LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 46)

vvvv in 2011, as part of the world heritage site application process, Greenlee and several members of the initiative team met with representatives of four federally recognized native american tribes: the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana, the Choctaw nation of oklahoma, the mississippi Choctaw tribe and the alabama Coushatta tribe of texas. one of Greenlee’s colleagues raised a question about the red jasper owls. would an image of an owl make a good symbol or icon for the Poverty Point initiative? Bad idea, the team was told. owls, as far as the native americans present were concerned, signaled misfortune. as Poverty Point archaeologist Jon L. Gibson writes in The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: “owls, especially screech owls, were omens of death and evil among the Choctaws and Chickasaws, probably because of their association with witches. southern tribes thought horned owls actually killed men and animals, and hoots of screech and barred owls were believed to portend the imminent death of a small child among family or friends or else the death of a relative.” thus, there probably won’t be an owl logo on the Poverty Point website. they will have to be downplayed as far as any official promulgations. still, if you are neither a Poverty Point official nor a native american, who is going to forbid you from viewing the red jasper owls as signs of beneficence and quiet beauty? Jenny Ellerbe’s Shared Earth photo-documentation project includes earthworks from sites in Louisiana beyond Poverty Point, including Venable Mound, located in Morehouse Parish. The site originally included three mounds, but late 19th- and early 20th-century agricultural practices eroded two of the mounds. as a retired professor of anthropology at the university of Lousiana at Lafayette, Gibson knows the folkways of native tribes well. he notes: “on the other hand, wearing owl feathers was believed to help Creek shamans see at night, so even owls had some positive attributes depending on circumstances.” however, speaking of Poverty Point’s stone charms, he adds: “if such objects stood for the animals and spirit beings in Gulf-derived lore, then their owners were probably hoping to capture their legendary qualities for themselves or for tasks at hand. they were probably good-luck charms or, if ritually consecrated, fetishes.” “southern tribes thought horned owls actually killed men and animals, and hoots of screech and barred owls were believed to portend the imminent death of a small child among family or friends or else the death of a relative” – archaeologist Jon l. gibson 46 Louisiana EndowmEnt for thE humanitiEs • Winter 2012-13 PHOTO BY JENNY ELLERBE 

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LCV Winter 2012

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