AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Tales of Esnesv: Indigenous Oral Traditions about Trader-Diplomats in Ancient Southeastern

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 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 in chatted with Hakope, an elder of a small Native American (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 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 . 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 , 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 Bloch • Tales of Esnesv 3 and internally diverse communities. Esnesv enjoyed Place-Thought speaks to modes of peoplehood that exceed impunity when traveling within enemy territories and used masterful subjects and inert objects. It is always both epis- diplomatic knowledge to resolve conflicts between warring temological and ontological: a way of knowing and of living communities. Esnesv carried specific goods that Hakope with others that cannot be reduced to discrete categories of called the Seven Trade Items, which have important ce- mind, body, and place. Similar to Watts’s Place-Thought, lestial qualities. For example, Hakope described shells as my hosts speak of “Power”: that which animates movement watery forms of stars in the night sky, and mica as frozen and the growth and decay of all things. Power is universal, smoke from the Milky Way. These items evoke a cosmos but its expression is geographically specific, evoking animat- in which worlds above and below are enfolded within one ing forces that always manifest in localized, emplaced ways. another. This is similar to ’s (2013, 7, 27) Here, I add that the land moves; it travels. These intercon- metaphor of “bundling” as a key historical process within nected roads and ways evoke modes of movement and dif- Southeastern cosmopolitics, speaking to agencies emergent ference that cannot be reduced to bounded places, people, within relational networks formed through the drawing to- cultures, objects, or cosmic realms, nor to self-contained gether and dispersing of people, landscapes, and things at political hierarchies. the convergence of earth and sky. Esnesv and the materials they carried were agents of Since the passage of the Native American Graves Pro- cosmic connectivities that rebalanced the world, offering tection and Repatriation Act of 1990 (NAGPRA), archaeo- insight into Indigenous diplomacies—and, by extension, logical scholarship has seen renewed interest in Indigenous sovereignties—that exceed the evolutionary category of oral traditions (Echo-Hawk 2000; Ferguson and Colwell- . Esnesv stories are “of,” and not just “about,” the Chanthaphonh 2006; Schmidt 2006; Whiteley 2002). This land and earthly minerals (Todd 2015; Watts 2013). LeAnne period has produced decolonizing methodologies that center Howe (2014, 75) argues that mounds are stories told in the archaeological theory and practice on living Indigenous com- “reciprocal embodiment between people and land.” Like- munities, values, knowledges, and realities (Atalay 2006, wise, esnesv routes were stories told in the movements of 2012; Smith and Wobst 2005; Watkins 2000). Oral tradi- earthly and celestial materials (76). They evoke lifeways ani- tions about esnesv provide an Indigenous perspective on an- mated by roads and ways tracked by mobile landscapes, paths cient exchange networks, diplomacy practices, landscapes, that gathered distant peoples and places within one another. and cosmologies that can help interpret and explain the ar- Esnesv rebalanced intertribal politics through peacemaking chaeological record. These stories offer a culturally partic- as they carried materials that drew together earth, sky, and ular alternative to elite-controlled trade models, describing the four directions. So, too, did gathering, crafting, and how esnesv facilitated interregional exchange and used spe- depositing these materials enact cosmic and rebalancing cialized diplomatic knowledges in peacemaking processes. movement by drawing on the entanglement of worlds above Moreover, the Seven Trade Items evoke a cosmos in which and below. Many of these cosmic substances were deposited earth and sky are threaded within one another, collapsing in mounds and cemeteries as pathways or portals to the other apparent distance and categorical difference. This approach side of life. Perhaps materials exchanged from northwards moves beyond structuralist interpretive frameworks that or southwards also carried resonances from worlds above imagine Southeastern cosmologies in terms of categorically and below. As such, the movement of landscapes is always discrete, supernatural upper and lower realms. Instead, es- multiple and relational, as people and things are mutually nesv stories describe a moral geography of “white roads” constituted and are “placed” in renewed (if shifting) balance (nene hvtke), which has a double meaning of “the Milky with one another. This rebalancing required nuanced Way” and “peaceable relations” (Bloch 2018, 136–70; on knowledge about geography and celestial movements. Muskogee color symbolism, see Lankford 1993). Intertwin- Esnesv stories can also rebalance through ing exchange and diplomacy, land and sky, esnesv threaded Indigenous knowledges, transforming the discipline by re- earthly fragments of celestial bodies through peoples’ rela- configuring its constitutive power relationships, cultural tionships with distant and foreign others, helping make peace archives, and genealogies. In describing how many nonlocal between communities. items and ideas moved about the landscape, oral traditions Place is not static and fixed but is mobile and rela- about esnesv constitute independent lines of evidence that tional. The land moves across itself, carried by esnesv, complement the , beyond the former, traversing paths between peoples with different ways of merely being supported by the latter. Although others have moving through the world without collapsing heterogene- successfully utilized ethnological approaches to oral tradi- ity. Mohawk and Anishnaabe scholar Vanessa Watts (2013) tions (Hall 1997; Lankford 2007, 2008), that is not my aim argues that the land itself is animate, thinking, and feeling. here. Eschewing the illusion of the view from nowhere, I The movements of human and other-than-human beings treat these stories as gifts from an elder that provide in- are themselves expressions of the land’s diffuse intention- sight on their own terms (Fixico 2003, 22; Watts 2013, ality. Watts calls this phenomenon “Place-Thought,” or “a 21). However, these stories also represent a perspective non-distinctive space where place and thought were never located within a particular community, and other com- separated because they never could or can be separated.” munities may tell different kinds of stories (Ferguson and 4 American Anthropologist • Vol. 000, No. 0 • xxxx 2018

