety of techniques including engraving and embossing, depicting elaborate scenes of dance, gaming, warriors, and mythological creatures. Among the latter were winged serpents, antlered serpents, spiders, and catlike monsters that later became important in the mythologies of historic southeastern tribes. At Spiro, however, the animal figures favored by early artisans were later replaced by humanlike figures.
For two or three centuries, Spiro and its satellite centers flourished. Around A.D. 1250, they began to change their way of life. Frontier settlements were abandoned, some people completely left northeast Oklahoma, and others began congregating along the Grand and Arkansas Rivers. From A.D. 1200 to 1400, a large community developed on the uplands and terraces around the Spiro site; however few, if any, people were actually living at the site itself. Apparently, they only visited the mounds periodically for certain rituals and ceremonies. Mound construction continued, and many people were buried in Craig Mound. Their diverse graves and burial associations attest to the presence of a highly developed hierarchy of political-religious leaders. Of the more than 700 burials discovered at Craig Mound, most are believed to have been deposited during this time. Many of these burials may represent the remains of leaders from other communities who were brought to Spiro for burial. Because so few “status goods” are known from other northeast Oklahoma centers, either the distribution of wealth among leaders was very unequal or it was being deposited at Spiro along with its deceased owners who had been the leaders of other centers. By A.D. 1450, the dominant priestly chiefs were no longer evident in Spiro society; trade and influence among Southeastern chiefdoms were no more; and ritual mound construction at the Spiro site had apparently ceased.
By the mid-sixteenth century, Spiro’s descendants were living in hamlets scattered along the Arkansas River between Muskogee and Spiro. Their settlements consisted of small, less substantial houses with many nearby storage and trash pits. For the first time in their history, these people were hunting bison extensively. The use of buffalo and increased use of storage pits indicates that Spiro’s descendants were becoming part-time hunters and farmers. After storing fall harvests, they left their homes to hunt bison in the upper reaches of the Grand and Verdigris Rivers. Travel was by canoe, with meat, hides and bones being carried back to villages in early winter. Another noteworthy feature of these later people’s cultural change was their adoption of ideas and tools which had long been common with the Plains Indians. As trade with the Southeastern chiefdoms decreased, that with the Plains people increased.
The principal stimulus for this marked change is believed to have been the onset of a drier climate around A.D. 1200. This change adversely affected the ability of northeast Oklahoma villagers to produce crops, eventually causing them to move downstream toward the Arkansas River Valley where summer rainfall remained dependable for growing corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers. However, this increase in population placed more demand on the available soils and resources, creating ecological and social stresses that Spiro leaders could not resolve. It is thought that this eventually brought about the decline of these leaders’ political and religious power, thus undermining the Spiro society’s high level of organization and cultural development. By A.D. 1450, the Spiro site was abandoned. And, by 1719, when eastern Oklahoma was first visited by Europeans, the natives were bison hunting, part-time farmers of a tribe now part of the Wichitas.
Today, barges laden with Oklahoma grain, coal and oil travel down the Arkansas River to eastern manufacturing cities and ports. From distant places come equipment parts, fertilizer, asphalt, pulp products and steel needed by Oklahoma’s farms and businesses. Ten miles west of Fort Smith, Arkansas, all river traffic passes through one of the locks and dams on the Arkansas River Navigational Canal, just a short distance from the Spiro Mounds site. Even today, the Spiro area is important in trade, commerce, and travel, and the mounds stand as silent monuments to a people who, for their day, attained levels of technical, artistic, commercial, political and religious achievement that rival our own.