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._