The sacred square being ready, every fire in the towns under the jurisdiction of the head chief is, at the same moment, extinguished. Every house must also at that moment have been newly swept and washed. Enmities are forgotten. If a person under sentence for a crime can steal in unobserved and appear among the worshippers when their exercises begin, his crime is no more remembered. The first ceremonial is to light the new fire of the year. A square board is brought, with a small circular hollow in the center. It receives the dust of a forest tree, or of dry leaves. Five chiefs take turns to whirl the stick, until the friction produces a flame. From this sticks are lighted and conveyed to every house throughout the tribe. The original flame is taken to the center of the sacred square. Wood is heaped there, and a strong fire lighted. Over this fire the holy vessels of new-made pottery are placed. Drinking-gourds, with long handles, are set around on a bench. Appointed officers keep up an untiring surveillance over the whole, never moving from the spot; and here what they call the black drink is brewed, with many forms and with intense solemnity.
Now, then, having rendered you, by these numerous prefaces, much better informed about the Creek Jerusalem and its paraphernalia than I was when I got there, I will proceed with my travel story, just as if I had not enabled you to ponder all that I saw so much more understandingly than I myself did.
I cannot describe to you my feelings when I first found myself in the Indian country. We rode miles after miles in the native forest, seeing neither habitation nor an inhabitant to disturb the solitude and majesty of the wilderness. At length we met a native in his native land. He was galloping on horseback. His air was oriental;—he had a turban, a robe of fringed and gaudily-figured calico, scarlet leggings, and beaded belts and garters and pouch. We asked how far it was to the Square. He held up a finger, and we understood him to mean one mile. Next we met two Indian women on horseback, laden with water-melons. In answer to our question of the road, they half covered a finger, to express that it was half a mile further, and, smiling, added,'sneezer—much,' meaning that we should find lots of our brethren, the sneezers, there, to keep us company. We passed groups of Indian horses tied in the shade, with cords long enough to let them graze freely. We then saw the American flag—a gift from the government—floating over one of the hut-tops in the square. We next passed numbers of visitors' horses and carriages, and servants, and under the heels of one horse a drunken vagabond Indian, or half-Indian, asleep. And, finally, we found ourselves at the corner of the sacred square, where the aborigines were in the midst of their devotions.
As soon as I left the carriage, seeing an elevation just outside of one of the open corners of the sacred square, whence a clear view could be obtained of what was going on within, I took my station there. I was afterwards told that this mound was composed of ashes which had been produced during many preceding years by such fires as were now blazing in the center; and that ashes of the sort are never permitted to be scattered, but must thus be gathered up, and carefully and religiously preserved.
Before the solemnities begin,—and, some one said, though I am not sure it was on good authority, ere new earth is placed,—the women dance in the sacred square, and entirely by themselves. I missed seeing this. They then separate from the men, and remain apart from them until after the fasting and other religious forms are gone through, when they have ceremonies of their own, of which I shall speak in due course.
As I gazed from my stand upon the corner mound, the sacred square presented a most striking scene. Upon each of the notched masts, of which I have already spoken as attached to each of the structures within, was a stack of tall canes, hung all over with feathers, black and white. There were rude paint-daubs about the posts and roof-beams of the open house-fronts, and here and there they were festooned with gourd vines. Chiefs were standing around, the sides and corners, alone, and opposite to each other, their eyes riveted on the earth, and motionless as statues. Every building was filled with crowds of silent Indians,—those on the back rows seated in the Turkish fashion, but those in front with their feet to the ground. All were turbaned, all fantastically painted, all in dresses varying in ornament but alike in wildness. One chief wore a tall black hat, with a broad, massive silver band around it, and a peacock's feather; another had a silver scull-cap, with a deep silver bullion fringe down to his eyebrows, and plates of silver from his breast to his knee, descending his tunic. Most of them had the eagle plume, which only those may wear who have slain a foe; numbers sported military plumes in various positions about their turbans; and one had a tremendous tuft of black feathers declining from the back of his head over his back; while another's head was all shaven smooth, excepting a tuft across the center from the back to the front, like the crest of a helmet.
I never saw an assembly more absorbed with what they regarded as the solemnities of the occasion.
The first sounds I heard were a strange low, deep wail,—a sound of many voices drawn out in perfect unison, and only dying away with the breath itself, which indeed was longer sustained than could be done by any singer I ever yet heard. This was followed by a second wail, in the same style, but shrill, like the sound of musical glasses, and giving a similar shiver to the nerves. And after a third wail in another key, the statue-like figures moved and formed two diagonal lines opposite to each other, their backs to opposite angles of the square. One by one, they then approached the huge bowls in which the black drink was boiling, and, in rotation, dipped a gourd, and took, with a most reverential expression, a long, deep draught each. The next part of the ceremony with them was somewhat curious; but the rapt expression of the worshippers took away the effect which such an evolution would be apt to produce on a fastidious stomach if connected with an uninterested head. In short, these dignitaries, without moving a muscle of the face, or a joint of the body, after a few seconds, and with great solemnity, ejected what had been swallowed upon the ground. It seemed as if given forth in the spirit of a libation among the ancients. The chiefs having afterwards tasted, each replacing the gourd, and returning to his stand before the next came forward, they all went to their seats, and two old men approached and handed round gourds full to the other parties present who had remained stationary. The looks on each side were as full of solemn awe as I have ever seen at any Christian ceremony; and certainly the awe was more universal than usually pervades our churches.
This done, a chief made a speech, but without rising. It was listened to with profound attention, and in one place, at a pause, called forth a very unanimous and emphatic shout of approbation,—a long sound, seemingly of two syllables, but uttered by all in the same breath. I asked a professed linkister what the speech was about; but he was either indifferent or ignorant, for he only replied that it was an appeal to them not to forsake their ancient ceremonies, but to remain faithful in their fulfilment to the last, and that it wound up with a sort of explanatory dissertation upon the forms which were to follow.