Letters from North America (London, 1824), i. 131 sq.; B. Hawkins, “Sketch of the Creek Country,” in Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, iii. (Savannah, 1848) pp. 75-78; A. A. M'Gillivray, in H. R. Schoolcraft's Indian Tribes of the United States (Philadelphia, 1853-1856), v. 267 sq.; F. G. Speck, Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians (Philadelphia, 1909), pp. 112-131. The fullest descriptions are those of Adair and Speck. In the text I have chiefly followed Adair, our oldest authority. A similar ceremony was observed by the Cherokees. See the description (from an unpublished MS. of J. H. Payne, author of Home, Sweet Home) in “Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, by William Bartram, 1789, with prefatory and supplementary notes by E. G. Squier,” Transactions of the American Ethnological Society, vol. iii. Part i. (1853) p. 75. The Indians of Alabama also held a great festival at their harvest in July. They passed the day fasting, lit a new fire, purged themselves, and offered the first-fruits to their Manitoo: the ceremony ended with a religious dance. See Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes occidentales (Paris, 1768), ii. 54. These Indians of Alabama were probably either the Creeks or the Cherokees.
217
W. Bartram, Travels, p. 507.
218
So amongst the Cherokees, according to J. H. Payne, an arbour of green boughs was made in the sacred square; then “a beautiful bushy-topped shade-tree was cut down close to the roots, and planted in the very centre of the sacred square. Every man then provided himself with a green bough.”
219
So Adair. Bartram, on the other hand, as we have seen, says that the people provided themselves with new household utensils.
220
B. Hawkins, “Sketch,” etc., p. 76.
221
F. G. Speck, Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians (Philadelphia, 1909), pp. 86-89, 105-107, 112-131.
222
Th. Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. (Leipsic, 1862) p. 42; A. S. Gatschet, A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, i. (Philadelphia, 1884) pp. 66 sqq.; Totemism and Exogamy, iii. 167.
223
C. MacCauley, “Seminole Indians of Florida,” Fifth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1887), pp. 522 sq.
224
That is, the grand chief of the nation. All the chiefs of the Natchez were called Suns and were connected with the head chief or Great Sun, who bore on his breast an image of the sun and claimed to be descended from the luminary. See Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes occidentales (Paris, 1768), i. 42.
225
Le Page Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, or of the western parts of Virginia and Carolina, translated from the French, New Edition (London, 1774), pp. 338-341. See also J. R. Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Washington, 1911), pp. 110 sqq., where the passage of Du Pratz is translated in full from the original French. From Mr. Swanton's translation it appears that the English version of Du Pratz, which I have quoted in the text, is a good deal abridged. On the festival of first-fruits among the Natchez see also Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, Nouvelle Édition, vii. (Paris, 1781) p. 19; Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1744), vi. 183; De Tonti, “Relation de la Louisiane et du Mississippi,” Recueil de Voyages au Nord, v. (Amsterdam, 1734) p. 122; Le Petit, “Relation des Natchez,” ibid. ix. 13 sq. (reprint of the account in the Lettres édifiantes cited above); Bossu, Nouveaux Voyages aux Indes occidentales (Paris, 1768), i. 43. According to Charlevoix, Le Petit, and Bossu the festival fell in July. For Chateaubriand's description of the custom, see below, pp. 135 sqq.
226
C. Hill-Tout, The Far West, the Home of the Salish and Déné (London, 1907), pp. 168-170.
227
J. Teit, The Thompson Indians of British Columbia, p. 349 (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, April, 1900).
Joseph Thomson, Through Masai Land (London, 1885), p. 430; P. Reichard, Deutsch-Ostafrika (Leipsic, 1892), p. 288; O. Baumann, Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 162; M. Merker, Die Masai (Berlin, 1904), p. 33; M. Weiss, Die Völkerstämme im Norden Deutsch-Ostafrikas (Berlin, 1910), p. 380. However, the motive which underlies the taboo appears to be a fear of injuring by sympathetic magic the cows from which the milk is drawn. See my essay “Folk-lore in the Old Testament,” in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor (Oxford, 1907), pp. 164 sq. According to Reichard the warriors may partake of honey both with meat and with milk. Thomson does not mention honey and speaks of a purgative only. The periods during which meat and milk are alternately consumed vary, according to Reichard, from twelve to fifteen days. We may conjecture, therefore, that two of them, making up a complete cycle, correspond to a lunar month, with reference to which the diet is perhaps determined.
232
M. W. H. Beech, The Suk, their Language and Folklore (Oxford, 1911), p. 9. In both cases the motive, as with the Masai, is probably a fear of injuring the cattle, and especially of causing the cows to loose their milk. This is confirmed by other taboos of the same sort observed by the Suk. Thus they think that to eat the flesh of a certain forest pig would cause the cattle of the eater to run dry, and that if a rich man ate fish his cows would give no milk. See M. W. H. Beech, op. cit. p. 10.
233
O. Baumann, Durch Massailand zur Nilquelle (Berlin, 1894), p. 171.
234
Fr. Boas, “The Central Eskimo,” Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology (Washington, 1888), p. 595; id., “The Eskimo of Baffin Land and Hudson Bay,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, vol. xv. part i. (New York, 1901) pp. 122-124. For more details see Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, pp. 208 sqq.
235
Rev. R. H. Codrington, The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 134.
236
Pausanias, v. 13. 3. We may assume, though Pausanias does not expressly say so, that persons who sacrificed to Telephus partook of the sacrifice.
237
Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum,2 No. 576 (vol. ii. p. 267); Ch. Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques, No. 723, p. 622. Further, no one who had suffered a domestic bereavement might enter the sanctuary for forty days. Hence the pollution of death was clearly deemed more virulent, or at all events more lasting, than the pollution of food.
