Oneota Culture
1000 CE
First appearance of the Oneota culture? - https://archaeology.uiowa.edu/oneota
Life Ways
What kinds of money do you use?
- None known
How much do things cost?
- Buffalo Bird Woman cord-bison exchange rates, etc.
What system do you use to describe what time it is? When does one day end and another begin? How do you tell time?
- Horizon astronomy? Wood henge?
What system do you use for describing dates? What is your calendar like?
- Lunar calendar: research Ioway, Ho-Chunk terminology
Can you read? If so, what have you read? What poems, tales, etc. have you heard told?
- Pictographic system
- Winter counts? like the Dakota?
- Winter stories? like the Ojibwe?
What do you know about history?
- Creation stories
- Meeting of the clans
- Origin of clans/names
Have you heard of Alexander the Great? Julius Caesar? Charlemagne? Vergil? Saladin? What do you "know" about each?
- No. Nothing.
What do you know about geography? What is the most distant country you have heard of? The most distant country you have met someone from?
- 1837 No Heart map, sources of copper, shells, Knife River flint
Who is your immediate overlord (title and/or name)? Who is your ultimate overlord?
- winter chief vs summer chief, Mississippian chieftainship system
What is your religion? What duties (prayers, fasts, dietary restrictions, etc.) does it impose? What do you (your persona) know about its doctrines and history?
- Axis mundi, 3 levels of the world
What do you eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What do you drink? Where do your food and drink come from? How is the food cooked (style of cooking, tools, how does the oven work, etc.)?
- Three sisters plus sunflowers?
- How much wild game? Bison?
What sorts of wild animals live in your area? Which are dangerous? Which are good to eat? How are the latter hunted?
- see above, use of fire to encourage healthy convenient populations of game
What clothes do you wear? What are they made of? Where do they come from?
- Weaving just for baskets and housing? or also for clothing/accessories?
What crops are grown in your part of the world?
- Three sisters plus sunflowers?
- Goosefoot, other more ancient crops?
What goods, if any, are exported, and how are they transported? What goods are imported?
- Trade at Blood Run for bison products, Knife River flint
- Trade near Keokuk or Prairie du Chien for Mississippian/Great Lakes goods?
- Above exchanged for pipe stone
What language(s) do you speak? What language(s) do other people in your town (city, barony...) speak?
- Chiwere, other Siouan, Ojibwe/Alongonguian, Iroquoian, Caddo? Mississippian Creek?
If you or one of your friends wrote a poem, what form would you use? What about a song?
- Poetry?
- Farming songs, working songs, seasonal songs
What "mythological" beasts do you know about? Which ones do you believe in? What do you believe about them?
- Upper world: thunderbirds
- Lower world: paisa