Colwell-Chanthaphonh 2006). As such, this is also a call for occurred in the Mississippian Period (c. 850–1600 CE) those stories. It is an effort to begin drawing together per- in the and Southeast. The Mississippian spectives from different peoples and places, much like esnesv refers not to a monolithic entity but a complicated themselves once did, to build more balanced, located, and process whereby different peoples unevenly participated in decolonial knowledges. interregional networks and selectively adopted economic, This kind of rebalancing through decolonial storytelling political, and ritual practices according to divergent local is vital because it can animate futures that are not monop- histories (Pauketat 2007). olized by colonial regimes as mere extensions of Eurocen- Hakope recounted oral traditions he learned in his youth tric histories and genealogies. Esensv stories disrupt popular about esnesv: persons who traveled and facilitated exchange discourses that frame ancient Native American peoples as relationships between autonomous communities. He trans- static and isolated communities with clear insides and out- lated esnesv alternatively as travelers, traders, diplomats, sides. They also help clear away colonial assumptions that and acolytes. In his penchant for etymology, Hakope ex- dominate archaeological discourses (Bloch 2014; Shoemaker plained that in Muskogee, nesetv means to buy, trade, or sell. 2002; Smith 2012) and speak to diplomacies, sovereignties, The nominal form, nesv, can mean buyer or merchant. The and ways of being with others in place that exceed the log- prefix es- signifies “the means by which” (Martin and Mauldin ics of settler nation-states (Watts 2013). In what follows, I 2004, 81, 352). A preliminary definition of esnesv could be discuss the general descriptions of esnesv given to me, in- “the means of trade.” Although Hakope described esnesv as a cluding Hakope’s four-fold translation as travelers, traders, special status of men and women, he was clear that they were diplomats, and acolytes. Some readers may be left wanting not a high or elite group. They traveled along regular, well- more detail, but this is in part the nature of the stories I established routes across the Southeast and Midwest, carry- was given. I next attend to narratives about particular es- ing exchange items and coordinating larger trading parties.5 nesv, highlighting their role as peacemakers. I then turn to Esnesv usually traveled in groups, such as in twos and fours, matters of landscape, discussing the Seven Trade Items. In although in some stories they traveled alone. They also led concluding, I argue that esensv stories hint at worlds beyond groups of persons to predetermined meeting places to trade. the limits of inert materialisms and private property, de- Esnesv spoke multiple languages and learned about different scribing peoples enrolled within mobile landscapes as beings peoples’ lifeways: skills important for their work. In addition much older and larger than human lives. to material goods, esnesv carried ideas and news: this com- munity had a good year for purple shell, that community had ESNESV, THEIR STORIES a good harvest, and so on. Esnesv used knowledge cultivated One afternoon, Hakope and I stood on his porch, smoking through their travels to mediate conflicts between peoples, cigarettes as we rested between chores. The day before, at times making peace between warring communities. I had visited Fort Walton Temple in the Florida In her research on the De Soto chronicles, Robbie Panhandle with another Talwa person, David. Originally Ethridge (2017, 67) notes descriptions of well-maintained built around 850 CE, today the eight-meter-tall mound roads and paths that connected the region circa 1540, as well erupts out of the city of Fort Walton Beach, simultaneously as roles such as burden bearers, interpreters, and “profes- hidden by trees and surrounded by sidewalks and store- sional guides” that “had extensive knowledge of the land- fronts. Our conversation shifted to the nonlocal materials scape over long distances” (73–78). Some of these per- excavated from Fort Walton and other mounds, and then sons were doubtlessly esnesv. According to Hakope, esnesv to the exchange routes that had once connected the region. could move between enemy territories with impunity (see Archaeologically speaking, mound building and associated also Ethridge 2017, 78). In fact, harming esnesv would in- interregional exchange networks cycled in material scale vite devastation upon one’s person, family, and community. over several thousand years (Anderson 1996; Milner 2004). William Bartram ([1781] 1998, 279) noted this phenomenon Ancient Native American peoples built the first archaeologi- in 1781, writing that neither traders nor their companions cally known mounds circa 3500 BCE (Saunders et al. 2005). were attacked even when traveling between enemy nations: Mound building peaked again at (c. 1750 BCE “Although my apprehensions on this occasion, were some- to as late as 970 BCE) in what is now . Excavated whattumultuous,sincetherewaslittlehope,ontheprinciple