Ceramic Wares and Water Spirits

Abstract

Water spirits as major Mississippian cosmic powers assumed various forms ranging from panther-like to serpent-like, and these varying visualizations were crafted as ceramic vessels, copper objects, rock art, and shell media. Evidence of water spirit religious sodalities is reflected in the numerous Lower Mississippi Valley “cat serpent” bottles and bowls found in northeastern Arkansas and southeastern Missouri. Their use flourished during the protohistoric period, the decades between the Hernando de Soto entrada and initial French contact. Water spirit vessels were crucial for transforming and in consuming medicinal potions for purification in water spirit rituals. In this chapter I discuss these Lower Mississippi Valley “Great Serpent” effigy vessels and argue that they were central to religious beliefs in Beneath World deities associated with the cycle of life and death and appealed to through ritual supplication and veneration.