Indiana County Humane Society: Fill & Download for Free

Before I answer this personal question I have to share a little story with you. After you read the story, I hope you will have your answer.When I was a struggling college student a kitten entered my life that changed me into a responsible adult. He was my first child. “Elvis” was abandoned by his mother and through some social engineering; I convinced our other resident momma cat to adopt him long enough to ween him. He even had a very badly infected eye that I cleaned and nursed him through. All his brothers and sisters died from the same condition. I thought this kitten would hate me after that, but once he was weened, he followed me everywhere when I was home from school. He pounced on my feet and hid behind corners to attack my legs. He loved to put his paws in the air during the attack like you see on all those YouTube kitten videos.After summer break I couldn’t bear to leave him and after one look at that sad yellow tabby face I snuck him into my apartment on campus. He was a teenager cat at that time and was religiously using the litter box. We weren’t allowed to have pets - but it seemed that as long as it didn’t cause a problem a blind eye was turned. He slept on my feet every night and his super soft purr would calm my anxiety and I would drift off to sleep. Winters were cold in Indiana, and Elvis was the best blanket I ever had.Since he went through college with me - and little did I know - he was the ice breaker I needed to be able to talk with the opposite sex. When male friends on campus saw that I had a cat, I was made fun of. When girls on campus saw that I had a cat they had to come over to hold “Big E”. My friends on campus didn’t make fun of me anymore. As a matter of fact they were the ones that came up with the nickname “Big E”. It was the 90’s.This cat taught me a pet’s unconditional love - something I didn’t really understand back then but grew to understand later. It is something given with no expectation of anything in return. Anything. “E” was a lover but never could purr very loud. His purr was so quiet; everything in the room would have to be turned off to hear his faint rumble.He comforted me when my grades turned low, he comforted me when I didn’t think I would finish my degree in engineering, he comforted me through numerous break-ups, through deaths in the family. He saw me through graduation, through my first job, through my engagement, through my wedding. He saw me though my career transitions and he saw me through so much that by the time I had my first child he was 12 years old.When my daughter was born, I, for the first time, started to understand unconditional love. She was born into the world with a giant smile on her face and a love for her momma, her daddy, and her kitty. She loved everything and grew very confident with herself quickly. That cat became the center of her world and she wanted the world to know it. I once brought a kitten doll home from a faraway trip, and I can still hear the sound of excitement in her voice that day.My wife was not a cat person and when the doctor mentioned my daughter may have a slight allergy to the cat at age 3; my daughter defiantly told her mother giving the cat away was a deal breaker that would crush her. We tried to separate her from the cat but that wasn’t an option, and my daughter did everything possible to hind any hints of an allergy after that.Elvis would go to tea parties, get his diaper changed, put her to sleep during naptime and bedtime and play hide and seek with her. He showed her unconditional love.In 2008, at the age of 16, Elvis’ health started to turn. He slowed down and started to walk in angles. Once, I even blamed my daughter for pushing him down the stairs. She was 3 and with him at the top of the stairs. When Elvis tried to sprint down, his newfound lack of balance tripped him down the stairs. I yelled at my daughter for being so mean, but did not understand what really happened until the vet had told us that he had had a stroke. What was I thinking; my daughter would never harm a hair on that cat. My daughter was even more crushed because she thought this was her fault. I didn’t win any “father of the year” trophies then. I still regret that.I thought this was temporary at first but quickly realized things were going downhill with each thing he could no longer do. He had a hard time eating so I hand fed him. He could not make it to the litter box anymore and the sand was too rough to properly cover his business, so I put pine shavings in old cookie sheets around the house. It was then I realized that in 16 years he had never missed the litter box until then. His personality on that bordered on “OCD” up until that time.My wife was the only pragmatic person in the house when she mentioned that it might be best to put him to sleep. He seemed to be in quite a bit of pain, but neither my daughter nor I could bring ourselves to admit it.Finally, one night while hand feeding him, he bit me, hard. He drew blood. I was shocked. Either he couldn’t tell the difference between his food and my hand or he was trying to tell me something. He had never done anything like that in his entire life. I called the vet that night and left a message that I would be coming in that morning to put him to sleep. My wife tried to intervene and said she could spare me the pain, but I couldn’t bear to abandon him in his last moments.That night, Elvis snuck out of my daughter’s room, where he had slept the last several years beside her and crawled into bed with me. I barely noticed until he