Friday evening
Three weeks after the close of the Neshoba County Fair
August had passed quickly for Faye, as time does for a person who is doing good work. After their job in Mississippi was done, Dr. Mailer and the others had gone home for a week of rest before beginning the fall semester, but she and Joe were lingering until the last possible moment. They had worked seven days a week all month and they were tired, but it was a good kind of tired. Soon enough, they’d be home again, just in time to be named godparents to Magda’s and Mike’s little Rachel. Until then, Faye was willing to do all it took to get the work done.
The highway department project had ended well for everyone. Dr. Mailer’s team had cataloged some interesting artifacts, but nothing that would prevent the traffic engineers from straightening the dangerous curve that had triggered the entire project. So the client was happy and Dr. Mailer was happy.
The Nails were still a little sad to sell even a portion of the land they’d held since the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, but it was a slender slice of land and the price was very good. Besides, Oka Hofobi had earned a salary funded by the government, as well as accumulating data for future publication credits, all for doing work he wanted to do anyway. Faye considered that to be partial payment of a very old debt.
But the project had only kept Faye busy from Monday through Friday, leaving her weekends free for fun things like…more field work. She and Mrs. Calhoun had become fast friends from the moment the old woman understood that Faye had solved her husband’s murder.
“Honey, if those two old mounds and that cave mean so much to you, why don’t you spend some time looking them over? Or bulldoze them. I don’t care. Never did. Carroll was the one that was so protective of his precious property. Look at where that got him.”
So Faye and Joe had dug test pits. They had surveyed the surface contours of key sites along the creek, looking for proof of Faye’s suspicions that much of the land had been re-formed in antiquity. They had conquered a few lingering fears and gone back into their underground prison, looking for clues as to who built it. And those clues pointed to…a lot of people. Her research told her that the people who built Poverty Point were thought to have constructed water control devices within their elaborate earthworks—not to mention the fact that they had dammed up the bayou that ran beside their settlement to create a haven for fish. But Poverty Point was built three thousand years ago. Could the drain have survived that long?
Or maybe the people who had knapped flint on the Nails’ property had built it. She’d read everything she could find on the water control structures at Fort Ancient, which were built about that time…only
two
thousand years ago. Did they enlarge a cave to build the drain to protect the cemetery mound during floods? Did they repair and maintain a thousand-year-old drain left behind by the Poverty Point people? Or maybe someone even later had built it. Faye didn’t know if she’d ever find these answers, but she loved the questions.
She and Joe had spent evenings with Mrs. Calhoun, eating her zucchini bread and pawing through her husband’s arrowhead collection. There were real treasures among the things he’d uncovered during a lifetime of farming, but nothing that might prove Faye’s fondest hope—that a vast complex of monumental earthworks had once graced the Calhoun property. And, Faye realized as she thought of Neely with an odd pang, those ancient monuments had once graced the Rutland property, too.
Later on those same evenings, Faye and Joe and Mrs. Calhoun had stayed up half the night, playing with Faye’s new telescope. It was a fine instrument with precision optics, because Ross valued well-engineered products. When it arrived, shortly after Ross returned to Georgia, Faye considered sending it back. How could she accept something so expensive from a man she’d just met? Then she read the card, which said only, “A woman who knows the stars as well as you do should have the opportunity to see them clearly.”
Ross had included his phone number and his e-mail address, but not his home address, cleverly ensuring that she couldn’t send it back without talking to him first. After some thought, she’d called to thank him and to invite him to visit her at Joyeuse, where he could see her island’s spectacular skies for himself. After all, her mapping software told her that it was only three hundred miles from his doorstep to hers.
As the fall semester approached, Faye had begun reconciling herself to the prospect of going home without proof. On this, their last day in Mississippi, she and Joe were digging test pits around the big mound where all the summer’s problems had begun. They were probing into the eagle’s wings. Or, rather, they were digging where Faye thought its wings might be.
As she worked, Faye heard that blessed “click,” the heart-racing sound of a metal tool striking stone. She felt for the source of the noise and was rewarded with something hard and cool, something more angular and knobby than the natural stones in these parts. This rock was no longer wearing the shape that God had given it.
Faye forced herself to wait, to do things right. She took the object’s photo
in situ
, right where it lay. She made copious notes in her field book. Then, finally, when the time was right, she pulled it out of the ground, brushed it clean, and laughed out loud. Perched on her palm was an effigy bead, a tiny carving of an eagle with its wings outspread. And, unless she missed her guess, she could see the beak of another eagle poking out of the soil at the bottom of her test pit. Somebody had carved these birds and buried them here, where the tip of the eagle mound’s wing faded into the ground.
Faye knew academics, and she knew that many journals would expend many pages of scholarly discussion over whether the Calhoun mound could be definitively called an eagle effigy, but Faye knew it in her heart, that very minute.