materials include copper, galena, hematite, magnetite, soap- of reason, should I be left alone, of escaping cruel captiv- stone, greenstone, and quartz sourced to places across the ity, and perhaps being murdered by the Chactaws [sic]; for Southeast and Midwest (Gibson 1994a, 1994b). Miniature the company of traders was my only security, as the Indi- jasper owls manufactured at Poverty Point have been found ans never attack the traders on the road, although they be as far away as central Florida (Lien et al. 1974). Mound build- trading with nations at enmity with them.” Additionally, ing peaked again in the Middle Woodland in the Midwest Hakope stated that esnesv were required to be honest. Any (c. 200 BCE–500 CE) and the South (until c. 750 CE). who lied risked being killed by other esnesv. To Hakope, During this period, multiple interaction networks emerged this suggested that esnesv may have been analogous to a clan across the region, shifting over time and according to because all esnesv were responsible for the actions of others local contexts (Carr 2006; Wright 2017). The fourth peak among their membership. Bloch • Tales of Esnesv 5

FIGURE 1. Forked-eye motifs in Mississippian art, drawing by Antonio J. Waring and Preston Holder. From Waring and Holder (1945). (Reproduced with permission from the American Anthropological Association)

FIGURE 2. Cast of engraved shell fragment from in Oklahoma featuring forked-eye motifs. Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, catalog number A407190. (Photograph by author) [This figure appears in color in the online issue]

Hakope described a technology and dress of esnesv. free hand, esnesv carried a staff with four feathers: an owl They carried their goods in a basket on their backs, called a feather, red-tailed-hawk feather, eagle feather, and song- ‘sunkv, or burden basket (see Hudson 1992, 456). A now- bird feather. Esnesv painted their cheeks and eyes with deceased Talwa basket maker taught Hakope that this bas- straight, white lines—maybe, Hakope wondered aloud, ket was made using four kinds of wood that had special like the forked-eye motif in Mississippian art (a marking importance and manifested medicine colors.6 With their also found on peregrine falcons and hornworm caterpillars) 6 American Anthropologist • Vol. 000, No. 0 • xxxx 2018

FIGURE 3. Pochtecha in the Florentine Codex, Book IX: The Merchants. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Med. Palat. 219, f. 326v / f. 346v. (Reproduced with permission from MiBACT) [This figure appears in color in the online issue]

(Figure 1 and 2). Here, Hakope noted marked similarities tionary, derive from a Greek word meaning a doubling or to pochtechas depicted in Aztec codices. At his suggestion, folded piece of paper. One might say that esnesv folded not I searched the Internet for comparative images (Figure 3). declarations but distant peoples and landscapes into each Pochtechas are associated with distant regions and state for- other. This image can situate inquiry into Indigenous diplo- mations unlike what existed in eastern North America, and macies as an alternative to the Eurocentric genealogy of the thus are not identical with esnesv. Yet it is possible that nation-state. esnesv were part of a broader, if variable, North American Yet, esnesv were not just traders or diplomats in the phenomenon.7 usual sense. I asked Hakope: At least some of the goods they Hakope suggested that in facilitating connections be- carried were sacred and animate beings in their own right, tween diverse and distant people, esnesv acted like diplo- were they not (Pauketat 2013, 6; Wallis 2013)? Hakope re- mats. Indeed, Pauketat (2004, 124; 2007, 155–56) also sponded that many decades ago, other Talwa people trans- draws a connection between peacemaking and long-distance lated esnesv as “acolytes of sacred knowledge and vessels.” exchange, theorizing a pax Cahokiana that spread through Esnesv carried teachings as well as materials. These included the American Bottom in the early Mississippian Period. Es- esotericknowledgeandpractices,suchasceremonialdances. ensv sometimes used their knowledge of different peoples’ Jason Baird Jackson and Victoria Levine (2002) also ar- cultural practices and material conditions to create peace gue based on ethnological research that certain ceremonial between warring communities. Their stories tell of travel dances were exchanged between Native American commu- within a world of multilingual and multiethnic communi- nities in the Southeast. They describe this as a kind of cultural ties connected through exchange, kinship, migration, and hybridity that extends beyond the colonial moment. Indeed, war. Yet I was hesitant about the term “diplomat” given Hakope believes that esnesv likely played a major role in local the state-driven baggage of the concept. Hakope suggested and interregional cultural transformations, including those we look up the etymology. “Diplomatic” shares a history thatcharacterizedtheMississippianworld.Here,imaginaries with “diploma.” Both, according to the Oxford English Dic- of bounded communities or cultural areas give way to ones Bloch • Tales of Esnesv 7 involving movement along paths: roads connecting emer- accomplish through specialized knowledge and skills, includ- gent lifeways. ing competency in multiple languages and an ability to speak Talwa oral traditions provide an Indigenous perspec- with people from opposing communities. In both stories, en- tive on ancient exchange practices, providing insight into emy peoples become enrolled in long-lasting peace through assemblages of nonlocal materials excavated from mound trade, eating together, or cohabitating. In these ways, Talwa sites from across the Southeast and Midwest. Esnesv oral traditions situate esnesv within other historically partic- were not “travelers” and “traders” in a narrow sense, but ular practices, institutions, and processes. “diplomats” and “acolytes” who facilitated movements of