laid on my feet - like he had done when I was in college. The warmth washed over me like nothing I had ever experienced. The triggers from nostalgia can be very powerful. He was also purring so loudly that I thought by some miracle he might be getting better. I even fantasized that the vet would have some drug that fixed some weird reaction he was having to his food and that I was just over reacting. Sometime in the night he moved up to my torso and lay sideways. He passed away next to me while I was sleeping.The next morning I woke up and realized he was gone. He had spared me the pain of putting him down. I was crushed beyond tears. Worse yet, I was so entrenched in my grief, that I had ignored that he was probably in pain the last several weeks. My guilt and my sorrow were unbearable until my daughter grabbed me. She held me and made me realize that she was sharing in my grief equally.When I looked at her crying uncontrollably – not in a way a toddler cries – but in the way an adult expresses grief, I realized I wasn’t alone. I also realized I needed to be the adult and still needed to take him to the vet to be cremated.That vet was a hard ass, but he was good. Several years back, Elvis had cancer and after several trips to other vets, he looked to leave the building early. The vet aggressively cut out the tumor to the point I thought was excessive and overreaching until Elvis showed that he was completely cured. He lived four more years after that. That vet told it like it was – and I always respected him for that after that surgery. When I took Elvis in, he didn’t say a word and just said, “He’s in good hands now.”After a few weeks, I was given a large wrapped package by my family. My wife, who at first wanted to get rid of the cat soon after we were married, showed me her empathy by putting together a collage with his collar and a poem with Elvis’ ashes in a tiny pine box. Under the poem was his paw print in ink. I knew it was his by how fragile it looked. I was broken inside, but they were trying to fix me.Fast forward six months and our house was amazingly sterile. No cat hair. No litter box smell. No happy daughter……she was different. We thought having kids with allergies, our pet days were over. Every cat she saw at another house brought her smile back until we left that home.I went on-line and found a kitten at a county humane society over 30 miles away that was a yellow tabby that looked like Elvis. I emailed them that we would like to adopt the kitten but when we arrived we found that a volunteer had already taken the kitten home for the day. It’s always easier to adopt out kittens anyway. I started to argue with the humane society volunteer about letting the kitten out with a volunteer when it could be adopted (not my finest hour) when I hear my daughter giggling.Behind her was a teenage cat that the humane society had kept for several months. It was around 10 months old and was not a kitten. It had stuck its paw out of the cage and was playing with the back of my daughter’s leg.“Oh, that’s John,” proclaimed the staff member. “He’s not a kitten – you wouldn’t want him.” My heart broke when she said that and we immediately adopted him. He’s been my daughter’s cat ever since.My wife and I had another daughter next year and got a young dog (teenager again) from a farmer some distance away the year after that. The new cat took to terrorizing the dog like Garfield does to Odie in the comics. The dog, Molly, is three times the size of the cat and ridiculously scared of the cat. Molly lets the cat eat her food and sleep in her bed. Sometimes the dog looks at us like “the cat’s being a jerk -can you do something about him.” I saw where Jim Davis got his ideas.That cat is now 9 years old and has grown into an integral part of our family. When he misbehaves he runs to our daughter’s room where he knows he has ultimate protection – although now at the hands of a 12 year old that cuddles him to death. Oh, and I forgot to tell you his name…..You see I wanted to name him Elvis the second and “John” wasn’t going to fly…. Sorry dad. I grew up loving rock music from the 50’s and 60’s from my dad’s 8-track collection. He became “Presley” and we all love him unconditionally…even the dog…to a point.Edit February 25th, 2021We just rescued a beagle mix from the Hamilton County Humane Society. I think his name is going to be Snoopy. His number one job is finding all the stuffed animals in the house and hoarding them around his new bed. He’s supposed to be 6 but I think he’s younger - but diffidently smart enough to have been around the block a few times.Presley is 12 now and still healthy (knock on wood). He still sneaks around the house stealing the dog food when possible and then runs around the house at 80 mph howling something like “mrrrrrawrahahrahrawwww!”Molly has aged the most and is 10 now. She follows Snoopy outside but Snoopy runs around the yard and circles back around to her slow saunter. He’s so excited to play with her. She wasn’t too excited at first and would bark angrily at Snoopy but has now accepted him with reciprocated excitement.��

There are a few rescue organizations that come to mind in and around the Indianapolis area. You can visit the Indianapolis Humane Society, Indianapolis Animal Control, Hamilton County Human Society. Also FACE has cat adoptions.A couple times a year, multiple agencies come together to host the Mega Adoption at the Indiana State Fairgrounds where hundreds of dogs and cats are available in one place for adoption.I hope these suggestions help you adopt your perfect furever friend!

