This little-known Native American society was once as powerful as the Aztecs and Incas nationalgeographic.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nationalgeographic.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
On the Town: Exhibit illuminates life in times well before Columbus By: Lillie-Beth Brinkman The Journal Record February 23, 2021
Lillie-Beth Brinkman
The new exhibit featuring the treasures found at the Spiro Mounds in eastern Oklahoma has opened at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. You’ll have until May 9 to see it in Oklahoma City. Don’t miss it.
“Spiro and the Mississippian World” is a fascinating look at the people who were here long before Columbus landed in the Americas and before English colonists settled here. That singular point of view was the focus of much of the history that I learned growing up, although thankfully, history lessons have expanded over the years to include more perspectives.
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Firebrand country artist Kaitlin Butts performs a streaming, pay-per-view concert at 7 p.m. Friday. The show is part of an ongoing virtual concert series filmed inside Tulsa’s Mercury Lounge. For online admission tickets, which come with a five-day extended viewing period, go to www.mercuryloungetulsa.com.
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Pantry Partners in Norman hosts an online “Have a HeArt” art auction starting at 4 p.m. Saturday at www.facebook.com/pantrypartnersnorman. All proceeds benefit underserved teens, and the artwork features several teen artists.
QUITE A SITE
“Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World” opens at 10 a.m. Friday at the National Cowboy & Western
Critical Thinking Difficult Issues: Unsafe Deposit Glenn Adamson
National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC.
What would burn, they burned. They crushed the rest underfoot. And when they were done, they blew up the whole thing with dynamite.
The year was 1935. The setting, just a few miles outside of Spiro, Oklahoma. Centuries earlier, indigenous Americans had invested this site with great spiritual significance. On top of a sacred mound built by their own ancestors, they constructed a hollow chamber and placed within it a cache of valuable objects: textiles, engraved shells, copper axes and plates, wooden sculptures, large-scale effigy pipes. This “King Tut’s Tomb in the Arkansas Valley” (as one 1930s newspaper put it) was one of the most important archaeological repositories in America, indeed, the world. Yet it was all but completely destroyed in a moment of casual vandalism.
If becoming more cultured is one of your New Year's resolutions, the museums and art centers in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area are going to make that goal easy to achieve.
Unprecedented opportunities to see frescoes from ancient Rome, Mississippian artifacts from Oklahoma's own Spiro Mounds and landmark artwork by one of the state's official cultural treasures are all planned in the first half of the year.