Abundant material for the study of ethnography is on hand for the
earlier and later periods of the Creek nation; but here we have to
restrict ourselves to some points which are especially adapted to the
illustration of the migration legends. The relation of husband to wife
and family being the foundation of all tribal, social and political
life, should certainly be treated as fully as it deserves, but in this
context only incident notes can be given on this subject.
_Condition of Females._--Although succession among all Maskoki tribes
was in the female line, the females occupied a subordinate condition
among the Creeks, and in their households were subjected, like those
of other Indians, to a life of drudgery. Divorces were of frequent
occurrence.
On the first days of the busk females were not permitted to enter the
area of the square, nor were they admitted to the council-house
whenever the men were sitting in council or attending to the
conjurer's performances. The women were assigned a bathing place in
the river-currents at some distance below the men. It is also stated
that a woman had the privilege of killing her offspring during the
first lunation after the birth, but when she did so after that term
she was put to death herself.[119] This may have been the practice in
a few Creek tribes, but it is doubtful that such was the general law
in all, except in regard to illegitimate offspring.
[Footnote 119: Milfort, Mém., p. 251.]
The occupations of Creek women are described by Cpt. B. Romans, p. 96
(1775), in the following succinct form:
"The women are employed, besides the cultivation of the earth, in
dressing the victuals, preparing, scraping, braining, rubbing and
smoaking the Roe-skins, making macksens of them, spinning buffaloe
wool, making salt, preparing cassine drink, drying the _chamærops_ and
_passiflora_, making cold flour for traveling, gathering nuts and
making their milk; likewise in making baskets, brooms, pots, bowls and
other earthen and wooden vessels."
_Initiation._--Indian parents bring up their children in a manner
which better deserves the name of training than that of education.
They think children become best fitted for future life when they can,
for a certain period of their ages, roam around at will and act at
their own pleasure. They do not reprobate or punish them for any
wanton act they may commit; hence the licentiousness of both sexes up
to the time of marriage, and the comparative want of discipline among
warriors on their expeditions. But the boys were taught to harden
their constitutions against the inclemencies of the seasons and the
privations in war, and this result they most successfully attained by
the so-called _initiation_, and also by continued bodily exercise
before and after that solemn period of their lives. B. Romans (1775)
sketches the training of the Creek youths in the following words (p.
96): "Creeks make the boys swim in the coldest weather; make them
frequently undergo scratching from head to foot, through the skin,
with broken glass or gar-fish teeth[120], so as to make them all in a
gore of blood, and then wash them with cold water; this is with them
the _arcanum_ against all diseases; but when they design it as a
punishment to the boys, they dry-scratch them, _i. e._, they apply no
water after the operation, which renders it very painful. They
endeavor ... to teach them all manner of cruelty toward brutes," etc.
[Footnote 120: Also practiced once a year upon the Shetimasha
warriors, on their knee-joints, by men expressly appointed to
this manipulation.]
This sort of treatment must have been abundantly productive of
rheumatism and other affections, though we have many instances of
Creek Indians reaching a high age. Of the _initiation_ which the Creek
boys underwent before attaining their seventeenth year, B. Hawkins
gives a full and circumstantial account, which shows that
superstitions had entered into the customs of private life of the
Creeks as deeply as they had into those of other Indian tribes.
The ceremony of initiating youth into manhood, says B. Hawkins[121],
is usually performed at the age from fifteen to seventeen, and is
called puskita (_fasting_), like the busk of the nation. A youth of
the proper age gathers two handfuls of the sowátchko plant, which
intoxicates and maddens, and eats this very bitter root for a whole
day, after which he steeps the leaves in water and drinks from this.
After sunset he eats two or three spoonfuls of boiled grits.[122] He
remains in a house for four days, during which the above performances
are repeated. Putting on a new pair of moccasins (stillipaíχa), he
leaves the cabin, and during twelve moons abstains from eating the
meat of young bucks, of turkey-cocks, fowls, peas and salt, and is
also forbidden to pick his ears and to scratch his head with his
fingers, but must use a small splinter to perform these operations.