Exsqueeze me?It really is a pity that today, despite all the literature, museums and outreach, even the average citizen of the eastern United States is still blissfully unaware of the complex societies whose remnants they often walk or drive right over.Story time!The Eastern Woodlands of the United States has been a nexus for stratified civilization since 3500 B.C. The Mississippi River area was even home to its own independent cradle of agriculture known as the Eastern Agricultural Complex, from which we still have popular vegetables like squash and sunflower. The peoples that farmed these crops have been traditionally termed the “Mound Builders”, so named for their apparent proclivity towards earthworks. The term is a bit dated now, and archaeologists today are able to differentiate specific cultures, but “mound-building peoples” is often still used to describe the cultures in general.There have been many mound-building societies over the course of North American history. We’ll probably never know the exact political relationships, but we can identify consistencies in material culture and living patterns. The first one that really seems to take off across the board is the Hopewell:Starting around 100 B.C., sites all around the Mississippi start adopting a similar set of traits such as pottery styles, arrowhead techniques and artistic motifs, along with a much more pronounced sense of social stratification. The Hopewell appear to have begun with the Ohio Hopewell, which built upon the stratified Adena culture that existed since 1000 B.C. on the Ohio River valley, which connects to the Mississippi. The Hopewell greatly proliferate the number of mounds constructed in the Eastern Woodlands and diversify their uses.Hopewell “serpent” copper effigyReplica of a copper headdress recovered from Posey County, IndianaOne of the most iconic examples of the Hopewell are the Newark Earthworks: a series of interconnected circles, walls and moats that appear to serve as a massive lunar observatory. The Moon’s orbit ‘wobbles’ in relation to the Earth: at one extreme the orbit is rotated one way, and rotated the other way at the other extreme. The point in this cycle where the Moon’s orbital plane reaches its northernmost or southernmost extent before going back to the other is termed the lunar standstill, which produces an effect not unlike the Sun’s solstices. This happens every 18 years, 7 months and almost 10 days. The Newark Earthworks are able to track the Moon’s declination until the next standstill with remarkable precision.Newark today. A country club still owns parts of the earthworks.It’s possible that the Ohio Hopewell had such influence over the Eastern Woodlands that they may have started a new religious movement, or perhaps their influence was economical and assimilating their culture was better for business, or people may have simply admired parts of their culture enough to replicate it. A mix of the three may have happened, but we might never know specifically why people wanted to copy them.What we do know was that their influence was phenomenal. The Hopewell had access to a trade network that extended all the way to the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico and the Rockies, with artifacts from these regions showing up in Ohio:In the year 500 A.D., the bow and arrow trickled southward after being introduced by Arctic and Subarctic peoples. This makes hunting (and fighting) much more accessible, freeing people up from their dependencies on crops and some hierarchical control.From there the magic begins to die for the Hopewell and the societies within its sphere fall into the geographically broader-ranging Woodland period. The 500 years of the Late Woodland period saw a great intensity in fortification, a significant reduction in mound-building (though some are still built) and more numerous, smaller walled villages instead of the somewhat larger settlements of the Middle Woodland’s Hopewell. This lifestyle, in some form, actually lasted in the periphery of the Eastern Woodlands until the arrival of Europeans.By the year 1000, however, something new appears in the heart of the Mississippi. People are once again gathering in large towns, larger than ever before, and forming wealthy elites under the control of powerful rulers who began using earthworks to proclaim their legitimacy. Corn (maize) was introduced to the Eastern Woodlands in 200 B.C., but had a hard time dealing with the colder climates. However, new cold-hardy cultivars had finally been developed and were taking the Eastern Woodlands by storm into a new agricultural revolution. Things were about to get corny.Archaeologists have given these maize-crazy, mound-building chiefdoms the aptly-named title of the Mississippians:This is where things really start getting big. The power and influence of chiefs have increased drastically into large, multi-town paramount chiefdoms, though if we’re being completely honest some of these really resemble early kingdoms and the difference is largely semantic. The massive trade networks have fired back up and are bringing in more goods than ever before. They especially love Great Lakes copper. Art, culture and religious expression have also greatly expanded and this cultural movement reaches nearly every corner of the Mississippi River watershed:The “Sponemann Figurine” from Cahokia. The headwrap seen on her head has been documented in historical Native American tribes.Copper plate of a falcon-eyed man from Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma.