A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, vol. 1

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

The present publication proposes to bring before the public, in popular form, some scientific results obtained while studying the language and ethnology of the Creek tribe and its ethnic congeners. The method of furthering ethnographic study by all the means which the study of language can afford, has been too little appreciated up to the present time, but has been constantly kept in view in this publication. Language is not only the most general and important help to ethnology, but outside of race, it is also the most ancient of all; ethnologists are well aware of this fact, but do not generally apply it to their studies, because they find it too tedious to acquire the language of unlettered tribes by staying long enough among them. The help afforded to linguistic studies by the books published in and upon the Indian languages is valuable only for a few among the great number of the dialects. The majority of them are laid down in phonetically defective missionary alphabets, about which we are prompted to repeat what the citizens of the young colony of Mexico wrote to the government of Spain, in Cortez's time: "Send to us pious and Christian men, as preachers, bishops and missionaries, but do not send us scholars, who, with their pettifogging distinctions and love of contention, create nothing but disorder and strife."[1] In the same manner, some Creek scholars and churchmen agreed five times in succession, before 1853, upon standard alphabets to be followed in transcribing Creek, but, as Judge G. W. Stidham justly remarks, made it worse each time. To arrive at trustworthy results, it is therefore necessary to investigate the forms of speech as they are in use among the Indians themselves. Very few statements of the Kasi'hta migration legend can be made available for history. It is wholly legendary, in its first portion even mythical; it is of a comparatively remote age, exceedingly instructive for ethnography and for the development of religious ideas; it is full of that sort of navet which we like so much to meet in the mental productions of our aborigines, and affords striking instances of the debasing and brutalizing influence of the unrestricted belief in the supernatural and miraculous. Of the sun-worship, which underlies the religions of all the tribes in the Gulf territories, only slight intimations are contained in the Kasi'hta legend, and the important problem, whether the Creeks ever crossed the Mississippi river from west to east in their migrations, seems to be settled by it in the negative, although other legends may be adduced as speaking in its favor. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49031
Author: Gatschet, Albert S. (Albert Samuel)
Release Date: May 23, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English