Muskoka Nations of Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole Indians

THE CHAHTA-MUSKOKIS.

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 th
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. 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 hi
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

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 no 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.

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 wit
half-understood Christian teaching