The first story begins with a boy and girl born to a materials, knowledges, and practices. Mississippian archae- Creek town but captured in a raid by a warring nation ology, in particular, has historically been dominated by elite- (Hakope suggested Sauk Fox, but was not certain). The controlled exchange models, yet the evolutionary roots of children were subsequently adopted into the enemy town: these frameworks obscure historical particularity (Pauketat But those children were hauled off and some of their parents, 2007). Oral traditions about esnesv contribute to more- family were killed and some survived. But as happened in many recent research that complicates these frameworks by fore- cases, they were adopted into the new group to replace children grounding horizontal modes of social differentiation as well and adults who had been killed there by someone else. as historical and regional variation (Blitz 2010; Cobb 2003). And because there were two of them, and there was already Thomas Foster (2007) advocates building archaeological another captive or two, they kept their language up. And I’m models based on culturally particular institutions described told that when speakers of another language were captive, they in written records, such as tribal towns led by councils never tried to beat their language out of them. If there were as an alternative to the traditional archaeology concepts of other people that spoke that language, they encouraged them to continue speaking it and to know their new language, which was “cultures” or “chiefdoms.” Political processes of tribal towns just real practical common sense.8 include fissioning, fusing, and budding off from one another, as well as the cohabitation of distinct peoples in what are The siblings continued speaking Muskogee among them- called “twin towns” (Blitz 1999; Jenkins 2009). Like these selves. Years later, an esnesv passing through recognized the studies, oral traditions about esnesv help identify historically language: particular exchange and peacemaking practices, illuminating And so when the esnesv heard them talking with each other, and historical processes that characterized tribal towns and par- heard Creek, he inquired, and was told by the leader: “Oh yes, allel institutions. they used to be Muskogees when they were children. But they Moreover, one could interpret esnesv stories as long- have now been changed into Sauk Fox,” or whatever this group is. distance socialities emergent within bodily and emplaced And he was invited to chat with them. And he asked them where they were from, if they remembered when they came from these contact vis-a-vis` exchange. Returning to Watts’s (2013) people, if they remembered their tribal town. Yes, they did. They concept of Place-Thought, esnesv facilitated movements knew their clan, they knew the names of their relatives. And the of fragments of the earth, including minerals, medicines, esnesv told them that, “Well, some of your relatives are still alive, and foodstuffs. As they did so, esnesv brought distant peo- and I know them. That is the town next to where I live.” ples and places into indirect earthly and corporeal contact. And they said, “Well, tell them that we miss our family—or miss This echoes Stockbridge-Munsee archaeologist Robert Hall’s our former family—but we’re happy here. We’re well treated, (1997) argument that the mingling of bodily substances was and we have beautiful children.” central to ancient Indigenous diplomacies. Hall argues for Of course, he agreed, because he could see the children. a broadly Amerindian understanding of body and soul as flowing substances that mix and recombine through contact The esnesv carried news about the siblings to their for- between persons and between persons and things. Here, ad- mer family. Grateful that their children had been cared for, ditional consideration of Indigenous peacemaking practices they sent the esnesv back with fine gifts to present to the and landscapes is needed. other town’s council (and not, Hakope explicitly stated, that town’s headman): INDIGENOUS DIPLOMACIES Well, that whole village decided to do the proper thing by our Hakope shared narratives about particular esnesv. Although culture and our tradition at the time. And so they prepared a Hakope suggested such narratives are rare in Talwa oral basket, a ‘sunkv basket, which is the burden on the back, that had traditions, they give detail to the general descriptions that a beautiful white deerskin—probably an albino deer—but it was constitute the bulk of his knowledge. Two of them tell of a very beautiful deerskin. It had been worked into the softest of buckskin leather. They gathered up several purple mussel shells, esnesv who helped make peace between warring commu- which were a high trophy. And according to the story, there was nities (for full transcriptions, see Appendix A). These nar- an engraved cup and a large quantity of yaupon leaves, which really ratives provide insight into Indigenous exchange and diplo- didn’t weigh a whole lot—that wasn’t much of a burden—and macy practices in the context of multilingual communities, several strings of pearls. long-distance kinships, and community-fusion processes in And they instructed the ‘snesv to return to that village and to take the Native South. The dramatic tension of these stories turns these gifts to the Council. They didn’t instruct him to give the on the transformation of war into peace, which the esnesv gifts to a headman in person, but to give them to the Council, 8 American Anthropologist • Vol. 000, No. 0 • xxxx 2018

