|
A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians
The present publication
proposes to bring before the public, in
popular form, some scientific results
obtained while studying the language and
ethnology of the Creek tribe and its ethnic
congeners. The method of furthering
ethnographic study by all the means which
the study of language can afford, has been
too little appreciated up to the present
time, but has been constantly kept in view
in this publication. Language is not only
the most general and important help to
ethnology, but outside of race, it is also
the most ancient of all; ethnologists are
well aware of this fact, but do not
generally apply it to their studies, because
they find it too tedious to acquire the
language of unlettered tribes by staying
long enough among them.
The help afforded to
linguistic studies by the books published in
and upon the Indian languages is valuable
only for a few among the great number of the
dialects. The majority of them are laid down
in phonetically defective missionary
alphabets, about which we are prompted to
repeat what the citizens of the young colony
of Mexico wrote to the government of Spain,
in Cortez's time: "Send to us pious and
Christian men, as preachers, bishops and
missionaries, but do not send us scholars,
who, with their pettifogging distinctions
and love of contention, create nothing but
disorder and strife."l In the same manner,
some Creek scholars and churchmen agreed
five times in succession, before 1853, upon
standard alphabets to be followed in
transcribing Creek, but, as Judge G. W. Stidham justly remarks, made it worse each
time. To arrive at trustworthy results, it
is therefore necessary to investigate the
forms of speech as they are in use among the
Indians themselves.
Very few statements of
the Kasihta migration legend can be made
available for history. It is wholly
legendary, in its first portion even
mythical; it is of a comparatively remote
age, exceedingly instructive for ethnography
and for the development of religious ideas;
it is full of that sort of naïveté which we
like so much to meet in the mental
productions of our aborigines, and affords
striking instances of the debasing and
brutalizing influence of the unrestricted
belief in the supernatural and miraculous.
Of the sun-worship, which underlies the
religions of all the tribes in the Gulf
territories, only slight intimations are
contained in the Kasi’hta legend, and the
important problem, whether the Creeks ever
crossed the Mississippi river from west to
east in their migrations, seems to be
settled by it in the negative, although
other legends may be adduced as speaking in
its favor.
Owing to deficient
information on several Maskoki dialects, I
have not touched the problem of their
comparative age. From the few indications on
hand, I am inclined to think that
Alibamu
and Koassáti possess more and Cha’hta less
archaic forms than the other dialect-groups.
From Rev. H. C.
Buckner's Creek Grammar, with its numerous
defects, I have extracted but a few
conjugational forms of the verb isita to
take, but have availed myself of some
linguistic manuscripts of Mrs. A. E. W.
Robertson, the industrious teacher and
translator of many parts of the Bible into
Creek.
The re-translation of
the legend into Creek and
Hitchiti is due to
Judge G. W. Stidham, of Eufaula, Indian
Territory, who in infancy witnessed the
emigration of his tribe, the Hitchiti, from
the Chatahuchi River into their present
location. My heartfelt thanks are also due
to other Indians, who have materially helped
me in my repeated revisions of the subject
matter embodied in these volumes, and in
other investigations. They were the Creek
delegates to the Federal government, Chiefs
Chicote and Ispahidshi, Messrs. S. B.
Callaghan, Grayson and Hodge.
I also fully
acknowledge the services tendered by the
officers of the U. S. Bureau of Ethnology,
as well as by Dr. Daniel G. Brinton and by
General Albert Pike, who placed the rich
shelves of their libraries at my
disposition. In the kindest manner I was
furnished with scientific statements of
various kinds by Messrs. W. R. Gerard, C. C.
Royce and Dr. W. C. Hoffmann.
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.
Genealogy |
Indian
Genealogy
|
|
