In the beginning, the Great Spirit looked at a great mass of water. So
he said, “There should be something solid for animals with blood.” So he
called upon the crawfish to dig down and bring up some dirt, which they
did. As they brought up the dirt, the water receded. The crawfish is
still working at it. The Great Spirit was pleased. So he took the dirt
and made all living things with it. When he ran out of objects, he said,
“This is good, but I must make one to control these animals. I will make
man.” So he chose some good clay and made a clay man, but it was soft.
“I shall bake it in the fire from the sun,” he said. So he baked it, and
when he took it out, it was pale. So he just blew on it and set it
aside. Then, the more he looked at it, the more he was displeased with
it. So he said, “I will let it live, but I will make another one and
leave it longer to darken it.” He left it twice as long as before and
when he took this one out, it was black. So he set it aside and said, “I
shall make another,” and when he baked this one he cut the time in half,
and it came out exactly as he wanted it. So he made three—one white, one
black, and one red. He named that one _pinikan_, meaning Red.
Then he saw man needed a helpmate. “I made man out of dirt so I will
take part of man to make his helpmate so they will be as one, and she
will be known as female as she is part of the male.” After looking the
male over, he decided to make her out of bone. So he took a rib from the
rib case, right in front of the chest, leaving a bone dangling. When man
woke up, he saw this female sitting there. He noticed she was built
different and beautiful. When he started to her, he cried, “Wo Man,” and
they committed the first sin (as we know it). The man said, “You should
cover yourself up.” The female said, “And so should you. I know, I will
take the large leaves from this tree and make each a cover.” She made
the covers and tied them on with a vine known today as the white vine.
When they heard the Great Spirit coming, they were ashamed, and hid from
him. So he called for them to “Come out wherever you are.” Then the
Great Spirit asked them, “Why are you hiding?” Then the male said, “She
looked so enticing that I went into her without your permission.” The
Great Spirit said, “For that you shall go out on the earth and earn your
living by the sweat of your brow. If you do not work, you do not eat,
and you, woman, you shall bear his offspring in great pain. I did not
intend to have but you two, but since it is this way, you will be
fruitful and multiply so your seed may be many, and now that you are
smart, I will give you the earth, but remember you are made of her dirt
and you shall return to her. She is your mother. She will feed you and
clothe you. She will give you the trees to give you nuts and fruits for
you to eat and at seasons for birds to live in, and fur bearing animals.
You will also enjoy its shade. When you are tired, you may rest on the
soft grass that will grow. The tree will have many uses. It will be used
to warm you in the winter, to make rafts to float on the waters, and it
will make your homes for your protection against the cold winter. It
will heat you when it is cold. It will cook your food and its fire will
be a blessing as the flames leave by small parts into the skies. It will
also tell you the direction you must go so you need not ever get lost
while you are traveling. The seed you shall plant, the earth will help
them grow so you will have something to eat. She will separate and make
streams to harbor the fishes you will eat and for you to drink and
bathe. So protect the waters and keep them clean. Your life depends on
its purity just like the air you breathe. You may have my breath in you,
and if you disobey me, I will withdraw my breath and you will be no
more. And through my breath, I will be with you always. When you are
sick, the earth will bear roots and herbs for you to use. I will not
inflict any sickness that will not have herbs to cure. I will speak to
your medicine man through a coma only and only to this man I shall
designate the cures. I will speak to him only through a vision. No one
else shall see me again, and this man shall choose someone of his kind
and reveal this secret to any man worthy of him. To avoid conflict,
there will be only one in each group to speak to me. His power strength
will be as strong as his faith in me. I shall keep the mother earth in
my custody so I may destroy it any time that you have lost faith in me
and disobey my teaching. You will, at any time I choose for you, return
your body to the mother earth, but if you love me and keep the faith
your spirits will go to the Happy Hunting Ground, where everything will
be for your taking, and you will die no more. But if you do not, your
carcass will remain in mother womb and return to dirt of which you were
created.
“The earth will be for your use. Use it in any way you choose. But no
one can claim it as their own. It is not to be bought, sold, or rented,
because the earth is mine. Misuse it, and you shall repent for any wrong
use of the land or its streams. This I command you to live by, so go out
in the world that you have made for yourself and be fruitful and
multiply.”
