This text was obtained via automated optical character recognition.
It has not been edited and may therefore contain several errors.

---

56	MISSISSIPPI:	THE	GENERAL	BACKGROUND
Curiously, the most powerful and populous tribe, the Choctaw, was also the most peaceful and democratic. Their chiefs attained their position through merit alone and then were hardly more than counselors. The warlike Chickasaw, who never numbered more than 5,000 warriors, were controlled by a form of military aristocracy, while the power of the Biloxi and Ofo chiefs varied, some being very feeble. The Natchez, perhaps at once the most civilized and the most barbaric tribe in the South, set up an absolute monarchy, their chief claiming descent on the female side from the sun.
The Great Sun of the Natchez, whose person was sacred and mandates absolute, lived a retired life in the "great village” on St. Catherine’s Creek (Adams County). His house, the dimensions of which were all about 30 feet, stood on a mound fronting the village square. The door faced the east, so that the Great Sun might greet the first morning beams of his celestial brother with a prolonged howl and three puffs of his calumet, then wave his hand from east to west, to show the sun its daily path. The mother of the Great Sun bore the title of Woman Chief, and though she did not meddle in the government she held the power of life and death and was paid great honor. The royal family and members of the nobility were forbidden to marry among their equals, a prohibition that proved revolting to the pride of many. It was the offensiveness of this law that led a female Sun (Princess) to propose marriage through her mother to Du Pratz, a nobleman, hoping to bring about a revolution in the social system of her nation. Another female Sun was called the Proud because, rebelling against this law, she refused to sell her favors to any save the nobility.
Like the Peruvians the Natchez had two languages, one reserved for the "stinkards,” or lower classes, the other for the nobles and the women. Both languages were very rich yet there was no similarity between them. The women spoke the language of the nobles with an affected pronunciation totally different from that of the men. The French, who seem to have associated more with the women than with the men, took the women’s pronunciation—thus provoking the rebuke to one of them from a Sun: "Since thou hast the pretension to be a man, why dost thou lisp like a woman?”
A majority of the tribes believed in a Supreme Being or Great Spirit of the Universe but they had no particular notion of his character and, with the exception of the Natchez, no set form of worship. The Natchez, different in religion as in everything else, worshipped the sun. The sun, they believed, was a male spirit who had molded the first man. Their ideas of woman’s creation were indefinite. One legend is that a short time after the
ARCHEOLOGY AND INDIANS	57
first man was made, he was taken with a violent fit of sneezing and something in the shape of a woman, as big as his thumb, bolted from his nose. On falling to the ground it began to dance around and around, growing larger and larger until at last it grew into the actual size and shape of a woman. That evil spirits abounded, they were well aware. They tried to placate them by fasting and praying. When the Natchez wanted rain or fair weather, they fasted. But in either case the Great Sun abstained for nine days from meat and fish, living on nothing but a little boiled corn. During this time he also took particular care not to communicate in any way with his wives.
The temple of the great village, where the Great Sun resided, was near St. Catherine’s Creek on a mound said to be eight feet high. The door of the temple, like the door of the chief’s house, faced the east. In the largest room was an altar six feet long, two feet wide, and four feet high, and on it a reed basket containing the bones of the preceding Great Sun. It was here before the sacred fire that the Great Sun, who was also high priest by virtue of his kinship to the sun, officiated. Only those of royal blood, or such visitors as the Sun considered sufficiently distinguished, could enter this room. The stinkards were not permitted to enter any part of the temple. In the smaller room were sundry small objects which the Indians seem never to have explained to the white men. On the roof of the temple sat three wooden birds twice the size of a goose, with their feathers painted white and sprinkled with red. These birds faced east toward the rising sun.
Like all people who place credence in spirits the Indians were superstitious. They believed in witches and ghosts and were afraid to travel alone at night. So, quite naturally, they had, as a privileged caste, the rain maker and the medicine man. The medicine man interpreted dreams, charmed away spells, and healed the sick; the rain maker in periods of protracted drought saved the crops and the water supply by bringing rain. The method of the medicine man in curing a patient was to roll him in a blanket and, bending over him, suck the painful spot. If sucking, kneading pounding, and growling did no good and the patient grew worse and died, the doctor declared that some malicious witch had interfered to defeat his purpose. The relatives of the dead man then would formally demand the witch be pointed out, and after several days of apparent thought the doctor would indicate some old, decrepit woman who, without formality, would be put to death.
The rainmaker enjoyed the privilege of being paid in advance. He al-ways gave the Indians to understand that spirits did no business on credit, and, as he was never called on until the crops were burning and the supply