The Creek Confederacy
The Creek Confederacy
Gatschet, Albert S.A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians. Pub. D.G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 1884.
The Creek Confederacy
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, …
The social organization of all the Indian nations of America is based upon the existence of the tribe. The tribe itself is based upon smaller units of individuals which are joined together by a common tie; this tie is either the archaic maternal descent, or the more modern tie of paternal descent, or a combination …
Civil Government Of The Creek Tribe
Cha’hta Tribes Of The Gulf Coast
The northern parts of Mississippi State contain the earliest homes of the warlike tribe of Chicasa Indians which historical documents enable us to trace. Pontotoc County was the centre of their habitations in the eighteenth century, and was so probably at the time of the Columbian discovery; settlements of the tribe scattered along the Mississippi …
Cha’hta Indians
Editor’s Note: Chahta is a derivative for Choctaw, so the following information is referencing the Choctaw Language. The Chahta1 Language, the representative of the western group of Maskoki dialects, differs in its phonetics from the eastern dialects chiefly by the more general vocalic nasalization previously alluded to. Words cannot begin with two consonants; the Creek …
Alibamu Indians
Allophylic Languages Among Southern Tribes
The solemn annual festival held by the Creek people of ancient and modern days is the púskita, a word now passed into provincial English (busk); its real meaning is that of a fast. In the more important towns it lasted eight days; in towns of minor note four days only, and its celebration differed in each town in some particulars. The day on which to begin it was fixed by the míko and his council, and depended on the maturity of the maize crop and on various other circumstances.
Apalachi Indians
Kataba is a derivative for Cawtaba, so the following information is referencing the Cawtaba Indians. The Kataba Indians of North and South Carolina are mentioned here only incidentally, as they do not appear to have had much intercourse with any Maskoki tribe. The real extent of this linguistic group is unknown; being in want of any vocabularies besides that of the Kataba, on Kataba river, S. C., and of the Woccons, settled near the coast of N. C.
The Cheroki spelling is a derivative of Cherokee, so the following information is referencing the Cherokee Indians. The Cheroki, or more correctly, Tsalagi nation is essentially a hill people; their numerous settlements were divided into two great sections by the watershed ridge of the Alleghany mountains, in their language Unéga katúsi (“white, whitish mountains”}, of which even now a portion is called “Smoky Mountains.”
In the history of the Creeks, and in their legends of migration, many references occur to the tribes around them, with whom they came in contact. These contacts were chiefly of a hostile character, for the normal state of barbaric tribes is to live in almost permanent mutual conflicts. What follows is an attempt to enumerate and sketch them, the sketch to be of a prevalently topographic nature. We are not thoroughly acquainted with the racial or anthropological peculiarities of the nations surrounding the Maskoki proper on all sides, but in their languages we possess an excellent help for classifying them.
The Calusa held the southwestern extremity of Florida, and their tribal name is left recorded in Calusahatchi, a river south of Tampa bay. They are called Calos on de Bry’s map (1591), otherwise Colusa, Callos, Carlos, and formed a confederacy of many villages, the names of which are given in the memoir of Hernando d Escalante Fontanedo.
The Atákapa tribe once existed upon the upper Bayou Tèche northwest and west of the Shetimasha, north and northwest of the Opelousa Indians, and from the Tèche extended beyond Vermilion river, perhaps down to the sea coast. The Atákapa of old were a well-made race of excellent hunters, but had, as their name indicates, the reputation of being anthropophagites.
Editor’s Note: Arkansas is a name by which the Quapaw tribe were recorded in history. None of the numerous Algonkin tribes lived in the immediate neighborhood of the Maskoki family of Indians, but of the Dakotan stock the Arkansas (originally Ákansä the Akansea of Father Gravier), dwelt in close proximity, and had frequent intercourse with …
Of this small and obscure Indian community mention is made much earlier than of all the other tribes hitherto spoken of in this volume, for Cabeça de Vaca, in his Naufragios, mentions them among the inland tribes as Atayos. In the list of eight Caddo villages, given by a Taensa guide to L. d Iberville …