On the far side of the mound, someone was digging his own test pit, someone who would understand more than anyone else in the world what this little eagle meant to her. She hopped to her feet and hurried in his direction, calling out for Joe.
Guide for Teachers, Students, and the Incurably Curious
Because Faye’s archaeological adventures are being read in schools, I began posting interesting historical and scientific information on my website. Teachers and parents and students responded so well to this kind of background that it only makes sense that I include it right in this book.
Then I found that the same questions were being asked when I spoke to readers’ groups. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I get questions at all hours of the night and day from people wanting to know things like, “Did Andrew Jackson
really
say that Native Americans didn’t have ‘the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvements’ that would make it possible for them to live side-by-side with white American citizens?”
Well, yes, he did say that, during his fifth annual address to Congress. I’ve compiled that reference, along with a long list of other books that I used to write
Effigies
, especially for the compulsive learners among us—people like me.
Hollywood has done an excellent job of engraving the western Native American tribes on the American psyche, but the southeastern tribes are far less well-known. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to acquaint readers with the Mississippi Band of the Choctaw Indians, who valiantly refused to be relocated to the West, then suffered through a century and a half of poverty before rising to prosperity. As a native Mississippian, I’m proud to portray the state at the beginning of the 21st century as it leaves a troubled past behind. I’ve anticipated a few of your historical questions here, and I’ve thrown out a few discussion questions of the literary sort for book groups and English teachers. Please e-mail me at
[email protected]
with any other questions, or just to chat.
Questions for readers:
I’m a seventh-generation Mississippian, and I’ve seen my home state portrayed in many ways in the media. Often, those portrayals appear factual. But there are those times…
I recently read a novel set in Mississippi which featured a small town where many of the streets were not paved. Within the first chapter, I realized that the author believed that this was still commonplace in that part of the world. After reading a few pages further, I realized that the author had probably never even visited the state.
In
Effigies
, I have tried to portray a modern Mississippi. The past is receding, though it is not yet dead. Many people are educated, and a lack of education does not necessarily mean that a person is stupid or ignorant. All conflicts, political and personal, are not based on race, and any crime investigator who assumes otherwise is taking a tremendous risk. Do you think this portrayal feels realistic?
I enjoyed “being” Mrs. Nail, and letting her tell the old stories in her own way. I wanted readers to feel an intimate closeness with modern-day and ancient Choctaws, and the folk tales seemed to build a wonderful bridge. Paging through a whole book of tales, I chose stories that related to Faye’s experiences, hoping they would help my readers feel the cool water on their feet and the dank cave over their heads. In a way, they take you on a vacation to an unspoiled part of a beautiful state.
Faye hasn’t always trod the legal straight-and-narrow, though in my mind she has her own set of ethics. They might not be
my
ethics, but she’s consistent in applying them. (Or she’s as consistent as most of us are in applying our ethics.) She trod close to some ethical boundaries in
Artifacts
and
Relics
, too, but most people were willing to cut her some slack. From an author’s point-of-view, pushing ethical boundaries gives me some conflict—inner and outer—with which to work. How did you feel when Faye was more interested in pursuing the truth than in respecting Mrs. Calhoun’s property rights? And did the need to prevent further crimes justify disturbing a grave?
Joe was created to be completely unsuitable as a lover for Faye. I wanted them to have a platonic and absolutely true friendship.
He’s nine years younger than she is. When she met him, he was unemployed, barely literate due to serious learning disabilities, and homeless—but he looked good and he cooked good, so she let him stay with her.
Joe grew into much more of a fully rounded human being than I expected, and he is a completely likeable person, worthy of Faye’s love, but I’m not sure she’s ever going to let herself recognize that. Ross is the kind of person she always pictured herself loving. We’ll have to see what she decides.
Historical and scientific questions:
Yes. With some exceptions, I modeled them on actual stories collected by folklorist Tom Mould and presented in his book
Choctaw Tales
. The original storytellers who helped ensure that these tales were recorded for posterity should be recognized, I think, and this is as good a place as any:
The Choctaw Creation Legend—Isaac Pistonatubbee, 1901
The Cornfinding Myth—Ilaishtubbee, 1899
Wild Geese and the Origin of Corn—Baxter York, 1975
The Girl and the Devil—Unknown, collected in 1909
The Spectre and the Hunter—J. D. McDonald and Peter P. Pitchlynn, 1850
Kashehotapalo—Ahojeobe (Emil John), 1909
Okwa Nahollo, or White People of the Water— Heleema (Louise Celestine), 1909
Kowi Anukasha—Ahojeobe (Emil John), 1909
The quotes attributed to real people—Andrew Jackson, Pushmataha, and Army Major Armstrong—are real, though not strictly folk tales. In Dr. Mould’s book, there are recorded stories that tell of actual historical events, so I took those as a model. I incorporated several historical quotes that I thought were significant to
Effigies
into stories that I wrote myself for Mrs. Nail to tell. Similarly, the tale of the donation of seven hundred dollars from Oklahoma Choctaws to the starving Irish during the potato famine is a true story that I put into Mrs. Nail’s mouth.
