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.