“Crouching Man” effigy pipe from Shiloh Indian Mounds, Tennessee.More Spiro copper plate art, including a falcon dancer (or warrior) to the left. These are replicas for Spiro’s museum exhibit.Ceremonial copper axes from Etowah, Georgia.“Conquering Warrior” effigy pipe from Spiro. The wooden slat backshield he is wearing has similarities to the armor worn by Great Lakes tribes, which also protected the head and neck in this way.Wood duck effigy bowl, diorite. Moundville, Alabama.Shell gorget of two dancers from the McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture in Tennessee.Shell forget from Texas depicting a falcon and feline figure in combat. From the Werner Forman Archive at the National Museum of the American Indian.But one of the most profound examples of Mississippian culture, and what everybody wants to see when they visit the sites, are of course the mounds.These are no mere piles of dirt either, but alternating layers of various clays and particulates that each have their own physical properties and ostensibly spiritual meanings to ensure the greatest structural stability and proper religious status. Most of these clays were sourced from many miles out, even when a more convenient source was nearby. Most of these mounds were built to house a temple or chief, and the larger mounds served as residential-religious complexes for the elites. When the person living on the mound died, his house was burnt with any of his belongings and a new mound was constructed atop.The most impressive of these Mississippian mounds, still standing today (in somewhat eroded form) is Monks Mound in the archaeological site of Cahokia:This terraced platform mound is 100 feet high, 775 feet wide, and 955 feet long; slightly larger at the base than the largest Egyptian pyramid.The mound held multiple large buildings, including that of the paramount chief who overlooked a city we call Cahokia, the largest in pre-Columbian North America north of the Rio Grande, existing from A.D. 1050 to 1350.And there’s a highway right through it…(A little outdated: there is evidence of clay caps on many Mississippian mounds, which means these mounds would have been a bright yellow or red instead of turf green. This illustration also shows mainly the “downtown” area - other precincts of the city such as the East St. Louis group are not shown.)The safe estimate for Cahokia’s population is around 20,000 people, but it has sometimes been given twice that. Either way, it’s reasonably impressive for the area and historical context. Our modern life has made us used to megacities spanning hundreds of thousands or millions of people, but to put 20,000 souls into perspective: This is close to the same size as London in 1200. Berlin was a quaint village of barely over a thousand at this time. Paris had very recently become a medieval metropolis at a hundred thousand people, but had floated at around 35,000 for about a millennium. The modern city of Ithaca, New York is around 30,000.This city was America’s first melting pot, bringing in peoples from very distant regions who came for trade, religion and safety. The city was organized into districts according to class and sometimes function, including ‘industrial zones’ for production of things like beads, tools, pottery and copper art.Outside the walled ceremonial district was a “Woodhenge”; a circular arrangement of poles that track the position of the sun like a giant solar calendar. Nearly all of the buildings are aligned to the four cardinal directions; the four directions to this day are important to many Native American tribes. Some pits within the city were dug as a source of clay and, if we can glean from historical accounts of native towns, were likely flooded and stocked with fish.Aztalan, Wisconsin, a probable colony of CahokiaCahokia faced many typical issues of a large early city: social order, sanitation, dietary deficiencies, and especially resource exhaustion (good timber had to be brought in from upriver). In finding a reason for Cahokia’s fall, it seems to have dealt with these okay enough. But some time after 1200 A.D. came an unusually wet era for the Mississippians, and all that extra rainfall drained into and rushed down the Mississippi, which would have drenched all of Cahokia