AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST RESEARCH ARTICLE Tales of Esnesv: Indigenous Oral Traditions about Trader-Diplomats in Ancient Southeastern North America Lee Bloch ABSTRACT Material assemblages excavated from sites across eastern North America indicate the existence of ancient exchange networks that once spanned from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes and from the Atlantic to the Ozarks. Yet identifying specific mechanisms of trade is more difficult. This article investigates oral traditions about esnesv—persons who acted as travelers, traders, diplomats, and acolytes—told in a Native American community in the US South whose members identify as of Muskogee (Creek) ancestry. Esnesv traveled great distances, enjoyed impunity in enemy territories, facilitated exchanges of knowledge and materials with important celestial qualities, and mediated peacemaking between peoples. Esnesv stories provide Indigenous perspectives on ancient exchange and diplomacy practices as a historically particular and archaeologically viable alternative to elite-controlled trade models. These stories describe trade goods that are simultaneously of earth and sky, furthering archaeological understandings of landscape and cosmology by rethinking difference, distance, and materiality. Esnesv threaded earthly fragments of the sky and Milky Way through peoples’ relationships with foreign others, making exchange and peace within a world of roads connecting diverse, place-based lifeways. In doing so, they rebalanced the world, facilitating circulations of mobile landscapes and cosmic substances that generated new connectivities and ways of being. [oral traditions, exchange, decolonizing methodologies, Native American and Indigenous peoples, North America] RESUMEN Los ensamblajes materiales excavados de sitios a traves´ de Norteamerica´ oriental indican la existencia de redes antiguas de intercambio que una vez se extendieron desde la costa del Golfo a los Grandes Lagos y desde el Atlantico´ a los Ozarks. Sin embargo, identificar mecanismos especıficos´ de comercio es mas´ difıcil.´ Este artıculo´ investiga tradiciones orales acerca de los esnesv —personas quienes actuaron como viajeros, comerciantes, diplomaticos´ y guardianes de la cultura— contadas en una comunidad indıgena´ americana en el Sur de Estados Unidos cuyos miembros se identifican como de ascendencia Muskogee (Creek). Los esnesv viajaron grandes distancias, disfrutaron impunidad en territorios enemigos, facilitaron intercambios de conocimiento y materiales con cualidades celestiales importantes, y mediaron negociaciones de paz entre los pueblos. Las historias de los esnesv proveen perspectivas indıgenas´ sobre practicas´ de intercambio y diplomacia antiguas como una alternativa historicamente´ particular y arqueologicamente´ viable a modelos de comercio controlados por la elite.´ Estas historias describen el comercio de bienes que son simultaneamente´ de la tierra y del cielo, fomentando entendimientos arqueologicos´ del paisaje y la cosmologıa´ al repensar la diferencia, la distancia y la materialidad. Los esnesv enhilaron fragmentos terrenales del cielo y de la Vıa´ Lactea´ a traves´ de las relaciones de personas con otros de fuera, haciendo intercambios y la paz dentro de un mundo de caminos conectando formas de vida diversas, basadas en lugar. Al hacerlo de AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 000, No. 0, pp. 1–14, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. C 2018 The Authors American Anthropologist published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13134 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. 2 American Anthropologist • Vol. 000, No. 0 • xxxx 2018 este modo, ellos reequilibraron el mundo, facilitando circulaciones de paisajes moviles´ y sustancias cosmicas´ que generaron conectividades y maneras de ser nuevas. [tradiciones orales, intercambio, metodologıas´ descolonizadoras, pueblos americanos nativos e indıgenas,´ Norteamerica´ ] The old men still relate with pride that . “the Lenapˆ ehada´ flowed throughout the deep history of the region, spanning string of white wampum beads, wapakeekq, which stretched from across the Great Lakes and the Gulf Coast, the Atlantic and the Atlantic to the Pacific, and on this white road their envoys the Ozarks. travelled from one great ocean to the other, safe from attack.” – Lenni Lenape (Delaware) oral tradition (Brinton 1888, 41; cited For example, at the Hopewell site in present-day in Lepper 1995, 56) Ohio (c. 100 BCE–500 CE), archaeologists excavated hundreds of pounds of obsidian from Yellowstone, about ot, humid air pressed against my skin as I leaned 2,400 kilometers away (Hatch et al. 1990), as well as H against the porch, taking a break from yard work. I mica from the Lower Appalachians. At Spiro Mounds in chatted with Hakope, an elder of a small Native American Oklahoma (c. 940–1540 CE), archaeologists unearthed elab- community in the US South that claims Muskogee (Creek) orately engraved Busycon whelk shells from the Gulf Coast. 