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Creek Ethnographic Notes
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.1 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.
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 chamcerops 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 teeth2 , 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.
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.
Hawkins3, 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.4 He remains in a
house for four days, during which the above
performances are repeated. Putting on a new
pair of moccasins (stillipaiχa),
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 hatki, 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’tcha-is,5 "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.
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.6
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 (chapelef). 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
Yamassi
customs.
Footnotes:
- Milfort, Mem., p.
251.
- Also practiced once a
year upon the Shetimasha warriors, on their
knee-joints, by men expressly appointed to
this manipulation.
- Sketch of the Creek
Country, pp. 78. 79.
- Maize pounded into
grits.
- Slightly altered from
the words given by Hawkins.
- Cf. what is said of
the initiation of the ahopáya and imíssi,
pp. 159. 165.
Back to: Creek Indians
Notes About Book:
Source: Gatschet, Albert S., A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians.
Pub.
D.G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 1884.
Notes about Online Publication: This manuscript has been ocr'd and heavily
edited. Many of the Native American words have been reproduced as clearly as
online publication will allow us, but not all are exactly the way they were in
the original work. The structure of this manuscript has been changed to allow
better online presentation.
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