to use as they thought best. And that they were sending these in I’ll not kill you.” And he asked the man to come with him to the appreciation for the thoughtfulness, the gentleness, and the care next village. with which they had shown this community’s former children. And the man said, “I can’t, they are our enemy. They are why I am Upon receiving these gifts, the first town reciprocated, in deep trouble.” And the ‘snesv reminded him that he could pass sending foodstuffs and other materials not available further through the territory unharmed, as could anyone with him. So the boy really didn’t have much choice. If he had turned his back and south. This opened a sustained exchange relationship be- disagreed with the guy, he probably would’ve been killed right tween the two peoples, which sent regular trading parties then and there. But so he agreed. to meet midway: The two proceeded together to a nearby village, which It was agreed upon on which moon that the two groups would was at war with the man’s people. Realizing that the root of leave, and what route they would travel. Which meant that they met somewhere in the middle along the way: probably near Mount the strife was hunger, the esnesv suggested a feast between Cheaha in North . That was not quite as far for the other the two peoples: group to travel, but they had to go through some mountainous But because the esnesv had made these arrangements, and paid territory, which was slow. And this group whose camp I used to pearls for them, this enemy tribe decided that they would give know well, but it’s now under Lake Seminole, they had to travel this boy a four, five person escort back to his community because the longer distance, but most of it was flat. And a good bit of it they feared there might be other rogue people, hungry people they could do by water. But anyway, they met twice a year in the out there. And as the boy thanked them, they came to understand given spot, and that relationship carried on until the Removal to that the whole community was hurting badly. And that’s why Oklahoma. they had been harassing those people: picking at them, shooting This story illustrates how practices of adopting enemy at them, trying to kill them when they were out by themself and captives and war itself contained the seeds of peace. By rec- take the food. ognizing complex kinships, an esnesv cultivated lasting peace And the ‘snesv suggested that they had plenty. Perhaps they should and friendship between once-warring communities. A sec- share. And so they thought that was a good idea and they gathered ond story likewise tells of an esnesv who transformed war up some baskets of extra food—grains, whatever they had—and a group of people went with this young man to his village and they into peace, this time by identifying and resolving the under- brought food. And I imagine—it doesn’t say this in the story—but lying cause of conflict. In this narrative, an esnesv traveled I imagine that there was a great deal of diplomacy. They didn’t with two elaborately carved wooden plaques, yaupon, pearl, say, “We heard you are starving and so we’ve come to give you and purple river mussels. A stranger on the road attacked food.” They simply said, “You are our neighbors. You live where we live now, so let us have a feast to welcome you.” Of course, him, not realizing his foe was an esnesv: they brought all the food for the feast.

The ‘snesv was attacked by a lone warrior who shot an arrow at And the feast they did have. It went off well. Everybody got fed. him, thinking that this was a lone Indian and that he could kill him And these people said unto them, “You’re not so bad after all. and take his pack and goods and feed his family. And the reason Thereforth we’ll be friends, your town and our town.” And the he did it was that, [was that] his family was very hungry for some two towns came together and formed a new nation. And the ‘snesv reason. I don’t know if they were outcasts, bad weather, but he went about his business on further north and then back. was in difficult shape. So he shot at the ‘snesv. And being in that part of the South, and being late in the day, it was chilly. So the As the two peoples made peace and ate together, they ‘snesv was wearing a good covering: some kind of jacket, which also covered the plate. The arrow, whatever it was made from, became one as a new nation. stuck into the wooden plate and knocked the ‘snesv down on his This second narrative locates esnesv as central to what back. could have been a fusion or “twinning” process (in which two tribal towns cohabitate but maintain separate iden- And the ‘snesv just laid there, probably out of breath for a moment or two, and probably frightened as hell for a moment or two. tities). Like the first, it illustrates detailed worlds and And then the person who shot at him and knocked him down institutions characterized by multilingualism, adoption, con- came up, and bent over to see what he could get. And I’m sure he flict, and feasting, in which esnesv cultivated peace and ex- thought there was untold riches and treasure. In this case it wasn’t change. In this way, oral traditions can describe complex there. But this ‘snesv waited to the right moment and grabbed and multifaceted entanglements characteristic of Indigenous this young gentleman by the throat and the hair and whipped him . . . out of the clearing or standing position right down on his political and diplomatic practices, adding humanizing de- back, and stood on his arm, and knee on his belly, or something tail and depth to archaeological understandings of ancient like that. Any rate he was pinned down real good and he had his peoples. knife out, about to . . . stab the young man, or at least cut his throat. EARTHLY FRAGMENTS OF THE SKY After the esnev gained the upper hand, he learned that If the diplomatic work of esnesv folded distant peoples and this man’s people were starving; this was why he was attack- places into one another, so too did they thread together ing travelers on the road. The esnesv spared the man: earth and sky. Indeed, other researchers note that Cahokian peoples in the American Bottom gathered basalt and red Well, the ‘snesv decided not to kill him and let go, and stepped back, and offered a hand to help him up. And he believed the cedar from spiritually important places (Kelly and Brown sincerity of this young man. And apparently he was not too old— 2012). Swift