SECOND OR SPECIAL PART.
THE KASI'HTA MIGRATION LEGEND.
INDIAN MIGRATION LEGENDS.
There are events in the history of a people, which are remembered with difficulty or displeasure and therefore soon drop from the memory of men. But there are other incidents which pass from father to son through many generations, and the remembrance of them, though altered in many particulars and variously recounted, seems to be undying. Events of this kind are migrations, long warfare or decisive battles, which resulted either in defeat or victory, alliances with cognate or friendly tribes, times of abundance, of famines and epidemics. To be of easy remembrance, there must be something connected with these events which forcibly strikes the imagination and in later times stands out as the principal fact, while minor features of its occurrence disappear or become subject to alterations in the progress of time.
This also shows the process, how historic legends and traditions are forming among uncultured nations, which are possessed of imperfect means only for the transmission of ideas to posterity. Whenever this traditionary lore is written down by a civilized people, then the gathering of these tales, half mythic and half historic, forms a commencement of historiography, and by later generations is regarded as valued material for clearing up the dawn of history.
The historic legends of the different nations vary exceedingly in their contents, at least as much as do the nations themselves. There are some that speak of the chiefs only and not of the people, or fill the tales with mythic heroes and impossible events, while the more sober and intelligent restrict the miraculous element to narrow limits, though never excluding it entirely. There are peoples and individuals who will not give credence to a legend which does not contain miracles. Many of the North American tribes, especially on the Pacific coast, have no knowledge of early events in their tribe, because a severe law prohibits them from calling their dead relatives by their names. This superstition alone suffices to destroy the historic sense in the population, but does not seem to have operated among the Aztecs, Mayas and Quichhuas to any noticeable degree.
All nations of the globe have migrated from earlier into more recent seats, but with many of them these migrations took place in epochs so far distant that they have lost all recollections of them. These latter we call autochthonic; the Kalapuya of Willámet Valley, Oregon, and the Washo around Carson, Nevada, who claim to have originated from bulrushes in the vicinity, belong to these. All tribes of the Maskoki stock possess migration legends, and so do the Dakota and Iroquois. Their migration legends are intermingled with myths and mythic ideas; nevertheless, they prove that the migrations took place in comparatively recent times, and that these accounts are not pure astronomical or other fictions.
A full knowledge of Maskoki mythology would certainly help us in the understanding of their migration tales, but this subject has not been investigated as yet. Their principal mythic power is the "Master of Life" or "Holder of Breath," in Creek Isákita immíssi, a divine being, which is as thoroughly North American as Jahve, an ancient sun- and thunder-god, is of Semitic, and Dyaus, Zeus, Jupiter, the Sky-god, is of Aryan origin. The proper sense of the Creek name is "the one who carries, takes the life or breath for them;" it is the embodiment of the idea that a great, powerful spirit gives life, or what is synonymous with it, breath to them (to persons, animals), and takes it off from them at will (isákita life, breath; im-pron. poss. 3d person, ísäs I take, when the object stands in the singular); ísi, íssi taker, holder. The Master of Life, also called Suta-läíkati, "resident in the sky," is not a pure abstraction, but has to be brought into connection with the sun-worship of all Americans, which again became associated with the cult of the fire-flame. The idea that the Creeks knew anything of the devil of the Christian religion is a pure invention of the missionaries; being christianized, they call him now: ísti fútchigō "the man acting perversely," tasoχlä′ya, or: ísti niklé-idsha atsū′li "the old person-burner" (áni niklé-idshäs I burn somebody, something); the Yuchi call him "the swinging man," just as they call a ghost "a hunting man." The Shetimasha name for the devil is néka, which properly means conjurer, sorcerer and witchcraft.