Let me make some cultural arguments on behalf of identifying the
Hopewell artifact Tom Bain offered for us
http://www.explorehistory.org/cds/March/materials/act25.htm
as a carolina parakeet.
         The Hopewells would have been *far* more familiar with the parakeet.
Falcons would have been *far* more seldom seen. I just finished reading
Richter's "The Trees," the first in a well-researched trilogy of the
settling of Ohio by Europeans, set in the forest of southern Ohio in the
early 19th century. Half a dozen times he mentions "gabby birds,"
referring to parakeets. At one point, a man setting off on a long trip
tells his wife, "I'll catch you a young gabby bird this summer. You kin
learn it to talk. That'll make you company." Richter, and no doubt his
informants who learned from the indigenous peoples, passes along the
fact that humans relished the company of this bird, which like many
psittacids was able to learn to use human words, and could be kept in or
near the home as a companion. No doubt this bird was far more familiar,
and dear, to native Ohioans than the remote and rarely glimpsed falcon.
         It seems to me an unwarranted interpretation of the culture of the
original peoples of this region to say it would have been "natural" for
them to revere a rapacious predator that appeared once in a while to
raise havoc with the familiar local birds. I admit various cultures have
represented death-dealing predators in their art, but probably far more
often those that predated humans, like bears, panthers, etc.; how many
of these appear in Hopewell art, though? No doubt the Hopewells hunted,
but they also spent a lot of their time in agriculture. The were not
nomads, but lived in permanent villages, and it would be strange if they
gave reverence to migrant hunting species. It would instead seem
perfectly natural for them to honor, in their handiwork, familiar and
probably admired species like parakeets at least as much as ill-known
rapacious birds like the falcon. Do those who think this artifact
represents a falcon recognize another one that they think represents a
parakeet? Hopewell peoples made representations of turtles, ducks,
crows, woodpeckers: why not another familiar creature like a parakeet? I
just don't accept attempts to support the "nobility" of the Hopewell and
other peoples of the region by associating them with war-like attitudes
and representations of raptorious species.
        As for the sculpture in question, I already mentioned that it would
have been impossible to represent the skinny legs of a parakeet in a
stone sculpture. And the parakeet has a facial pattern just as well
represented by the the carving as that of the peregrine. And
speculations about the parakeet's typical postures are, alas, difficult
to make so many years after its extinction.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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