Rites of the Caddo

Exorcism By Bath

     An eagle killer is bathed with warm water and tobacco. Mourners bathe in a stream.
     River bath or the sweat bath, which is in general use in the Southeast, is preliminary to participation in Peyote ceremonial.

Prayer

     He prayed or gave thanks (t'umbakauutsihadina) is the term used for the initial prayer of the Peyote leader; also for the ceremony to ask forgiveness¹⁵¹ from your supernatural helper (p. 58), where it is described as "to pray or make offerings."

Offerings

     The hunt leader would build a fire and in the middle of it put an offering of buffalo tongue. This offering was to the fire itself, which was kept up for the duration of the hunt camp. Today when a beef is killed a piece is cast on the fire. Some of the first of the crop-potatoes, pumpkin, corn-is cast on the fire. When White Moon has been away, his grandmother will keep against his return the first meal of something new,¹⁵² putting a bit of it on the fire.¹⁵³
     At the meal eaten at the grave¹⁵⁴ to dispatch the dead and at memorial meals food is offered on the grave. The property of the deceased is hung on a pole, one of the regular early ways of making offerings.'-15 There are always crumbs for ghosts¹⁵⁶ (see p. 60).

Fasting

Fasting from salt is observed in Peyote ceremonial. Compare p. 33 for the idea that salt in the body precludes being affected by magical or supernatural influence-possibly a clue to the widespread taboo on salt in connection with ceremonial.

Smoking And Gift Of Tobacco

    The Peyote ceremony opens with ceremonial smoking, the leader holding the cigarette over Father Peyote, and puffing the smoke upward. Puffing in the directions on any occasion was unfamiliar to my informants, although into the eighteenth century Caddo did smoke in the directions.¹⁵⁷
     A gift of tobacco to a doctor who accepts it is binding.

Orientation: The Road

The circuit is sunwise, beginning in the east, as seen in ritual at the grave, in Peyote ceremonial and in the kak'it'imbin dance. The Ghost dance circuit is anti-sunwise and so is that of a pleasure "stomp dance." As among Pawnee,¹⁵⁸ the head of the ceremonial group sits at the west side, and north and south lines are distinguishable.¹⁵⁹

     The "road," presumably for the Spirits, runs east and west. The Sky father to whom the dead go lives in the west.

Favored Numeral

     It is six;¹⁶⁰ as White Moon puts it, "they always do it six times.¹⁶¹ Curing ceremonial lasts six days. The mourning period is six days. There are six tallies in the hand-game. The cardinal directions are accounted six. In describing how women used to pound corn Ingkanish said there would be as many as six women working together at the mortar; in previous accounts no more than four are described.¹⁶²

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151 Hakuts'iats'a, I am sorry.
152 Formerly, at least at a ceremonial meal, "something of everything" was offered (Hatcher, XXX, 212); now it is only something of anything new.
153 Cp. Harrington, 267; Hatcher, XXX, 212-213; Creeks, Swanton 1: 517, and general in the Southeast (Swanton 2: 708).
154 One Shawnee division set the food for the final burial feast on the grave first, then brought it back and served it to the guests, at the dwelling house (Voegelin).
155 Hatcher, XXX, 214.

156 Food, also tobacco, was offered to the scalps at the victory celebration (Joutel, 380). Inferably the tobacco was to bind the Spirits (see below).

157 Hatcher, XXXI, 166, 172. Creeks used color-directions associated with water (Swanton 1: 623-624).

158 Murie, 628.

159 Murie, 628, 636, 642.

160 Cp. Pawnee, Murie, 629 n. 1.

161 See pp. 33 37, 40, 41, 61, 67, 68, and cp. Dorsey 2: passim.

162 Joutel, 367.

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Notes on the Caddo

Notes About the Book:

Source: Notes on the Caddo, Memories of the American Anthropological Association, Elsie Clews Parsons, 1921.

Online Publication: The manuscript was scanned and then ocr'd. Minimal editing has been done, and readers can and should expect some errors in the textual output.

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