We have all seen many examples of hand prints in petroglyphs and pictographs, from all over the world, but there is a variation of that theme, the hand-and-eye motif of the Mississippian cultures of North America. I recently received some wonderful photos of the Rocky Hollow rock art site in Missouri, from Dr. Michael Fuller (http://www.profmichaelfuller.com/rocky-hollow--23mn1-.html), and one panel includes the fascinating Mississippian symbol of the Hand-and-Eye motif.
It is quite probable that my personal fascination with this theme goes back to my very early childhood introduction to First Nations art of the North American Northwest Coast in the Burke Museum at the University of Washington in Seattle. In this sophisticated and complex art figures are often filled with eyes representing joints and other body parts, somewhat similar to the eye in the middle of the hand Mississippian motif. Whatever the case, I do find it fascinating, and the discovery (or at least confirmation) of another example is exciting.
Diaz-Granados, Carol, and James R. Duncan, 2000 The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa. Note the label "eye" has been removed from this version.
In describing his discovery at the Rocky Hollow site Fuller stated “the open hand petroglyph with red pigment immediately catches the eye when you approach the site. In the palm of the hand, I see the faint outline of an eye; this feature appears in a 1944 drawing of the panel (Eichenberger 1994:Plate XV), but was not recorded in the drawing of the panel (Eichenberger 1994: Figure 8). This interpretation was not made by other investigators who probably see the design in the palm of the hand as a natural damage or flaw in the rock. The hand-and-eye motif was used during the Mississippian Period (AD 900-1450) on shell artifacts from Spiro Mound (in Oklahoma) and at the Three Hills Creek Petroglyph Site (23WA17022) in Missouri. Reilly (2004:130) noted that the hand-and-eye motif is interpreted “as one of the portals or doorways to the Path of Souls”; a more detailed discussion of this concept was published by Lankford (2004:212) where he suggests a link between the motif and the “Hand” constellation which is called Orion in the European vocabulary of the sky. (Fuller 2020)” Interestingly, Diaz-Granados Duncan, had used Eichenberger’s drawing of this panel in her 1993 thesis which showed the shape in the middle of the hand with the label “eye” written in it, but when she reproduced it in her 2000 publication the label “eye” had disappeared.
Other rock art examples of the Hand-and-eye motif, although fairly rare, are known to exist. One example, also photographed by Dr. Michael Fuller, is seen at the Three Creek Hills site, also in Missouri. Dr. Fuller stated (2020, personal communication) that he saw a second example of the Hand-and-Eye motif in a photograph taken by the landowner but that he has not seen the actual second petroglyph at that location (both the Rocky Hollow site and the Three Creek Hills site are on private land and in rough country).
A couple of other sites containing images proposed to be examples of the Hand-and-Eye motif are found at Tycoon Lake, in Ohio, and at The Jeffer’s Site in southwest Minnesota. I have serious reservations about both of these. With the example at Tycoon Lake, Ohio, there is indeed a hand and an oval shape that is vaguely eye-like, but it is on the wrist of the hand, not in the palm. While I cannot say what it represents, it certainly does not give the sense of being an actual example of the Hand-and-Eye motif,
And with the example from the Jeffer’s Site in Minnesota all of the necessary traits are visible but in a very strangely distorted image, and there is no other rock art at the Jeffer’s site that displays any Mississippian cultural traits. I cannot go along with calling this an actual example of the Hand-and-Eye motif either.
Examining the images I find a roughly even number of left hand and right hands based upon which side of the hand the thumb is found. One uncertainty comes in trying to decide whether these images represent and eye on the palm of the hand or the back of the hand (which would affect the thumb position in the image). Most seem to be images of the palm of the hand, but the image I used at the top of the page shows fingernails on the fingers indicating that this is the back of the hand, so I think we must conclude that there is not a firm rule about how this motif is illustrated in that respect.
Next week in Part Two of this I will add some examples of the Mississippian Hand-and-Eye motif in other media.
NOTE: I wish to thank Dr. Michael Fuller for permission to use his photographs and information from his website in this paper.
Other images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports in the references listed below.
PRIMARY REFERENCES:
Diaz-Granados Duncan, Carol Anne,
1993 The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri: A Distributional, Stylistic, Contextual, Functional, and Temporal Analysis of the State’s Rock Graphics, Vol. I and II, Copyright Carol Anne Diaz-Granados Duncan, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.
Diaz-Granados, Carol, and James R. Duncan
2000 The Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Missouri, University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa
Fuller, Michael
2020 Rocky Hollow Site (23MN1), http://www.profmicAhaelfuller.com/rocky-hollow--23mn1-.html
Murphy, James L.
Date unknown, A Probable "Hand-and-Eye Petroglyph, Gallia County, Ohio, Ohio Historical Society.
SECONDARY REFERENCES:
Eichenberger, J. Allen
1944 Investigations of the Marion-Ralls Archaeological Society in Northeast Missouri, Missouri Archaeologist 9.
Lankford, George E.
2004 World on a String: Some Cosmological Components of Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, in Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Arts of the Ancient Midwest and South, Art Institute of Chicago.
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