Detail from a larger painting which is still a work in progress. The figures need hands of course, and in the case of the man I was thinking of having him grasping some game animal or bird, perhaps a turkey.

This is a Mississippian period town alongside a stream, complete with dugout canoes. Corn fields, grown with squash and other cultivated garden plants both familiar and unfamiliar to people today, would have been even more extensive than depicted - for example, historical Shawnee towns were described as having fields that extended for miles.

There would have been quite a few canoes, used both for transportation and carrying goods to and from trading centers, to procure materials like clay, chert and cane for artisans, and to use as fishing or hunting platforms. Lacking draft animals larger than dogs to pull loads overland, canoes and waterways were critically important to daily life.

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