[meteorite-list] Test your Meteorite Knowledge, Win a Free Assortment of Micromounts! Native Americans and Meteorites

[Adam Hupe]

Phil Wrote:
All the irons associated with aboriginal peoples make it even weirder  that the 
Winona was treated as a special rock. We'll never know the  story.

My best guess:
Winonaite inclusions are found in iron meteorites.  Winona is not that far from 
Meteor Crater in Winslow.  Perhaps Winona and Canyon Diablo are related. Maybe 
the shape and density of the meteorite made it desirable to the Native 
Americans.    Native Americans were experts at working with stones and know when 
something is special.   Thousands of years of working rocks have fine tuned 
their culture to know when something is special.

Best Regards,

Adam




----- Original Message ----
From: JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com>
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Sent: Tue, May 24, 2011 6:49:24 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Test your Meteorite Knowledge, Win a Free Assortment 
of Micromounts! Native Americans and Meteorites

Hello Mike:

It seems strange that the Sinagua people venerated an unusual achrondite 
(metachondrite) meteorite stone when they were so close to the Canyon Diablo 
crater and strewnfield. Surely they noticed how different the iron meteorites 
were from other local rocks. Yet they chose to bury an extremely rare type stone 
meteorite in the same manner as they would a child. Small children have been 
found buried in similar stone cists on pit house floors. This egg-shaped 24 kg 
rock was somehow special to them. Nobody knows why.

According to Nininger,  the Navaho irons were found in 1922 buried under stones 
piled into a cairn. Ornaments were found underneath one of the meteorites. The 
irons had grooves on their surfaces from stone tools. Also in 1922, the Mesa 
Verde meteorite was discovered in the remains of the Sun Shrine House in Mesa 
Verde National Park. In 1930, the Pojoaque meteorite was found buried in a clay 
pot on a village site. Archaeological investigators speculated the stone was 
carried around in a mojo bag due to its signs of wear by handling. Nininger 
later paired the Pojoaque with the Glorietta, found about 30 miles from the 
village site. The Casas Grandes iron was found buried in the Casa Grandes ruins 
of Chihuahua. It was discovered wrapped in a "mummy cloth." The Huizopa irons 
were found in ruins in western Chihuahua.  Nininger adds that the meteorites of 
Red River, Wichita County, Iron Creek, Willamette and Cape York were all objects 
of veneration and the destination of pilmigrages.

All the irons associated with aboriginal peoples make it even weirder that the 
Winona was treated as a special rock. We'll never know the story.

Phil Whitmer

_________________________________________

Hi Phil,

Thanks for the clarifications. Just when I think I am a smart cookie,
I find out that I don't know jack squat. LOL

So, I wonder what the modern finders of the Winona meteorite thought
when they dug it up? Did they know it was a meteorite at first? And
what other artifacts were found in that same hole (if any)?

This makes me wonder if Winona was a witnessed fall? Would the
indians have known that Winona was special and not just another rock,
unless they had seen it fall?

Best regards,

MikeG

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Galactic Stone & Ironworks - Meteorites & Amber (Michael Gilmer)

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\

On 5/24/11, JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum at embarqmail.com> wrote:

> Just a few minor corrections. Hopewell and Anasazi are not names of tribes.

> They signify prehistoric traditions or cultures, not individual tribes. We

> don't know the names of prehistoric tribes because they left no written

> histories. The large earthworks built by Midwestern and Eastern prehistoric

> American Indians are not burial mounds. While some contain burials, this

> does not seem to be the primary purpose of the mounds. Archaeologists

> believe the mounds were for ceremonial and social purposes. Some have

> postulated the earthern structures were astronomical observatories. I just

> saw a documentary on the Chaco Canyon culture where they showed how all the

> buildings, kivas and towers were designed to line up on the solstices. The

> western Native Americans did not build mounds. It was the Sinagua people,

> not the Anasazi, who interred the Winona meteorite in a stone cist dug into

> the floor of a pit house.


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