A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. 1 / With a Linguistic, Historic and Ethnographic Introduction

by Albert S. Gatschet

The cause of the warring, or the pretense for it, against "some other Indians from the west" is curiously similar to the rivalry in athletic sports, which took place between the western Iroquois and their subdivisions, and finally led to the destruction of the Erie or Ká'hkwa Indians (Cusick, Johnson). The names of "brothers, cousins, elders," which occur here, are terms of intertribal courtesy, which we find also, perhaps in a more pronounced manner, among the New York Iroquois. The Creeks called the Delaware and Sháwano Indians grandfathers, because they regard their customs and practices as older and more venerable than their own; others state, because they occupied their countries further back in time than the Creeks did theirs.

The facts subsequently related are given without such chronological dates as we find with the previous ones, but the narrator evidently tried to condense into the space of a few years what it took generations to accomplish. This is very frequently observed in legendary tales. The spreading out of the people from the Tallapoosa river to the Chatahutchi and from there to the Savannah must have involved a warfare, struggling, migration and settling down of several centuries, for the advance of the Maskoki proper in this direction was tantamount to the formation of the Maskoki confederacy by subduing or incorporating the tribes standing in their way, and to the still more lengthy process of settling among them. What nation the flat-heads or aborigines of the country may have belonged to, will be discussed in the remarks to Tchikillis' tale. That there were Creek-speaking Indians on the Atlantic coast as early as 1564, has been shown conclusively in the article Yámassi; but their expulsion from there by the white colonists occurred but one hundred and fifty years later.

A certain objective purpose is inherent in these legends, which is more of a practical than of a historical character; it intends to trace the tribal friendship existing between the Kasiχta and the Chicasa, or a portion of the latter, to remote ages. It must be remembered, that both speak different languages intelligible to each other only in a limited number of words. An alliance comparable to this also exists between the Pima and Maricopa tribes of Arizona; the languages spoken by these even belong to different families.

The period when the Chicasa settlement near Kasiχta was broken up by the return of the inmates to the old Chicasa country is not definitely known, but may be approximately set down in the beginning of the eighteenth century. Later on, a war broke out between the Creeks and Chicasa. Kasiχta town refused to march against the old allies, and "when the Creeks offered to make peace their offers were rejected, till the Kasiχta interposed their good offices. These had the desired effect, and produced peace" (Hawkins, p. 83).

Remarks to Milfort's Legend.

Milfort's "History of the Moskoquis," as given above in an extract, is a singular mixture of recent fabrications and distortions of real historic events, with some points traceable to genuine aboriginal folklore.

Nobody who has the slightest knowledge of the general history of America will credit the statement that the Creeks ever lived in the northwestern part of Mexico at Montezuma's and Cortez' time, since H. de Soto found them, twenty years later, on the Coosa river; and much less the other statement, that they succored Montezuma against the invader's army.[149] That they met the Alibamu on the west side of Mississippi river is not impossible, but that they pursued them for nearly a thousand miles up that river to the Missouri, and then down again on the other or eastern side of Mississippi, is incredible to anybody acquainted with Indian customs and warfare. The narrative of the Alibamu tribal origin given under: Alibamu, p. [86], locates the place where they issued from the ground between the Cahawba and the Alabama rivers. That the Creeks arrived in Northern Alabama in or after the time of the French colonization of the Lower Mississippi lands, is another impossibility, and the erection of Fort Toulouse preceded the second French war against the Chicasa by more than twenty years, whereas Milfort represents it as having been a consequence of that war.

It is singular and puzzling that Maskoki legends make so frequent mention of caves as the former abodes of their own or of cognate tribes. Milfort relates, that the Alibamu, when in the Yazoo country, lived in caves. This may refer to the Cha'hta country around "Yazoo Old Village" (p. [108], in Neshoba county, Mississippi; but if it points to the Yazoo river, we may think of the chief Alimamu (whose name stands for the tribe itself), met with by H. de Soto, west of Chicaça, and beyond Chocchechuma. A part of the Cheroki anciently dwelt in caves; and concerning the caverns from which the Creeks claim to have issued, James Adair gives the following interesting disclosure: "It is worthy of notice, that the Muskohgeh cave, out of which one of their politicians persuaded them their ancestors formerly ascended to their present terrestrial abode, lies in the Nanne Hamgeh old town, inhabited by the Mississippi-Nachee Indians,[150] which is one of the most western parts of their old-inhabited country." The idea that their forefathers issued from caves was so deeply engrafted in the minds of these Indians, that some of them took any conspicuous cave or any country rich in caves to be the primordial habitat of their race. This is also confirmed by a conjurer's tricky story alluded to by Adair, History, pp. 195. 196.