From this conception it came about that the supreme being of the Creeks, a kind of sky god, was known as Hisakita-imisi, “the breath holder.” While he did not necessarily interfere actively in the relations between the lesser powers and mankind, his primacy was recognized, and they were spoken of as his servants; he was their miko.
What took place for the individual in time of sickness happened for the entire tribe annually at the time of the poskita. It had been given to men by Hisakita-imisi for their health and for the annual renewal of the life of the tribe, as well as the individual lives of those composing it. The square-ground fire was but a detached fragment of the sun, the sky fire, and both of these meant life, for both were necessary to the lives of men. The renewal of the fire was the renewal of life, an act by means of which, the connection between human lives and the life of the universe was restored, and the corruption, which had accumulated about the fire obtained the previous year, gotten rid of. Similarly the participants were cleansed internally by means of the poskita medicines, one of which was to make good the defects of the system and heal its diseases, the other to insure the enjoyment of positive benefits. Hence it was that a little of each was carried home by every household and hung up by the door, some of it being used occasionally in medicines until the next annual ceremony.
As to the origin of things, the Muskogee had obscure traditions. They believed that the solid land had come from the expansion of a bit of earth brought from the edges of the world or from the bottom of the ocean. They also told of a flood, but their story of human origins did not concern any tribes except their own and a few believed to be related closely to theirs. They thought that after their ascent from the world beneath at the point in the far west called “the navel of the world,” they had traveled toward the southeast for a long time, led by their Medicine Maker, who, in turn, was guided by a staff, stuck upright in the ground every night and found inclining in the direction to be taken every morning. In the meantime, four “light beings” from the corners of the world had brought the knowledge of the poskita to them and had lighted their first poskita fire. During this period, ties of friendship sprang up between the several Muskogee tribes, and some that were not Muskogee. Two of the leading tribes, the Kasihta and Coweta, formed an agreement by which they were to play ball with each other at intervals, but were never to fight and as other towns or tribes became allied with these, they also became allied in the ball games until there came to be two classes of towns with about twenty-five on a side. Those headed by Kasihta were dedicated to peace and those headed by Coweta to war....
One day—it was toward the end of summer—Tokulki and the Medicine Maker strayed some distance eastward of the town and sat down upon the side of a hill, where the older man reviewed the more important particulars of his teaching more impressively than ever before. After a time he paused, and then he said: “I have told you all that I know; this is what the Medicine Maker who was before me, and all of the knowers and the doctors have told me. It must be so. I believe it. Yet perhaps it is not all the truth. I think we are not to understand some of the things that they tell just as they sound; they have another meaning. Sometimes we can see what this other meaning is; sometimes we can not. Perhaps, too, like the poskita fire, it has become fouled by much contact with common things, by much repeating. Perhaps Hisakita-imisi did not tell our grandfathers all that he had in mind to tell. But much of it is good, and it is for the good of our people. So use what seems to you good! And the rest you need not use. And if Hisakita-imisi seems to tell you something that is better, if you think it is better for your people, use it! It is what he must have intended from the beginning. I tell you this because I feel that your times will not be like my times. The plant dies. In the spring the plant comes up again. It is the same plant, and yet it is not the same plant. It is like, but it is unlike.
“Have you not heard of the people who come across the wide, white water in canoes with wings? Even now I hear that a great number of them are marching through our country and that they are coming in this direction. Maybe the old things are to pass away.” He stopped, and just then out of the east came a low noise, a noise strange to that country until then, but one which a white man of the time would have recognized as the discharge of a harquebus. It was a harquebus in the army of De Soto.
John R. Swanton
Slender-maiden of the Apache
Slender-maiden was to have her dance in twelve days. The acorns were now ripening along Ash Creek; the stags, their horns fully grown, were taking on fat; thunder-showers were now falling, and the year was at its best. During the preceding spring, Slender-maiden’s mother had noted her daughter’s approach to womanhood. The winter before, Slender-maiden’s father had gone to the mountains beyond Black River and hunted for half a month. The best of the deerskins had been carefully tanned and put away. On Cibicu Creek, a day to the west, lived a man noted for the fine buckskin suits he could make. Slender-maiden’s father took four of these dressed deerskins and two of his best horses to this skilled man. The horses were given him for his work on the skins. Slender-maiden’s father was told to come for the garments about the time corn showed its tassels.