Creek pots (c. 100–700) can be understood he might have been a late teenager. And he said, “Very well then, in terms of distributed personhood (i.e., how pots index Bloch • Tales of Esnesv 9 social relationships) and as animate beings in their own right to resemble the Milky Way. When these stones are wet, (Wallis 2013). Parallel to the concept of nene, Pauketat’s striations and swirls become visible—again, resembling the (2013) theory of bundling evokes the “lines of movement” Milky Way. Copper is sun colored when first mined from through which people, places, and things were drawn to- the ground but turns green as it “breathes” or oxidizes upon gether and dispersed (see also Keane 2003, 421). These exposure to the air of the Upper World. Copper, soapstone, movements generate materially, socially, symbolically, and greenstone, and mica are described as “living” and “limber” spiritually efficacious and historically situated assemblages. stones, particularly in that the first three change color or Prestige-object models can obscure that some artifacts were “transform” when exposed to oxygen or fire, respectively. likely inalienable possessions tied to ceremonial knowledge, These minerals make a duality with sycamore, cypress, and although oral traditions about esnesv subvert any dichotomy sweetgum trees, which also have Milky Way connections in between sacred knowledge and trade (Scarry and Stepon- Talwa oral traditions (Bloch 2018, 28, 149–56). Moreover, aitis 2016; Steponaitis et al. 2011; Steponaitis 2016). This Hakope explained that the Seven Trade Items may have a scholarship opens landscape and ontology as an alternative special duality (or doubleness) with fourteen medicine plants to elite-controlled exchange and structuralist cosmological in the town’s bundle. models. In this sense, the Seven Trade Items are simultaneously According to Hakope, esnesv carried what he called the of Upper and Other Worlds. This draws attention to craft Seven Trade Items: mica, copper, soapstone and greenstone materials as an alternative to interpretive approaches that (a single category), yaupon leaves, garfish teeth and scales, identify representational content in terms of categorically shells, and freshwater pearls. Although these were not the discrete Upper and Other Worlds. Nor can these worlds only goods that esnesv carried, these seven categories of be reduced to “beliefs” regarding supernatural realms con- items had important celestial and Milky Way qualities.9 The structed in opposition to a predefined nature (Fowles 2013, Seven Trade Items should be understood in the context of 5–6; Pauketat 2013, 5–6; Watts 2013, 21). The Seven Trade the three-tiered cosmos common among Southeastern Na- Items enfold earth and sky within one another. Addition- tive American peoples, consisting of an Upper World, a ally, these ontologies are not absolute but place-based: they Middle World, and Other or Lower World (Hudson 1992, emerge in acts of coming together and walking with others, 122–32; for applications to Mississippian art, see Knight, as roads and as ways (Johnson and Larsen 2017; Sundberg Brown, and Lankford 2001; Reilly 2004). Anthropologi- 2014). Hakope recalls some debate in his youth in which cal interpretations of this cosmos often frame the Upper varieties of chert were sometimes included within the Seven and Other Worlds as supernatural realms that exist in op- Trade Items. Another Talwa person, David, suggested that position to one another. In contrast, according to Talwa different peoples would probably list different items. Power, teachings, the Upper World is the world above: a realm of he noted, is geographically specific. While there were Seven air, light, order, and celestial phenomena. Birds fly in the Trade Items, different peoples might include different goods Upper World. Breath is of the Upper World. The Other (or among these. What items were important was contingent Lower) World is of earth, water, darkness, and disorder. upon specific, place-based expressions of Power (or vital Caves are in the Other World. Disorder (or reconfigura- force). tion) is not inherently bad but can be dangerous in certain Talwa oral traditions call attention to paths of move- contexts. Additionally, order is relational. For example, ment and material-semiotic qualities of certain goods that stars are not fixed in place, but they remain constant in gathered together distant peoples and places, as well as earth their relationships to each other as they move. The Up- and sky (Pauketat 2013; Wallis 2013). Esnesv carried little per and Other Worlds cannot interact with one another migrating fragments of land: earthly apparitions of stars and directly. Interaction and balance is achieved through the the Milky Way. The paths traveled by these materials, which Middle World—a surface within which humans generally exist at the edge of earth and sky, brought distant peoples dwell—which hangs in between the other two worlds. As into relationships of exchange and peace as they shared in such, the Seven Trade Items call attention to the significance the geographically specific expressions of the Power of other of land and minerals within Southeastern Native Ameri- places. In fact, one of the phrases that Talwa people use can cosmologies, complicating interpretive frameworks that fortheMilkyWay,nene hvtke (or “white road”), can also cast Indigenous realities in terms of discrete supernatural mean peaceable relations. A similar metaphor is used in the worlds. Lenape oral tradition at the epitaph, which evokes a “string As stones, metals, shells, and fish scales, the Seven Trade of white wampum beads” and a “white road” upon which “en- Items are Other Worldly materials. Yet they also have qual- voys traveled . . . safe from attack.” As such, peacemaking, ities that link them to the Upper World and often the Milky exchange, earth, and sky are inseparably entangled. Esnesv Way. At certain times of the year, Talwa people describe the stories present not a world