but the tops of its mounds.Interestingly, the Osage tribe, a Dhegihan-Siouan people that have one of the closest cultural similarities with the archaeological findings of Cahokia, have an origin story that draws many parallels (from Willard H. Rollings’ The Osage: An Ethnohistorical Study of Hegemony on the Prairie-Plains):. . . in the beginning all of the Osage lived in a single village located along a river. One day the river flooded, and the Osage fled the rising waters. One group made it to the top of a hill, while others fled a nearby timbered ridge. A third group escaped to higher ground and sought shelter in a dense thicket, while a fourth group found refuge at the base of [a] hill just above the floodwaters. Some of the Osage, unable to escape, remained in the flooded village. After the floodwaters receded, the Non-hon-zhin-ga [council] insisted that the people remain in the groups they had formed during the flood. They claimed that Wa-kon-da [the Great Spirit/Mystery] wanted the people to live apart and to establish five villages . . .After the flooding, Cahokia was still inhabited, but was a shadow of its former self. The people that lived there in the roughly 200 years until its final abandonment seem to have lived without a major elite class and used parts of Monks Mound as a garbage midden. Cahokia, once at the forefront of the Mississippian trade network, seems to have taken the long distance trade with it.…but that’s not the end!Mississippian culture was still alive and vibrant in the Lower Mississippi and Southeastern Woodlands (and the Middle Mississippi and Ohio River too, but the other places are more intense). However, times have changed. The lack of the Cahokian trade nexus has wrecked regional economies. Influence vacuums have formed and the world seems just a bit more dangerous. This is where history begins to rhyme a bit: there is an increase in fortification and town splitting, though not quite to the same degree. Towns are typically surrounded by a defensive wall and people move if the population gets too big, but complex hierarchies and earthworks are more active than ever. The political climate of the Southeast leads to the creation of vast open territories, with areas of dense wilderness serving to buffer the territories from large military campaigns (though light travel is still possible on trails). These territories, of course, had to be managed. And it’s during this era that we are finally able to know how the Mississippians governed themselves, at least in some parts, due to the accounts from Hernando de Soto’s entrada. In the Southeast among Muskogean (Creek) towns, the major town leader (potentially the paramount as well) was the mico/micco. Subordinate to the mico are the orata, which governed satellite towns. The iniha/heniha was an administrator served along the mico as a kind of magistrate and the yatika was the official translator. Each of these large territories was an italwa, and this word was also used to describe the largest towns ruled by micos, talofa being the smaller towns. The Caddo Mississippians in Texas and Oklahoma had the same structure, despite being on the other side of the Mississippian sphere.Hernando de Soto’s route through areas that are known Mississippian polities. There are more archaeological sites than shown here which could possibly represent other polities.Starting from Florida, Hernando de Soto and his entrada entered Mississippian civilization, starting with the Appalachee (to the south, off-screen of the map) and into the Mississippi River proper. There they found large capitals with their mounds and walls, and many towns had other features such as moats and levies. Some of these moats seem to have doubled as fish traps, according to de Soto’s secretary Rodrigo Ranjel who described Pacaha’s (probably the Nodena site in Arkansas) moat as ”full of excellent fish of divers kinds”.The Parkin site in eastern Arkansas, one of the places visited by Hernando de SotoEtowah, a Late Mississippian town that may have also been visited by the entradaYou will often hear that from here, Hernando de Soto’s very existence caused 90% of the natives to keel over from European diseases. However, there is actually no evidence of such mass deaths, even in towns that had Spanish artifacts. To make matters even more interesting, de Soto and some other Spaniards actually fell ill and died on this journey, at a point in the journey longer than the incubation period of known European diseases, with the natives unaffected!But the entrada still had a devastating effect on the political atmosphere. In his search for gold and the desire to continue such a journey, de Soto raided and burned towns, forcibly occupied capitals and even kidnapped paramount chiefs — people who were supposedly of heavenly descent, reduced to being bound and caged for ransom. He used his influence to alter Mississippian political