A Piedmont Carolina Parakeet Effigy Bowl
They numbered in the tens of millions throughout Eastern North America. They were beautifully colored birds with their bright green feathers and yellow heads topped with scarlet. And now they are all gone.
The Carolina Parakeet, Corurpsis carolinensis, was our country’s only native parrot and was a non-migrating bird that lived from Florida to New York and Illinois to Texas. They were reasonably large birds being twelve to fourteen inches long head to tail and had large and very strong beaks. Their habits were to roost and raise their young in hollow trees deep in swampy forests through the entire eastern half of our country. Their favorite food was cockleburs but they ate seeds of all types and they had a decided affinity for salt and regularly visited salt licks. And they were definitely here during the prehistoric through the historic periods alongside the native humans. But because they lived and traveled in large destructive flocks that could totally destroy a farmer’s crops, these vivid birds were killed by early European and American farmers and hunters and completely exterminated in the wild in the nineteenth century. The last existing pair died in an Ohio zoo in the 1920’s.
The prehistoric to historic Indians were known to have made many types of animal and bird effigies especially as pottery vessels. Bird effigy bowls and jars were prevalent in the lower Mississippi River valley but in the Piedmont most pottery creations were usually simple utilitarian vessels. Not many effigy pots have been discovered in the area but a few have been found. Some years ago, I acquired a large NC collection that included a miniature bird effigy bowl that the finder called a quail effigy. The head did not look like a quail but I accepted his idea at the time. Time passed until one day I took the bowl outside for a thorough examination in bright sunlight and with the use of a ten power hand lens made a discovery. There were small but discernable remains of green pigment on the body of the vessel. Native copper will impart green colorings to contact objects when left in the soil for long periods of time but the green-gold color on this pot was not the normal color of copper deposits. This green color was rather perplexing until I re-examined the effigy head with it’s large hooked beak and remembered seeing paintings of extinct Carolina Parakeets and suddenly it became clear. I was holding a Carolina Parakeet Effigy Bowl.
This vessel was found on the Upper Sauratown Site which borders the Dan River in Stokes County, North Carolina. This site was occupied for a relatively short time period during the Historic Period before the inhabitants, today called Saura or Sara Indians, abandoned the area and moved south along the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. Based on the many trade items that have been found on the site, such as glass trade beads, copper plates and iron knives, the natives must have conducted a flourishing barter system with the Euro/American colonists and most likely some indigo dye or pigment was among the traded items several hundred years ago. The New World indigo plant, Indigofera suffruticosa, was used to make blue dye as early as the 1560’s in the Caribbean Islands and was sold and/or traded into this country after that time. After immersion in stale urine or continued exposure to the natural elements, the indigo blue will change to green-blue or green-gold, which is the faint color in this bowl. The Carolina Parakeets would have certainly been living and thriving in the seventeenth century along the Dan River and presumably some potter decided to make this effigy of the vibrant green bird. The bowl is definitely a miniature being only 3 9/16 inches in length beak to tail and 1 1/16 inches high to the top of the head and was made of fine grit tempered ceramics of the type used by the natives in the area during that time. The bird head is modeled on one bowl edge and the tail is attached to the opposite side. The tail is incised with lines supposedly to replicate the actual bird tail feathers while the head had a large parrot-like beak and large eye depressions. Carolina Parakeets had large white eyes so it would be a good guess that marine or fresh water shell eyes or maybe white glass trade beads (which have been found in abundance on the site) were glued into the eye pits. The date of manufacture of this unique bowl would have been in the AD 1600 to1700 time frame while the site was inhabited by the Saura Indians.
Prehistoric Period Americans could have made many Carolina Parakeet effigies but since they would probably had no source for green paint to color their creations until the arrival of the Europeans, these effigies could, even now, be misclassified as raptor effigies because of the large hooked beak. It is lucky for us today some pottery artisan a few hundred years ago decided to glorify this beautiful bird with indigo pigment and created this rare Piedmont Carolina Parakeet Effigy Bowl.
REFERENCES:
Dickens, Roy S., H. Trawick Ward & R.. P. Stephen Davis, Jr.
THE SIOUAN PROJECT
1987
Greenway, James E.
EXTINCT AND VANISHING BIRDS OF THE WORLD
1958
Martin, Alton
Personal Communications
2006
Sandberg, Gosta
INDIGO TEXTILES: TECHNIQUE AND HISTORY
n.d.