page_title: Red Horn
section_title: Prosopic earpieces as SECC artifacts
hierarchical_section_title: Red Horn / Red Horn in archaeology / Prosopic earpieces as SECC artifacts
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Long-nosed god maskette, marine shell, grave good excavated from the en:Yokem Mound Group, near Rockport, in en:Pike County, Illinois, now in the collection of the en:National Museum of the American Indian
context_page_description: Red Horn is a culture hero in Siouan oral traditions, specifically of the Ioway and Hocąk nations.
  He has different names. Only in Hocąk literature is he known as "Red Horn", but among the Ioway and Hocągara both, he is known by one of his variant names, "He Who Wears Faces on His Ears". This name derives from the living faces on his earlobes, or earbobs that come to life when he places them on his ears. Elsewhere, he is given yet another name, "Red Man", because his entire body is red from head to toe.
  Red Horn was one of the five sons of Earthmaker, whom the Creator fashioned with his own hands and sent to earth to rescue humanity. During his sojourn on earth, he contested both giants and water spirits, and led war parties against the bad spirits who plagued humanity. As Wears Faces on His Ears, he is also said to be a star, although its identity is a subject of controversy. Under the names "One Horn" and "Without Horns", he and his sons are chiefs over the small hunting spirits known as the herok'a and the "little children spirits". Red Horn, as chief of the herok'a, has a spiritual and sometimes corporeal identity with the arrow.
context_section_description: In the Ioway version of the Red Horn story, Wears Man-Heads in His Ears puts on a pair of prosopic earpieces which come to life. Prosopic ear ornaments have been found throughout much of the S.E.C.C. culture area in archaeological excavations and are called "Long-nosed god maskettes". They are typically made of either copper or shell, which were highly valued materials. Most wampum belts, for instance, are made of shells strung together. In contemporary Hotcąk the standard word for wampum is worušik, a word which also denotes earrings. It is a contraction of wa-horušik, "something suspended from the ears". This shows a linguistic "memory" of a time when at least certain earpieces were considered to be wampum. The S.E.C.C. artifacts have a high degree of uniformity except for the size of the nose, which may be either short or extraordinarily long and even crooked. The face is shield-shaped, and has a crown with a notch at its top center rim. The mouth is just a short slit, but the eyes are perfectly circular and large in proportion to the head, giving them an owl-like appearance. The first of these was discovered in Big Mound within St. Louis in 1870, where they lay beside the skull in a grave. Since then nearly two score of these artifacts have been discovered in an area encompassing at least ten states. S.E.C.C. pictorial art shows figures with long-nosed god maskettes on their ears, recalling the appearance of Red Horn and his sons. One of these is a sculpted pipe bowl, nicknamed "Big Boy", showing a seated young man wearing short-nosed prosopic earpieces (discussed below). They came to be called "Long-Nosed God" mask(ette)s because they were correlated with depictions of what appeared to be a deity with a very long nose. One of these has in addition to a long nose, a bilobed arrow attached to his hair, and a single long braid, all characteristics associated with Red Horn. On the other hand, such beings often have a curl at the end of their noses, either bending up or down, a feature not found on their maskette counterparts. In addition a great many prosopic earpieces have only a short nose. This has led Duncan and Diaz-Granados to develop a different theory to account for the variation in nose sizes. They believe that the prosopic earpieces represent the Twins, and that they were worn by war captives who were being assimilated into their new tribe. This is chartered by one surviving Twins myth, in which the wild brother has a very long nose in contrast to the normal nose of his domesticated brother. When the wild Twin is re-adopted into his family, the father trims the nose. Ex hypothesi, the size of the nose on the prosopic earpiece given to the adopted captive was trimmed to reflect the degree to which he had been assimilated.
caption: A Long-nosed god maskette excavated from the Yokem Mound Group in Pike County, Illinois, now in the N.M.A.I.
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