relationships to his benefit and this wrecked the status quo. The paramountcies of Coosa and Cofitachequi no longer had the same kind of respect, influence and control over their territories as they once had. Political cohesion was now much more tenuous.The fortress village of Mabila burning after a failed ambush.The entrada would not be able to walk away from the Eastern Woodlands so easily, however. Shortly before he died, de Soto tried to use his claim as son of the Sun to force the chiefdom of Quigualtam, the largest and most powerful polity of the lower Mississippi, to give them safe passage down the Mississippi … and some tribute for the road, of course. Quigualtam wasn’t buying it. After a failed overland route near Texas, de Soto’s entrada (now led by Luis de Moscoso) built some ships and tried to sail down the Mississippi as quick as humanly possible.Quigualtam, of course, caught up with them. The small Spanish river fleet was met by Quigualtam’s fleet of nearly a hundred canoes, many of which held up to 70 people. These large canoes had awnings in the back housing the commanders; the awnings, paddles, weapons, and the boats themselves were all one color, with a different color for each boat. They sang and drummed in unison to pace their paddling; most of the songs could be summed up as “You Spaniards sure are in for it now!”. There was, naturally, a very loud scream at the end of each song.Once the boats got close, teams of divers jumped off the boats and into the water to board the Spanish’s pinnace boats. Other paddlers stood up and began firing volleys. They managed to kill, wound and capture some people, but made the decision not to engulf them entirely — Quigualtam’s plan was not to annihilate the Spaniards, but to harass, exhaust and terrify them enough that they understood who had the real power in the Mississippi, and would tell all of their countrymen back home. Which of course succeeded: every time the Spanish thought they out-sailed Quigualtam, they would hear the shouting again and the terror would start back up.Quigualtam’s cultural descendants are the Natchez, whose society remained strongly Mississippian well into the historic period, interacting diplomatically with the United States.Despite this successful expulsion of the Spaniards, it was only the beginning of the end for the Mississippian way of life as a whole. European ships were conducting slave raids all around the North American coast, as well as propping up some natives to become slave raiders themselves, which only expanded ever inward. This led to an increase in warfare, famine and mass uncertainty that undermined the political structure of the Eastern Woodlands, leading to the breakup of most Mississippian polities. It was only when the stresses from raids and starvation was at its peak that the first epidemics begin to sweep through; these events had lowered the immune system of natives. The Native American slave trade continued well into the age of the British colonies and early U.S., where Savannah, Georgia was an important port for the export of Native slaves.De Soto’s accounts were buried in the libraries of New Spain, records of English colonial interactions with remaining Mississippian polities fell into obscurity, and the survivors of the Mississippian breakup had long since adopted new, somewhat more egalitarian lifestyles. Many of the old Mississippian towns and cities were revisited again as abandoned mounds. Rather than believe they were built by the ‘savage’ Indians they were killing and enslaving, people came up with numerous myths of other more prestigious people who came to America before them, only to be killed off by the current inhabitants. The Aztecs. Hindus. Babylonians. The Lost 13th Tribe of Israel. The Welsh. Anyone but the indigenous people. Thomas Jefferson was one of the first, after archaeological digs of his own, to suggest that the mounds were in fact built by Native Americans.But the myth had always persisted. In fact, some pseudoscientific circles to this day still deny the origins of the mounds in favor of their preferred civilization. And the lack of respect Americans have had for the mounds is exhibited by their constant destruction throughout American history. Massive temple platforms were excavated so their clay could be used for road fill or embankments. Some were simply in the way of progress: right across the river from Cahokia was the remains of a smaller city which was nearly completely torn down to make room for St. Louis.