That is the way the Indians said the Great Spirit gave it to the first
man, and it was in practice when the white man came into this country.
The Great Spirit showed them how to make coverups out of animal skin,
called breachcloths, and they were happy. Now the man who was to do the
treating found a certain herb that would put him into a coma, so he
would build a fire and drink a tea made from this herb and dance around
this fire chanting until this herb took effect. Then he would pass out.
While in this stage, he would communicate with the Great Spirit which
would tell him what to do or what to use or whatever his desire was.
Someone asked the medicine man to describe the Great Spirit since he
claims he saw him. The medicine man said he would be hard to describe
since he has no shape, and yet he has many shapes. “The way I saw him is
like a heavy mist. He had no eyes, yet he saw everything. He has no
ears, yet he hears everything, even the unspoken word within you. He has
no mouth, yet he speaks. You have heard him speak to you within your
head, something to not do that is wrong, or he will say do do that that
is good. He is watching you always. You cannot hide from his sight no
matter where you are or what you are doing.”
Now the Indians had no Hell, no Devil. They thought that returning to
dirt and not going to the Happy Hunting Ground was the worst thing that
could happen to them. It was their code, not religion. They lived by
sort of Moses’ law—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Their chief
and councilmen would decide. Now the white man says that they found them
worshipping the moon or some stars. True, they knew he was up there
somewhere, so some would think he was the man in the moon, and thought
he was some bright star. They did not know. Nonetheless, they knew that
there was a power stronger than them. They could feel him in their mind.
They did not teach fear to their children like they would go to hell.
They taught them bravery, to fear no one. As long as they obeyed the
Great Spirit, they would be content.
A long time ago, no definite date, came among the Chitimacha a strange,
fair complected man who spoke their language, which amazed the Indians.
He was very smart. The Indians said he knew everything. He taught them
to make better crops by using fish byproducts and even fish by their
plants, and it would make them grow healthy and strong. He helped them
to substitute herbs when one was not available at different seasons.
Then came one day, he told the Indians it was time for him to leave the
Chitimacha and go do his father’s work. He picked out a cypress tree and
climbed to the top. Then he told the Chitimachas, “Whenever you need
rain for your crops, come and wet this tree and it will rain according
to your needs.” And until this day, it works. It has been proven by
many, many people, white and black. All over South Louisiana, people
know about it and believe in it strongly. That is how the Indians were
blessed by the Great Spirit. He gives and he takes. The Chitimacha did
not think it feasible to ask the Great Spirit for anything. All they
taught their children was how to thank him for all the good things they
got from him. If something went wrong along the way, you just checked
the past—you have done something to displease the Great Spirit. It has
always been and still is until today. So the Indians would punish
themselves to try and please the Great Spirit.
Now the Indian has been ridiculed for talking to the Great Spirit which
is an Indian belief. The white prophets of old spoke to their gods. Why
should it be unreasonable for an Indian to do the same under the Great
Spirit? Guidance as afore stated, the Chitimacha do not believe Adam and
Eve naked in the Garden of Eden ate an apple; however, the white man
says so, so the Indians do not deny it, since they had to accept the
white God, which is the same Supreme Being with different names. They
are both sacred to the Chitimacha. Since the Indians could not read or
write, all this was handed down mouth to mouth. So many things might be
left out and some could have been added. We do not know for sure, yet
some of your strongest and oldest organizations do not have anything
written and are still going strong.
We do know that the Indians did not preach religion. They live it. They
have a ceremonial for everything, and it was all done with respect to
the Great Spirit. Their dances, their chanting was somewhat like your
unknown tongue of today, and it was always done around a fire because we
believe that fire has life. If you watch a fire, you will notice part of
the flame leaves the fire and goes up to carry the message to the Great
Spirit, thanking him for a good harvest, good hunt, a good fish catch,
and many other things.