of geographical boundaries but Milky Way as a great river. During this time, stars are shells one of seemingly different and distant places and peoples and pearls. Mica is frozen smoke from the Creator’s fire, woven through one another. A means by which landscapes another manifestation of the Milky Way. The dust created traveled as a confluence of agencies at the intersections of sky from pecking and grinding soapstone and greenstone is said and earth, esnesv routes brought different ways of existing 10 American Anthropologist • Vol. 000, No. 0 • xxxx 2018 into contact. Moving beyond dichotomies of the supernatu- these through peoples’ relationships with distant and foreign ral/natural, the key analytic is movement across difference others in the making of peace. that enfolds seemingly disparate entities within one another Yet oral traditions do not only describe past events. and rebalances the world. They can also communicate political critiques of the present (Womack 1999, 57)—in this case, of settler-colonial prac- CONCLUSION tices of externalizing, capturing, and exterminating differ- Once, during a formal oratory, Hakope described gift giving ence. The roads and ways of esnesv describe practices of in terms of beads of light connecting people. Imagery of living together peacefully as a mode of difference that ex- light evokes the Upper World: good feelings and relation- tends from mobile landscapes without absolute boundaries ships. Beads, historically important exchange items, were in or fixed categorical oppositions. Here, I find it useful to think ancient times crafted from shell and pearl: watery, Other with Anna Tsing’s (2012) concept of nonscalability. Scalable Worldly images of stars. As Hakope explained, holes drilled systems are those that can be expanded or be transported to through beads create portals: an absence of solid material al- new locations without transforming their nature—for exam- lowing for other kinds of flow. In this moment, trade beads ple, “scaling up” an enterprise or zooming in on pixel-based, evoke a material poetics of landscape, movement, and con- digital images. The elements that make up these systems nectivity that weave water, air, and stars within affective are “removed from formative social relations” and can be relationships. moved about without being altered. Tsing calls these nonso- If an esnesv carries shell from the Gulf Coast inland, cial landscape elements, or nonsoels (508). Geographically perhaps they carry a piece of that place and its Power else- specific expressions of Power draw attention to the place- where. That esnesv might also carry pieces of all those who based constellations and convergences of vital forces that had touched that shell or helped it along its formation, and in animate one’s movements. Such existence is not bounded doing so had become a part of that shell. Tracing the shell’s and held within discrete bodies and objects, as if life were ridges and engravings with one’s fingers, others might have a form of private property or something that one “has,” but remembered from whom and where it came. Perhaps they rather emerges within the transformational possibilities of remembered a knowledge or dance carried with it. Maybe living together within mobile landscapes. The ways of es- they just held it, no longer remembering from where it nesv were connective tissue, a means by which landscapes came. Archaeologists excavating that shell centuries years traveled and heterogeneous peoples learned to live amicably later would also become enrolled in its nene, or path. The together. land traverses across itself through the means of esnesv, re- Esnesv stories not only sharpen archaeological inter- balancing the world through paths that entangle divergent, pretation but also challenge the methodological centrality place-based ways of moving and expressions of Power within of nonsoels, the orienting imaginary of inert and deadened one another. “objects” so central in the operations of capitalist and settler Esnesv stories provide Indigenous perspectives on ex- violence. In Leslie Marmon Silko’s (1991) novel Almanac of change, diplomacy, landscape, and cosmos in eastern North the Dead, the land itself surges into revolutionary movement America. They evoke paths of balance within worlds of het- as the stories of characters scattered across the Americas erogeneous ways: peoplehoods and landscapes connected slowly converge over the course of eight hundred pages. and transformed by networks of roads. Although dominant As a sort of composite entity, the land acts through emer- settler discourses historically devalued Indigenous oral tra- gent and unintended confluences of agencies, as peoples with ditions aprioriover the previous century, ensesv stories en- diverse and divergent projects and intentions gather and dis- hance archaeological interpretation by providing insights not perse. Its movements are patient and slow, much more so available from the material record alone. These oral tradi- than anticipated within teleological settler narratives that tions provide alternatives to models of elite-controlled trade proclaim the completion of the colonial project. and categorically distinct, supernatural Upper and Other Life emanates from landscapes—from the meeting of Worlds. Perhaps some of the mound-based burials assumed the earth, air, sun, and stars. As such, we might begin to to have been chiefs were in fact esnesv interred with objects imagine an archaeology without objects, animated by In- communicating their value to the community. As travelers- digenous histories that are not yet foreclosed. Perhaps, to traders-diplomats-acolytes, esnesv traversed the landscape rephrase Zoe Todd (2015), it is increasingly necessary to and facilitated exchange relationships between distant remember how to listen to stories told in the earth’s bones. communities. In addition to material goods, they carried Even the slow apocalypse that is settler colonialism (Whyte knowledge, teachings, and