Religious ceremonial centers or cities existed to which outlying smaller village populations journeyed for religious festivals Priesthood with appropriate dress and regalia Temples or sacred groves for worship Religion with deities having special powers relating to maize-growing. Veneration or worship of ancestors Spring, first fruits, and harvest festivals Tobacco smoke, tobacco pipes used in ceremonies as incense offerings Athletic games form part of ceremonies Shamans still exist but chiefly for healing, etc. as among Hopewellians High-ranking officials and priests buried in graves in mounds. Usual preparation of body, burial, mourning periods, elaborated proportionately to the rank of the deceased. Art well developed Games of chance were probably known and played UPPER PHASE 1100(?)-1600 A.D. Note: These are fringe groups in relation to Middle and Lower phases, living in more wooded regions perhaps, where game was especially abundant and topography less favorable to plant-raising by a backward culture and where the social impetus for high cultural development was largely lacking Artifacts are a mixture of Woodland and Mississippi types Generally a single pottery ware with both elongated and globular pots is characteristic and there is little other specialization of form A hunting-collecting economy with plant-raising probably in garden-like plots Large and small villages A social development similar to but simpler than the Middle Phase, probably a combination of Woodland and Mississippi elements A religion based on plant-raising but probably with considerable emphasis on chief animals hunted. Sacred groves and shrines, possibly temples in some of larger villages No pyramidal mounds Dead buried in mounds and in cemeteries CONTACT PHASE (ILLINI) 1673-1833 A.D. Note: The artifacts of all tribes in the historic period probably became gradually much the same regardless of their prior cultural status due to deterioration of native technology and trading of furs for European tools, weapons, cloth, etc. Arrowheads of chipped flint, and native-made of European copper, brass or iron Numerous trade articles such as glass beads, gun parts, copper or brass kettles, bottles for wine, olives, etc. and other objects of European production Native stone molds and cast lead balls (for guns) and native chipped gun flints Rectangular L-shaped (“Siouan type”) pipes of catlinite and other stone. Micmac pipes after 1700.