The council would meet and decide what punishment should be for a
wrongdoer, such as if one committed murder and they decided he should
die also, the chief would tell him. So having no jail, he would be free
until his time came. Time was measured by the moon. The council would
decide how many moons he had left. Then the criminal would return to
meet his execution and if he did not return, his mother or father or
brother or his son would have to pay for his crime, someone very close
to him. Now in the killing of one in a brawl, the living was not
punished by death. He had to see that the family of the deceased was fed
and clothed until all were capable of taking care of themselves. If he
had only enough for one family, he had to do without, so the dead man’s
family would not suffer hunger. Now if a squaw committed adultery, she
was punished by cutting the tip of her nose. She would be forever marked
as an unfaithful squaw. There is no punishment known today for the man.
Once an Indian had an eye sore the medicine man could not cure. So he
had to go into a coma and seek the aid of the Great Spirit. After the
preparation that the Great Spirit had instructed them to do, he passed
out, so to speak. The Great Spirit told him where to find the herb that
would cure any sore eye. It seems that the chief’s little girl had died
and was buried. The Great Spirit told him to go to the grave of this
little girl, and he will find a small vine growing from her eye. Use
that vine and leaves, and make an eye wash with it. He did and the eyes
were cured (and we were still using it till we were forbidden by the
medical association to use any herb), and many herbs were found, like
moner, and until today only one of the tribe knows the herbs that were
used since the beginning, which will not be revealed to anyone. The
Indians of today do not meet the standard that the Great Spirit set, nor
will they follow the ritual that goes with it, so it will die out just
like the other things the white man deprived the Indians of, their way
of living.
The chief duty was to see that everyone had something to eat before he
would eat. If some did not have any through no fault of their own,
everyone had to share what they had with the one that had none. These
were the unwritten laws that the Chitimacha lived by. As far as this
writer knows that is the way it was related a long time ago. (I make no
excuse for adding some or leaving some of it out. As time goes on,
perhaps some more will come to mind. If so, it will be added to this
brief resume of the one and only Great Spirit as the Indians knew him
before the white man came.)
The Indians knew how to make rain without the rain tree and how to make
the north wind blow to dry up the weather when necessary. I have seen it
work time after time. It is a secret given by the Great Spirit for their
use, but they were warned never to abuse it nor use it to harm your
fellow men. But such rituals cannot and will not be revealed to the
Indians of today. They are too well integrated with the white man and
his ways. It may not work for them, so let it die out like so many
rituals have. Like an old Indian chief once said, “The campfire is dying
out, the hunt is almost over.” But what will happen to the songs and the
folklore? They will soon die out also. Everything an Indian does is done
in a circle because all things are round. The moon, the stars, the sun,
the sky, the world is round. So he must also do everything in a circle.
The sun rises and circles overhead until it disappears and returns to do
the same thing again. So does the moon. The stars do the same thing.
Their homes were built in circles. Their lives were lived in a circle
from birth to death to birth after death.
The extremely beautiful creation of the Chitimacha Indians is amazingly
similar to the Biblical Genesis. The animal was created before man. So
in this Divine Origin, they have a certain proximity to the Great Spirit
himself which serves the same function as revealed scriptures in other
religions. There are intermediators or links between man and the Great
Spirit. The Great Spirit comes to the Indian vision involving animal
forms. One old Indian, the last we know of, received his spiritual power
from visions of a wolf and when he died in the house where an Indian
still lives, a pack of wolves came and ran around the house several
times and then left never to return as far as we know. We as Indians
have lost the communication with the Great Spirit. Then we still have a
very small bird that lives with the Indians, and it peeps things Indians
understand. It tells when someone is coming, when it is going to rain,
and many other things only an Indian understands. No Indian was allowed
to harm this little bird.
Indians see signs from all the wild animals—have some trait—an Indian
notices them very close, thinking they are the love of the Great Spirit.
Since he created them first, we regard all created beings as sacred and
important for everything.
This is the way it was told to me many years ago. So be it.
[Illustration: Three members of a Chitimacha family. Pictured left
to right are Felicia Mora Darden, Ernest Jack Darden, and Emma
Darden Bernard.
(M.R. Harrington, 1908. Photo courtesy of Museum of the American
Indian, Heye Foundation)]