practices, facilitating connections 2017) represents a mere blip in the larger lives of these between culturally and linguistically diverse and geograph- landscapes, entities who will one day also see their fall. Es- ically distant peoples. They and their companions traveled nesv were the vessels through which bits and pieces of vital with impunity across enemy territories and utilized knowl- landscapes moved about and flowed. These paths folded ap- edge cultivated through their work to resolve conflicts and parent distance across itself through the gravitational pulls create peace between communities. Esnesv carried impor- of the materials that esnesv carried. Entering a space in tant materials that drew together earth and sky, weaving which mind, body, and place—and being and knowing—are Bloch • Tales of Esnesv 11 nondistinctive (Watts 2013), these stories speak to the cur- Garber 2007), which foregrounds interregional connectivity be- vatures of Indigenous spacetimes generated by landscapes on tween different communities. In a Hopewell context (c. 200 the move and to Indigenous diplomacies beyond ethnocen- BCE–500 CE), Christopher Carr (2006) argues that nonlocal tric genealogies of the nation-state. Implicit in words passed materials likely traveled through a variety of means that were from body to body, breath to breath over generations, are motivated by local situations and agents, as well as certain broadly ways of inhabiting landscapes and living peacefully with oth- shared cosmological frameworks and aesthetic sensibilities. The ers, human and otherwise. The steps of esnesv echo between oral traditions described here suggest that these factors often the past and present, the sound of a beating heart that pushes co-occur. a kind of blood through beings larger, and much older, than 4. When I began my research, the Talwa leadership asked that I ourselves. protect the privacy of the community. Due to both the risk of racist violence and the politics of Native American identity in the US South, Hakope and certain other individuals wish to remain Lee Bloch Department of Anthropology and American anonymous. Studies Program, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02453, Historically, the Muskogee Confederacy was made up of USA; [email protected] several dozen such tribal towns in what is currently Georgia, Al- abama, and northern Florida (Ethridge 2003; Foster 2007). Each town maintained significant political autonomy and sent repre- NOTES sentatives to a national council. In the nineteenth century, Talwa Acknowledgments. I thank my Talwa teachers, particularly people’s ancestors avoided removal by various means. Some fam- Hakope, for their patience and teachings. I also thank Editor-in- ilies continued to practice ceremonies, called the busk, in pri- Chief Deborah Thomas and the anonymous peer reviewers, whose vate. Although the Talwa community is not federally recognized, feedback greatly enhanced the article and to whom I owe the under- members do maintain relationships with persons enrolled in the lying ideas glossed as “rebalancing” in the introduction. This paper Muskogee (Creek) Nation and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Ad- grew from a presentation at the 2015 Society for American Archae- ditionally, although political relationships often shift over time, ology annual meeting and a UVA brown bag organized by Adria a 1992 letter from the Muskogee (Creek) Nation Office of the LaViolette. Martha Caldwell, Jessica Boynton-Rigney, and Jeffrey Principal Chief recognizes Hakope for undergoing a sixteen-year Hantman provided extensive editorial feedback, as did Lise Dobrin, training process to become a Maker of Medicine and states that Ryan Koons, Chris Kimball, Hakope, and several other Talwa people. his “unique ability to access the oral traditions of [Creek peoples Jackie Pozza from the Field Museum provided me with information in the area] should be treasured.” A copy of this letter is kept in a about the so-called “Moundville Spider.” Funding for my research state archives. was generously provided by the National Science Foundation, the 5. English speakers sometimes Anglicized esnesv to “sneezers.” Ac- Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Amer- cording to Talwa oral traditions, one of these routes went along ican Philosophical Society, the Explorers Club Washington Group, the Gulf Coast and before circling back through and the University of Virginia Institute of the Humanities & Global inland territories. A second, smaller circuit was nested within the Cultures. first. However, one of Hakope’s narratives describes how an en- snesv coordinated a more contingent route between two peoples, 1. This community is distinct from the (Creek) Nation in so some variability is evident. Oklahoma. 6. Hakope suggested that ‘svnkv were also used for building mounds, 2. Roads are also salient symbols in Papua New Guinea (Dobrin because the back has Upper Worldly qualities different from the 2014; Dobrin and Bashkow 2006). Roads mediated interactions Middle Worldly doings of hands. between communities, including exchange, affiliation, and war. 7. For varied positions on possible Mesoamerican-Southeastern con- Similar to the esnesv described in this article, Arapesh trading nections, see Cobb, Maymon, and McGuire (1999), chapters in partners, called “road friends,” learned multiple languages and White (2005), and White and Weinstein (2008). exchanged materials and dances. 8. The phrase, “they never tried to beat their language out of them,” 3. In the mid-twentieth century, Waring and Holder (1945) noted implicitly positions the story as a critique of Native American broad similarities in ceremonial artifacts excavated from Missis- boarding schools and, by extension, settler-colonial practices of sippian period (c. 850–1600 CE) mounds and posited the exis- cultural genocide. tence of a religious phenomenon that spread across the region, 9. 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