“Big Mound” of St. Louis’ Mound City; this mound was first excavated to make way for a street, and later completely demolished to become fill dirt for the North Missouri Railroad.Only one deeply eroded “Sugarloaf Mound” remains in St. Louis. Many Mississippian sites are still on private land, their artifacts routinely dug up by plows while their discoverers don’t think much of it. And when they think they can get away with it, land developers still try to build on native sites and tear down mounds that are “in the way”.Alabama city destroying ancient Indian mound for Sam’s ClubProfessor says 900-year-old Indian mound in Oxford has been destroyedNew St. Louis Rams Stadium May Be Built On Ancient Native American CityThis has been simply another front of a campaign as old as the United States itself to destroy and mask the history and culture of Native Americans, so as to put European-American history and culture at the forefront. Today, we are, comparatively, much more sensitive to the real history before the United States, and also have the power and resources to protect and educate. But the damage inflicted over the centuries has been done, and we are still reeling from its effects. It will take a while before Americans really truly become aware of their country’s pre-European past and realize it’s something to be celebrated, not quietly ignored — or worse, bulldozed. Until then, we should try to educate and raise awareness as much as we can.Winterville Mounds, MississippiAs you can see, the Mississippi River did indeed give birth to some quite complex societies. You might also be wondering: why didn’t all this complexity happen earlier? Or reach the political strength of other river valley civilizations?Well, first off I don’t think you can ever get a detailed answer to that. Many people like to fall on geography as the sole determiner of human society, but humans, as we all know, are complicated and do not like to follow the rules. Nevertheless, while the fertility of the Mississippi watershed can’t be overstated, the region is also perhaps a bit … too fertile. Most other river valley civilizations are in relatively dry areas, with a narrow stretch of fertile floodplain that forces most people to huddle together and submit to a central managing authority. In the Mississippi, you can have great farmland by the river, but you can also go deeper into the many, mazelike tributary rivers into the woods and have almost just as productive a crop. This is harder to keep under control, which narrows the focus of elites for the most part. However, ancient China had much the same layout: a large swath of fertile land under a complex watershed of not one but two giant rivers. Horses, not available to the Mississippians, may have also played a part in such a difference. Or perhaps simply not enough time has passed since the Eastern Woodland’s adoption of agriculture in 1800 B.C. and the introduction of more efficient crops in 900 A.D. If you’re asking me, a historical particularist, I believe that the fate of human societies can ultimately fall on the decisions made by their communities. The ideologies that led to the creation of sprawling, intensely bureaucratic states simply did not come to fruition in the same way they did in China or Mesopotamia. Maybe that was influenced by the factors I mentioned, or the values were simply different.Yet a civilization it definitely was, with its own sophisticated cultures, politics, and artistic expression. Like many civilizations, it had its own peaks and dips, and with every dip rose a peak that was stronger than ever before. The collapse of the trade networks after 1400 was a dip the Mississippians had just begun to recover from. Considering the interruption of Mississippian history with the arrival of the Spanish, one has to wonder: what kind of peak might we have seen next?Further Reading:Mysteries of the Hopewell: Astronomers, Geometers, and Magicians of the Eastern Woodlands by William F. RomainAncient Cahokia and the Mississippians by Timothy R. PauketatMedieval Mississippians: The Cahokian World by Timothy R. Pauketat and Susan M. AltMapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South by Robbie Ethridge and Sheri M. Shuck-Hall - goes into the political instability caused by European activity that led to the collapse of many Mississippian politiesEpidemics and Enslavement: Biological Catastrophe in the Native Southeast, 1492-1715 by Paul Kelton - also discusses the shatter zone, but builds upon it by touching on the biological aspect. Particularly, it addresses the myth of the spread of European disease in the EW: rather than the wildfire-like instantaneous transmission many imagine, the worst of the epidemics only came about when the immune systems of the natives were weakened through stresses.The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704 by Carmen Tesser and Charles Hudson - very aptly named; in-depth exposition of the often overlooked protohistoric period, inbetween the jurisdictions of archaeologists and historians.Amazon.com: Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms by Charles Hudson and Robbie Ethridge - Contains actual primary sources of de Soto’s journey, augmented and illuminated by the interpretations of modern historical and archaeological data.