land=mother???

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Michael Mccafferty wrote:
> ... In Emerson's and Sasso's excellent chapter 15 titled "Prelude to
> History on the Eastern Prairies" in the Smithsonian's recent (what
> year?) _Societies in Eclipse, Archaeology of the Eastern Woodlands
> Indians, A.D. 1400-1700_, ed., Brose, Cowan and Mainfort, they seem to
> suggest an Oneota cultural pattern expressed in "...patrilineal clans
> organized into earth and sky moieties."

This is generally descriptive of Dhegiha society, and, though I'm not sure
about the moieties, the rest covers Ioway-Otoe-Missouria and Winnebago,
too, and generally Central Algonquian (in the regional sense).  It's
certainly very likely that some of the picture, or the clarity in it,
comes from examining the likely suspects.

On the other hand, some fairly abstract cultural factors are thought to be
estimatable from physical evidence.  For example, the fairly rapid change
in stylistic detail of Oneota pottery is thought to reflect a patrilineal,
patrilocal pattern, on the assumption that women made the pottery and that
this approach to social organization is known to produce this pattern in
comparable historical societies.  Essentially, the pottery makers bring in
and get exposed to a variety of competing styles as they come into their
husband's group.  By contrast, the stability of styles in Middle Missouri
reflects matilineal, matrilocal patterns.  Using the traditional style is
an expression of kingroup solidarity.

I've also seen discussions of Oneota that suggest, based on house
population sizes estimated from house size and hearth numbers, and
arranged temporally, that Oneota varied between wife's parent and
husband's locality patterns with time.  Larger houses are correlated with
wife's parent residence, which might reflect matrilineality.

(I forget the terms for wife's parent and husband's parent residence -
uxorilocal and avunculocal?)

A possible basis for an assumption of a sky moiety could be the suspicion
that certain Oneota pottery decoration patterns are though to be stylized
representations of hawks.  I don't know if other patterns are thought to
represent the earth, but I know that a fairly wide range of patterns are
found.

Although it's certainly a reasonable suspicion that Oneota has some
conection with Siouan, the notion is not universally accepted and the
details are far from clear.  The existance of earth and sky divisions is
fairly well attested in historical times, however, and might be adequately
attested to in, say, Dorsey's Siouan Sociology survey, or in Fletcher &
LaFlesche.

Although not all IE languages follow a sun:male :: moon:female pattern
(historically reversed in Germanic), I think sky:male :: earth:female is
fairly constant.  In Siouan (and regional?) mythology the sun is male.  I
believe that the Sun is the father of the two twins, though this part of
the story is missing in the OP version.  It's there in the IO version, if
I remember correctly.  It's also true, I think, in Navajo mythology.  The
Sun and his sons figure in Blackfoot mythology as well, though the point
of view is somewhat different.