1 ancestry. He said, “When I mow, I don’t start and do the Copper found at the Lake Jackson site in current northern whole yard like one thing, going back and forth. I don’t do it Florida (c. 1050–1500 CE) was mined from either the Ten- like a blanket—I don’t know a better word. I do little parts nessee or Great Lakes area (Jones 1982). Trade networks and connect them. I circle around buildings and the garden. of Swift Creek ceramics in Georgia and Florida (c. 100– I make paths so we don’t get our feet wet walking through 700 CE), a style made by stamping unfinished pots with tall grass.” wooden paddles engraved with curvilinear designs, spanned I paused. When I mow, I section the property into as far as 200 kilometers (Smith 1998; Stephenson and Snow grids, much as I would an archaeological excavation. Straight 1998; Wallis 2011; Wallis et al. 2010). Researchers trace lines. Hakope’s lawn reminds me of Tim Ingold’s (2011) these movements of people, pots, and paddles by tracking understanding of life as meshwork: as intraconnected lines imperfections in the stamped designs (indicating pots made of movement, knotted along loose paths and loose ends. using the same paddle) and by the chemical composition of Hakope’s mowing embodies a practice of making place the clay. by circling about and making paths. Nene, in Muskogee: That materials moved great distances is archaeologically “ways” in the sense of paths and of ways of doing things. obvious, yet understanding how and why they moved can Hence the phrase often evoked by my hosts, nene Mvskoke, be less so. These assemblages could have formed through the way of Muskogee peoples, their histories and futures: long-distance trade between distant peoples, down-the- a path between generations. I take Hakope’s lawn as an line trade between neighbors, or another process entirely. analytic into “roads and ways,” which centers on movement Early research theorized these materials as evidence of and interconnectivity as an alternative to the totalizing gaze large-scale religious movements that spread across the re- that fixes objects within Cartesian space (Cruikshank 2005; gion. More current approaches foreground the diversity 2 Fixico 2003; Ingold 2007). Nene constitute a mode of of local practices within shifting interregional networks.3 difference that, like the “string of white wampum beads” Chiefs may have controlled long-distance trade, mobiliz- evoked in the epigraph, extend to Indigenous exchange and ing nonlocal materials as prestige items and status indi- diplomacy practices. cators. Or, in different historical moments, leaders may have mobilized exchange goods alternatively for individ- INTRODUCTION ual self-aggrandizement or community-oriented earthly re- Thousands of earthen mounds dot the landscape of what is newal ceremonies (King 2003). currently the Southeastern and Midwestern United States. However, Indigenous perspectives rarely play a role These mounds were built by myriad peoples in myriad eras within these debates. I draw on oral traditions from a small over the last 5,500 years. Some served as platforms for Native American community in the US South whose mem- ceremonies and important structures, others took on ani- bers identify as having Muskogee (Creek) ancestry. I refer malesque or geometric forms, and still others housed the to this community by the pseudonym “Talwa,” meaning “the 4 remains of the dead. Burial mounds often contained grave tribal town”: a kind of political and spiritual community. goods manufactured from nonlocal materials, such as cop- These stories were given to me by an elder and heles-hayv per from the Great Lakes and Tennessee, mica from the (Maker of Medicine) named Hakope. They describe per- southern Appalachians, galena from Missouri and Illinois, sons called esnesv (iss-NEE-suh), which Hakope variously marine shell from coasts, and pipestone from across the re- translated as travelers, traders, diplomats, and acolytes (an- gion. These were often worked into elaborate craft forms other elder suggested “culture-bearers” as an alternative to and artistic images. Such assemblages index patterned, long- “acolytes”). Esnesv traveled across the Southeast and Mid- distance movements and exchange networks that ebbed and west, facilitating exchange and peace between autonomous