The various nations who are classed under the Muskoki stock occupied the
broad and pleasant lowlands stretching from the terminal hills of the
Apalachian Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to
the Mississippi, and even beyond that mighty barrier. The remains of a
few other stocks in the eastern portion of this area indicate that the
Muskokis were not its original occupants, and this was also their own
opinion. Their legends referred to the west and the northwest as the
direction whence their ancestors had wandered; and the Choctaw legend
which speaks of _Nani Waya_, the Bending Mount, a large artificial mound
in Winston county, Mississippi, as the locality where their first parents
saw the light, is explained by another which describes it as the scene
of their separation from the Chickasaws.
Of the main division of the stock, the Choctaws lived furthest west,
bordering upon the Mississippi, the Chickasaws in the centre, and the
Creeks on the Atlantic slope. The Seminoles were a branch of the latter,
who, in the last century, moved into Florida; but it is probable that the
whole of the west coast of that peninsula was under the control of the
Creeks from the earliest period of which we have any knowledge of it.
The various members of this stock presented much diversity in
appearance. The Creeks were tall and slender, the Chickasaws short
and heavy; the skulls of both have a tendency to dolichocephaly, but
with marked exceptions, and the custom among many of them to deform
the head artificially in various ways adds to the difficulties of the
craniologist.[99] The color of all is called a dark cinnamon.
The gentile system with descent in the female line prevailed everywhere.
The Creeks counted more than twenty gentes, the Choctaws and Chickasaws
about twelve, united in phratries of four. In the towns each gens lived
in a quarter by itself, and marriage within the gens was strictly
prohibited. Each had its own burying place and sepulchral mound where the
bones of the deceased were deposited after they had been cleaned. The
chief of each town was elected for life from a certain gens, but the
office was virtually hereditary, as it passed to his nephew on his wife’s
side unless there were cogent reasons against it. The chief, or _miko_,
as he was called, ruled with the aid of a council, and together they
appointed the “war chief,” who obtained the post solely on the ground of
merit. Instances of a woman occupying the position of head chief were not
unknown, and seem to have been recalled with pleasure by the tribe.[100]
The early culture of these tribes is faithfully depicted in the records
of the campaign of Hernando De Soto, who journeyed through their country
in 1540. He found them cultivating extensive fields of maize, beans,
squashes and tobacco; dwelling in permanent towns with well-constructed
wooden edifices, many of which were situated on high mounds of artificial
construction, and using for weapons and utensils stone implements of
great beauty of workmanship. The descriptions of later travellers and
the antiquities still existing prove that these accounts were not
exaggerated. The early Muskokis were in the highest culture of the stone
age; nor were they deficient wholly in metals. They obtained gold from
the uriferous sands of the Nacoochee and other streams and many beautiful
specimens of their ornaments in it are still to be seen.
Their artistic development was strikingly similar to that of the
“mound-builders” who have left such interesting remains in the Ohio
valley; and there is, to say the least, a strong probability that they
are the descendants of the constructors of those ancient works, driven
to the south by the irruptions of the wild tribes of the north.[101] Even
in the last century they built solid structures of beams fastened to
upright supports, plastered on the outside, and in the interior divided
into a number of rooms. The art of picture-writing was not unknown to
them, and some years ago I published their remarkable “national legend,”
read off from its hieroglyphics painted on a skin by their chief Chekilli
in 1731.[102]
The religious rites of the Creeks were so elaborate that they attracted
early attention, and we have quite full accounts of them. They were
connected with the worship of the principle of fertility, the chief
celebration, called the _busk_ (_puskita_, fast), being solemnized when
the young corn became edible. In connection with this was the use of the
“black drink,” a decoction of the _Iris versicolor_, and the maintenance
of the perpetual fire. Their chief divinity was referred to as the
“master of breath” or of life, and there was a developed symbolism of
colors, white representing peaceful and pleasant ideas; red, those of war
and danger. The few Seminoles who still survive in the southern extremity
of the peninsula of Florida continue the ceremonies of the green corn
dance and black drink, though their mythology in general has become
deeply tinged with half-understood Christian teachings.[103]