Proverbs

[Rankin, Robert L]

>2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not
   find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may
   be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian
   chiefdoms.  Siouan is questionable in this regard.

Yes, we do not know whether ANY Siouan-speaking tribe participated in
Mississippian Culture, although some pretty clearly participated in its
northern offshoots (the effigy mound and Oneota cultures of Iowa and points
North).

3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American
   Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly,
   I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies
   were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of
   when we use that term.

That may be a reasonable view, but it seems to me to be one of those
definitional matters that is hard to resolve and which is quite subject to
the orthodoxy of the moment in cultural and social anthropology.  The
current thinking at Cahokia, as promulgated by the staff there, is that
Cahokia, at least, was not only a chiefdom, but that it was multi-
cultural", accomodating numerous peoples who spoke different languages.
Personally, I don't see the evidence for that sort of thing.

Bob