Hands

Usually the dancers on the engraved shells and copper plates hold a weapon in the right hand and a human head by the hair in their left. We cannot tell if the head shown represents a real human head or perhaps a rattle in the form of a head. 

The weapons carried by these men often have tassels that are probably turkey beards. The turkey is another creature symbolizing war and the warrior. In the Creek language of the Southeast, the words for "turkey" and "war" are the same. The Creek language is in the Muskogee family along with Choctaw and Chickasaw. 
 
 

Drawing of engraving on shell (above) Phillips, Philip, and James A. Brown, Pre-Columbian Shell Engravings from the Craig Mound at Spiro, Oklahoma. Peabody Museum Press Copyright 1978 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 

(left) Archaeologists call these artifacts Ramey knives; the Ramey family owned part of the Cahokia site. Large examples of these knives have been called "dance swords" because some shell engravings depict a dancer holding a long, pointed tool similar in size and shape to a Ramey knife. Ramey knives are 800 to 900 years old. They were made during the Mississippian Period. Mississippians fashioned many of them from Mill Creek chert, a particularly high quality stone found along Mill Creek in Union County, Illinois. Mill Creek chert artifacts, Ramey knives and hoes, are found throughout the Midwest. They were made at workshop sites along Mill Creek and distributed to Mississippian towns and villages over a wide area including the central Illinois River valley, where the specimens were found. Photographed by Michael Brohm