With no written records, symbols help us understand the Mississippian world. From AD 1000 to 1550, a mound-building culture thrived here. These people left no written stories, so artifacts are used to understand their rich civilization. Many symbols on the artifacts match those used by present-day Tribes, and those connections help begin to reveal their culture. The spider is a common character in many Southeastern Tribal stories, and Choctaw tradition tells how Grandmother Spider brought the Sacred Fire to humans in a clay pot. The cross in the center of a circle represents the four logs marking the village center’s Sacred Fire in present-day Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Muscogee Creek Tribes, and this Sacred Fire is linked to the Sun in many historical and archaeological accounts. Three circles surrounding the center cross symbolize the upper, middle, and underworlds, and an eight-pointed sun completes the design. The Great Serpent, or Underwater Panther, is a shape-shifting figure representing the powers of the underworld, sometimes shown as a great cat with legs and fangs and at other times as a fearsome serpent with a rattlesnake tail, in constant battle with the forces of the upper world. The Issaquena Disk features the panther head and rattlesnake tail of the Great Serpent; the sandstone disk was unearthed in Mississippi, and a reproduction can be seen in the Winterville Mounds Museum. Along with Thunderbirds and other powerful sky creatures, Thunder Beings indicate approaching rain or war, and a woodpecker head symbolizes the power of the sky or upper world. The Ogee appears on pottery and ornaments from many Mississippian cultures, and scholars believe it represents a passageway between life and death, day and night, birth and life, or the seen and unseen worlds. The meaning of the Rising Sun is not known, but it appears on pottery found at Winterville Mounds. Solar and lunar events were important to the mound builders, because mound sites often align with solstices and equinoxes. The colors and symbols on the pavilion are based on the clay capping that once covered Winterville’s central and largest mound.