Chapter I: Preface

The present publication proposes to bring before the public, in popular form, some scientific results obtained while studying the language and ethnology of the Creek tribe and its ethnic congeners. The method of furthering ethnographic study by all the means which the study of language can afford, has been too little appreciated up to the present time, but has been constantly kept in view in this publication. Language is not only the most general and important help to ethnology, but outside of race, it is also the most ancient of all; ethnologists are well aware of this fact, but do not generally apply it to their studies, because they find it too tedious to acquire the language of unlettered tribes by staying long enough among them.

The help afforded to linguistic studies by the books published in and upon the Indian languages is valuable only for a few among the great number of the dialects. The majority of them are laid down in phonetically defective missionary alphabets, about which we are prompted to repeat what the citizens of the young colony of Mexico wrote to the government of Spain, in Cortez's time: "Send to us pious and Christian men, as preachers, bishops and missionaries, but do not send us scholars, who, with their pettifogging distinctions and love of contention, create nothing but disorder and strife."[1] In the same manner, some Creek scholars and churchmen agreed five times in succession, before 1853, upon standard alphabets to be followed in transcribing Creek, but, as Judge G. W. Stidham justly remarks, _made it worse each time_. To arrive at trustworthy results, it is therefore necessary to investigate the forms of speech as they are in use among the Indians themselves.

[Footnote 1: Quotation, _ad sensum_, from Bernal Diaz' "Historia
verdadera."]

Very few statements of the Kasi'hta migration legend can be made available for history. It is wholly legendary, in its first portion even mythical; it is of a comparatively remote age, exceedingly instructive for ethnography and for the development of religious ideas; it is full of that sort of _naïveté_ which we like so much to meet in the mental productions of our aborigines, and affords striking instances of the debasing and brutalizing influence of the unrestricted belief in the supernatural and miraculous. Of the sun-worship, which underlies the religions of all the tribes in the Gulf territories, only slight intimations are contained in the Kasi'hta legend, and the important problem, whether the Creeks ever crossed the Mississippi river from west to east in their migrations, seems to be settled by it in the negative, although other legends may be adduced as speaking in its favor.

Owing to deficient information on several Maskoki dialects, I have not touched the problem of their comparative age. From the few indications on hand, I am inclined to think that Alibamu and Koassáti possess more and Cha'hta less archaic forms than the other dialect-groups.

From Rev. H. C. Buckner's Creek Grammar, with its numerous defects, I have extracted but a few conjugational forms of the verb isita _to take_, but have availed myself of some linguistic manuscripts of Mrs. A. E. W. Robertson, the industrious teacher and translator of many parts of the Bible into Creek.

The re-translation of the legend into Creek and Hitchiti is due to Judge G. W. Stidham, of Eufaula, Indian Territory, who in infancy witnessed the emigration of his tribe, the Hitchiti, from the Chatahuchi river into their present location. My heartfelt thanks are also due to other Indians, who have materially helped me in my repeated revisions of the subject matter embodied in these volumes, and in other investigations. They were the Creek delegates to the Federal government, Chiefs Chicote and Ispahidshi, Messrs. S. B. Callaghan, Grayson and Hodge.

I also fully acknowledge the services tendered by the officers of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology, as well as by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton and by General Albert Pike, who placed the rich shelves of their libraries at my disposition. In the kindest manner I was furnished with scientific statements of various kinds by Messrs. W. R. Gerard, C. C. Royce and Dr. W. C. Hoffmann.

THE AUTHOR.
_Washington, August, 1884._

CONTENTS.

_FIRST PART._

PAGE

THE SOUTHERN FAMILIES OF INDIANS 9

_I. Linguistic Groups of the Gulf States._

Timucua, 11. Calusa, 13. Tequesta, 15. Kataba, 15. Yuchi, 17.
Cheroki, 24. Arkansas, 29. Taensa, 30. Tangipahoa, 34. Naktche,
34. Tonica, 39. Adai, 41. Pani, 42. Shetimasha, 44. Atákapa, 45.
Bidai, 47. Koroa, 47. The Westo and Stono Indians, 48. The
Linguistic Map, 49.

_II. The Maskoki Family._

The Common Maskoki Language, 53. The Name Maskoki, 58. Tribal
Divisions; the Yamassi, 62. Yamacraw, 65. Seminole, 66.
Apalachi, 74. Mikasuki, 76. Hitchiti, 77. The Hitchiti Dialect,
80. Alibamu, 85. Koassáti, 89. Chicasa, 90. Tribes on the Yazoo
River, 97. Cha'hta, 100. The Cha'hta Language, 116.

_III. The Creek Indians._

Creek Settlements, 120. List of Towns, 124. The Indian Pathways,
151. The Creek Government, 152. Tribal Divisions and Gentes,
153. Civil Government, 156. The Warrior Class, 158. War Titles,
160. War Customs, 164. Organization of the Confederacy, 168. The
Public Square, 171. The Annual Busk, 177. Further Ethnographic
Notes, 183. Creek History, 188. The Creek Dialect, 198. Lexical
Affinities, 212.

_SECOND PART._

_The Kasi'hta Migration Legend._

Indian Migration Legends, 214. Migration Legends of the Creek
Tribes, 222. Tchikilli's Kasi'hta Legend, 235. The Text, 237.
The Translation, 244.

A MIGRATION LEGEND OF THE CREEK INDIANS.

FIRST OR GENERAL PART.

THE SOUTHERN FAMILIES OF INDIANS.

The early explorers of the Gulf territories have left to posterity a large amount of information concerning the natives whom they met as friends or fought as enemies. They have described their picturesque attire, their curious, sometimes awkward, habits and customs, their dwellings and plantations, their government in times of peace and war, as exhaustively as they could do, or thought fit to do. They distinguished tribes from confederacies, and called the latter kingdoms and empires, governed by princes, kings and emperors. But the characteristics of race and language, which are the most important for ethnology, because they are the most ancient in their origin, are not often alluded to by them, and when the modern sciences of anthropology and ethnology had been established on solid principles many of these southern races had already disappeared or intermingled, and scientific inquiry came too late for their investigation.

A full elucidation of the history and antiquities of the subject of our inquiries, the Creeks, is possible only after having obtained an exhaustive knowledge of the tribes and nations living around them. The more populous among them have preserved their language and remember many of their ancestors' customs and habits, so that active exploration in the field can still be helpful to us in many respects in tracing and rediscovering their ancient condition. Three centuries ago the tribes of the Maskoki family must have predominated in power over all their neighbors, as they do even now in numbers, and had formed confederacies uniting distant tribes. Whether they ever crossed the Mississippi river or not, the Indians of this family are as thoroughly southern as their neighbors, and seem to have inhabited southern lands for times immemorial. The scientists who now claim that they descend from the mound builders, do so only on the belief that they must have dwelt for uncounted centuries in the fertile tracts where Hernando de Soto found them, and where they have remained up to a recent epoch. In the territory once occupied by their tribes no topographic name appears to point to an earlier and alien population; and as to their exterior, the peculiar olive admixture to their cinnamon complexion is a characteristic which they have in common with all other southern tribes.

My introduction to the Kasi'hta national legend proposes to assign to the Creeks: (1) their proper position in the Maskoki family and among their other neighbors; and (2) to describe some of their ethnologic characteristics. The material has been divided in several chapters, which I have in their logical sequence arranged as follows:

Linguistic families traceable within the Gulf States.

The Maskoki group; its historic subdivisions.

The Creek Indians; tribal topography, historic and ethnographic
notices, sketch of their language.