The American Race. Brinton Daniel Garrison

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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

      THE MUSKOKI LINGUISTIC STOCK

      Apalaches, on Apalache Bay.

      Chickasaws, head waters of Mobile river.

      Choctaws, between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers.

      Coshattas, on the Red river.

      Creeks, see Muskokis.

      Hitchitees, sub-tribe of Creeks.

      Muskokis, between Mobile and Savannah rivers.

      Seminoles, in Florida.

      Yamassees, around Port Royal Bay, South Carolina.

      7. THE CATAWBAS, YUCHIS, TIMUCUAS, NATCHEZ, CHETIMACHAS, TONICAS, ADAIZE, ATAKAPAS, ETC

      Within the horizon of the Muskoki stock were a number of small tribes speaking languages totally different. We may reasonably suppose them to have been the débris of the ancient population who held the land before the Muskokis had descended upon it from the north and west. The Catawbas in the area of North and South Carolinas were one of these, and in former times are said to have had a wide extension. South of them was the interesting tribe of the Yuchis. When first heard of they were on both banks of the Savannah river, but later moved to the Chatahuche. They call themselves “Children of the Sun,” which orb they regard as a female and their mother. Their gentes are the same as those of the Creeks, and are evidently borrowed from them. Descent is counted in the female line. Women are held in honor, and when De Soto first met them they were governed by a queen.104

      Some of both these tribes still survive; but this is not the case with the Timucuas, who occupied the valley of the St. John river, Florida, and its tributaries, and the Atlantic coast as far north as the St. Mary river. They have been extinct for a century, but we have preserved some doctrinal works written in their tongue by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenth century, so we gain an insight into their language.105 It is an independent stock.

      Near the Choctaws were the Natchez, not far from the present city of that name. An account of them has been preserved by the early French settlers of Louisiana. They were devoted sun-worshippers and their chief was called “The Sun,” and regarded as the earthly representative of the orb. They constructed artificial mounds, upon which they erected temples and houses, and were celebrated for their skill in weaving fabrics from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and for their fine pottery. In their religious rites they maintained a perpetual fire, and were accustomed to sacrifice captives to their gods, and the wives of their chieftain at his death.

      The Taensas were a branch of the Natchez on the other bank of the Mississippi. Attention has been drawn to them of late years by the attempt of a young seminarist in France to foist upon scholars a language of his own manufacture which he had christened Taensa, and claimed to have derived from these people.106 The Natchez language contains many words from the Muskoki dialects, but is radically dissimilar from it.107 A few of the nation still preserve it in Indian Territory.

      The Chetimachas lived on the banks of Grand Lake and Grand River, and were but a small tribe. They are said to have been strictly monogamous, and to have had female chieftains. Their chief deity was Kut-Kähänsh, the Noon-day Sun, in whose honor they held sacred dances at each new moon.

      The Tonicas are frequently mentioned in the early French accounts of the colony of Louisiana. They lived in what is now Avoyelles parish, and were staunch friends of the European immigrants. Their language is an independent stock, and has some unusual features in American tongues, such as a masculine and a feminine gender of nouns and a dual in three pronouns.

      The Adaize or Atai were a small tribe who once lived between Saline river and Natchitoche, La. They spoke a vocalic language, differing from any other, though including a number of Caddo words, which was owing to their having been a member of the Caddo confederacy.

      The Atakapas had their hunting grounds about Vermilion river and the adjacent Gulf coast. Their name in Choctaw means “man-eaters,” both they and their neighbors along the Texan coast having an ugly reputation as cannibals, differing in this from the Muskokis and their neighbors east of the Mississippi, among whom we have no record of anthropophagy, even of a ritual character. The later generations of Atakapas have been peaceful and industrious. Their language, though in the main quite alone, presents a limited number of words evidently from the same roots as their correspondents

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