I found two references to the Pied-Piper-like tale of the Devil luring Choctaw children into Nanih Waiya Cave, then walling them up to die. Unfortunately, neither of those sources was a scholarly folklore text. One was a long out-of-print book,
Caves of Mississippi
, published in 1974, that mentioned this story in passing while describing the cave. Another was a personal communication from a non-Choctaw who had heard the tale sometime prior to 1961. I asked Dr. Mould, an expert on Choctaw folklore, whether he knew of the story. He said that it was common for tales about unusual places like caves to “travel.” People hear a scary story about a cave, then turn around and tell it as though it happened at their own local cave, in a process called “localization.” This is how urban legends develop. In his opinion, this is a story that has been attached to the cave in relatively recent times. I decided to consider it a modern folk tale, because it was too good not to use.
Another tale that lacked an iron-clad scholarly basis was the legend of Sinti Hollo. A full confession is necessary here. I found the story of the snake god on the Internet. (Do a web search on Sint Holo, an alternate spelling. You’ll get a flood of hits.) Unfortunately, that was the only place I found it. Dr. Mould told me that the prehistoric ancestors of the southeastern tribes left behind references to a snake god, predating the existence of the Choctaws as a separate group. Snakes figure into their folklore, but not quite in the way presented in the Sinti Hollo story. Again, this was too good a story to keep to myself, so I used it, but I’m confessing its questionable heritage here. (And let that be a lesson to you—always double-check anything you learn on the Internet!)
Mississippi is not known for huge caverns festooned with stalagmites and stalactites, though there are a few medium-sized caves with some interesting formations. By the standards of a place like Mammoth Cave or Carlsbad Caverns, many Mississippi caves look, well, a little bit like mudholes. Some of them are interesting, though. There’s one cave in Mississippi that was formed by cows licking at a rock outcropping with a high salt content. I know, you’re picturing a shallow depression in the ground, but no. This cave is the size of my bedroom, and it was dug with cow tongues. Let’s all think about that for a moment…no, wait. Let’s not.
Nanih Waiya Cave is also unusual, in that it is located in a clay formation, instead of the usual limestone. I’ve been there, though I was alone and not brave enough to shinny into the tiny opening. We’ll leave that kind of foolhardy activity to Faye. First-person accounts of the cave tell us that it is quite extensive, with multiple chambers. It is said that some of them once held Choctaw artifacts, but very little archaeology has been done there.
With a novelist’s boldness, I supposed that if there was one cave in clay in the area, then there could be two, and Faye’s underground prison came into existence. Some people say that the Choctaws enlarged the real cave in antiquity. Some people say that they dug the whole thing. As you have seen, I left open the question of whether Faye’s cave was completely or partially manmade.
Absolutely. I’ve been there. And they are so evocative that I was compelled to set the first scene of my book there. One of them was built about two thousand years ago, and it was originally part of a complex that included several smaller mounds and an encircling set of protective earthworks. Sadly, almost all traces of the other mounds and the earthworks have been plowed until they no longer exist.
The other mound looks very like the manmade one, massive and flat-topped, but it is a natural geological feature—just a big hump in a flat country, if you will. It is honeycombed by Nanih Waiya Cave, and it’s in an incredibly scenic location on the bank of Nanih Waiya Creek. The state park where it’s located is closed these days, but I was able to visit it by borrowing the key from the owner of a nearby store—no, I don’t know why he had it—driving as close to the site as I could without driving my car into a crumbling culvert, then walking a half-mile into the woods. Writers generally sit alone at their desks all day, but this was an adventure I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Not that I know of. As I did with the cave, I presumed that many interesting things could lurk on private property where archaeologists have never trod. There are no undisputed effigy mounds in the Southeast, though many people say the great mound at Poverty Point is a bird. (I’ve heard that someone showed a picture of it to a group of school kids. They thought it looked like a mushroom. So there you go. Perhaps effigies exist mainly in the eye of the beholder.) At the end of
Effigies
, we are left with a mound that
might
look like an eagle. Faye doesn’t yet know its age, but she hopes that it is very old. And she believes that it might be part of a collection of mounds and earthworks—which we know existed nearby at Nanih Waiya. Is someone likely to find a site like that lurking in backwoods Mississippi? Who knows? But it’d sure be fun to try…