Category: Native American

The Moundville Duck Bowl

9/20/2017

(Courtesy Moundville Archaeological Park)

The Moundville Duck Bowl-arguably the most beautiful piece of prehistoric Native American art ever discovered in the United States—has come home. Sculpted out of a single massive piece of stone, its creator adorned the rim of the elegant bowl with the graceful neck and head of what appears to be a supernatural bird creature. Called by its excavator, Clarence Bloomfield Moore, “a triumph of aboriginal endeavor, the ‘Portland vase’ of prehistoric art in the United States,” it remains unique in its execution and form. Some of the nation’s great museums have displayed the Duck Bowl or “Bird-Serpent Effigy Bowl,” as it has been called recently. Until now this important artifact has not been in Alabama since Moore found it at Moundville 105 years ago.

A Visionary Outreach: The Episcopal Church’s Mission to the Poarch Creek Indians

10/1/2013

Rev. Edgar Edwards baptizes members of the Poarch Creek band in the 1930s. (Birmingham Public Library)

By almost any standard, the Poarch Band of Creek Indians is successful. It operates three casinos in southern Alabama and gives generously to schools and other institutions in the area, donating more than two million dollars to schools in Escambia, Baldwin, and Monroe Counties in February 2013 alone. Less than ninety years ago, however, those same schools excluded the Poarch Creeks, and one woman visiting among the Poarch Creek people described their homes as “fly and mosquito-infested” and “alive with hookworms,” with families “thickly housed, often two, three, four beds in a little room.” The economic success and cultural renaissance of the Poarch Creeks is due in large part to its members’ indomitable will to survive, but it owes much as well to a small-town Episcopal priest, a pair of missionaries, and one visionary bishop.

The Moundville Duck Bowl

A Visionary Outreach: The Episcopal Church’s Mission to the Poarch Creek Indians

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