Ohio Hopewell Depictions of Composite Creatures

Abstract

Hopewellian peoples in southwestern, south-central, and north-central Ohio sculpted, engraved, and cut out six depictions of creatures that combine the bodily elements of different ordinary animals. Detailed zoological identification of the component animals documents that all were associated with the underwater-underground realms of historic Woodland and Plains Indian cosmoses, in contrast to some later Mississippian and Historic period composite creatures with both sky and water-earth associations. However, strong continuities are found in the kinds of underwater-underground creatures known to historic Woodland-Plains and prehistoric Ohio Hopewellian Indians. A survey of historic Woodland and Plains knowledge about underwater-underground creatures sheds light on both their helpful and harmful roles and the very wide spectrum of domains of life they affected, in contrast to some current Woodland ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and archaeological lines of interpretation that caricature the creatures as harmful and gloss over purposes of Ohio and Illinois ceremonialism other than world renewal.

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