Boiled grits--the only food allowed to him during the first four
moons--may be cooked for him by a little girl, but on a fire kindled
especially for his own use. From the fifth month any person may cook
for him, but he has to serve himself first, using one pan and spoon
only. Every new moon he drinks the pā′ssa or button-snake root,
an emetic, for four days, and takes no food except some boiled grits,
húmpita hátki, in the evening. At the commencement of the twelfth
lunation he performs for four days the same rites as he did at the
beginning of the initiation, but on the fifth he leaves the cabin,
gathers maize-cobs, burns them to ashes, and with these rubs his whole
body. At the end of the moon he elicits transpiration by sleeping
under blankets, then goes into cold water, an act which ends the
ceremony. The herb medicines are administered to him by the ísti
pakā′dsha `láko or "great leader," who, when speaking of him,
says: pusidshedshē′yi sanatchumitchä′tchä-is,[123] "I am
passing him through the physicking process repeatedly," or: náki
omálga imaki`lä′dshäyi sá`lit ómäs, tchí, "I am teaching him all the
matters proper for him to think of." If he has a dream during this
course of initiation, he has to drink from the pā′ssa, and dares
not touch any persons, save boys who are under a like course. This
course is sometimes shortened to a few months, even to twelve days
only, but the performances are the same.
[Footnote 121: Sketch of the Creek Country, pp. 78. 79.]
[Footnote 122: Maize pounded into grits.]
[Footnote 123: Slightly altered from the words given by Hawkins.]
The purpose of the initiation of boys, corresponding to the
first-menstruation rites of females, was the spiritual as well as the
physical strengthening of the individual. While the physical exposures
and privations were thought to render him strong in body and fearless
in battle, the dreams coming upon him, in consequence of the
exhaustion by hunger and maddening by all sorts of physic, were
supposed to furnish him visions, which would reveal to him enchanting
views for future life, material riches and the ways to acquire them,
the principles of bravery and persistence, the modes of charming
enemies and game at a distance, of obtaining scalps, and prospects of
general happiness and of a respected position in his tribe.[124]
[Footnote 124: Cf. what is said of the initiation of the ahopáyi
and imísi, pp. 159. 165.]
_Commemorative Beads._--To perpetuate the memory of historical facts,
as epidemics, tribal wars, migrations, the Creeks possessed the
pictorial or ideographic writing, the material generally used for it
being tanned skins. Besides this, which was common to the majority of
Indian tribes of North America, Milfort (pp. 47-49) mentions another
mode of transmitting facts to posterity, which shows a certain analogy
with the wampum-belts of the Iroquois and Algonkin tribes.
It consisted of strings of small beads, in shape of a narrow ribbon
(_banderole_) or rosary (_chapelet_). The beads are described as being
similar to those called _Cayenne pearls_ in Milfort's time, varying in
color, the grains being strung up one after the other. The
signification of each bead was determined by its shape and the
position it occupied in its order of sequence. Only the principal
events were recorded by these beads, and without any historic detail;
hence a single string often sufficed to recall the history of twenty
or twenty-five years. The events of each year were kept strictly
distinct from the events of any subsequent year by a certain
arrangement of the grains, and thus the strings proved reliable
documents as to the chronology of tribal events. The oldest of the
míkalgi (_les chefs des vieillards_) often recounted to Milfort, who
had risen to the dignity of "chief warrior" in the nation, episodes of
early Creek history, suggested to them by these "national archives."
Many old traditions of historic importance must have been embodied in
these records; but the only one given by Milfort, referring to the
emigration of the Creeks from their ancient cave-homes along Red
river, is so mixed up with incredible matter, that the fixation of the
events, as far as then remembered, must have taken place many
generations after the arrival of the Creeks in their Alabama homes.
Milfort himself, at the head of two hundred Creek men, undertook an
expedition to that renowned spot, to gratify himself and his
companions with the sight of the place itself from which the nation
had sprung forth, and all this solely on the strength of the belief
which these bead-strings had inspired in his companions.
Further notices on Creek ethnology may be found in _B. F. French_,
Hist. Collect. of Louisiana, III, 128-139, in the "Notes;" also in
Urlsperger's "Nachricht," Vol. I, chapter 5, 859-868, a passage
describing especially Yámassi customs.