Serpent Mound might depict a creation story
Serpent Mound in Adams County is the most iconic earthen sculpture ever created by the ancestors of North American Indians, but now it can be seen only through a kind of filter.
Why? It was damaged by looting and plowing before it was saved and restored in the late 1880s by Frederic Putnam of Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. And Putnam’s restorations were influenced by what he thought the mound should look like.
He decided that the mound represented a serpent with an egg in its jaws. He believed it demonstrated a connection between Serpent Mound and various Old World cultures. Other archaeologists have documented parts of the mound that Putnam ignored, such as a wishbone-shaped earthwork that wrapped around the far side of the socalled egg. Evidently, Putnam felt this earthwork made no sense if the mound actually represented a serpent and an egg, so he didn’t restore it.
A new interpretation of Serpent Mound, based on American Indian mythic stories portrayed in a remarkable series of pictographs from Picture Cave in Missouri, is offered by James Duncan, Carol DiazGranados, Tod Frolking and me in a paper published online last month in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. We argue that images of serpents and other supernatural beings on the walls of Picture Cave help us make sense of those parts of Serpent Mound that weren't restored.
One group of pictographs shows a serpent facing a humanoid female with her legs spread apart next to a large oval that might be the symbolic “toothy mouth” of the Great Serpent — lord of the Beneath World. Duncan and Diaz-Granados think this panel illustrates part of a Dhegiha Siouan creation story: the moment when First Woman mated with the Great Serpent in order to acquire his life-giving powers, which she then used to create all life on Earth.
Duncan, Diaz-Granados, Frolking and I believe that Serpent Mound incorporates these same elements: the Great Serpent, his oval “toothy mouth,” and First Woman (the wishboneshaped mound). If we’re right, this iconic monument represents that key moment in Dhegihan and possibly other tribes’ creation stories.
Another image of the Great Serpent at Picture Cave shows two blocky projections along the side of his head. Duncan, Diaz-Granados and their colleagues interpret these as earspools. Similar projections on the side of Serpent Mound’s head, which Putnam also chose not to restore, might therefore represent the earspools of the Great Serpent. This Picture Cave pictograph has been radiocarbon dated to A.D. 1000, which is very close to the date of A.D. 1030 obtained for Serpent Mound.
All this evidence suggests that Serpent Mound was designed and built during the Mississippian period, when serpents and other dragonlike creatures dominated the artistic landscape in the same way that Serpent Mound dominates the Ohio Brush Creek valley. Whether it was built by Siouan people who later migrated westward, or other groups who shared a once-more-widespread genesis story, remains to be worked out. But it’s clear that the story told by Serpent Mound is an American Indian story — not some Old World story about a serpent and an egg.