Their Religious Ceremonies as Sun-Worshippers

Hunting, fishing and the cultivation of the rich land were the chief employments of these people. The cotton plant was unknown to them, but hemp and flax were quite abundant. The women assisted the men in the fields, in the cultivation of corn, beans, peas, squashes, and pumpkins, which yielded enormous returns for the little labor bestowed. These productions were stored in granaries made of stone and earth and covered with mats, for winter use; also preserved meats. They obtained salt by evaporation, and the women were generally good cooks of the simple food. They made and used pottery for kitchen service, some of it skillfully constructed and quite beautiful. They were skillful artisans, as evinced by their arms, houses, beautiful barges and canoes, and ornaments. They had fortifications with moats or ditches; and walled towns; and some of their temples were grand, imposing and beautiful. Their roofs were steep and covered with mats of split cane, interwoven so compactly that they resembled the rush carpeting of the Moors. At the entrances to some of the temples, and in niches in the interior, were well-wrought wooden statues, some of them of persons who were entombed in the sacred place. Between these were shields of various sizes, made of strongly woven reeds adorned with pearls and colored tassels. Rich offerings of pearls and deer-skins, and the furs of martens and other animals were seen in these temples in great profusion, all dedicated to the Sun, the great God whom they worshipped.

The theology or religious system of these people was very simple. They regarded the Sun as the Supreme Deity, and venerated the moon and certain brilliant stars. In all their invocations of blessings upon their chiefs or upon themselves, the Sun was appealed to, as we appeal to God. "May the Sun guard you!" "May the Sun be with you!" were usual forms of invocation. At the beginning of March the men of a community selected the skin of the largest deer, with the heads and legs attached, which they filled with a variety of fruit and grain. It was served up, and appeared like the live creature in form. Its horns were garlanded with fruits and early spring flowers. Then the effigy was carried in a procession of all the inhabitants, to a plain, and placed at the top of a high post. There, at the moment when the sun appeared upon the eastern horizon, the people all fell upon their knees, with their faces toward the rising luminary, and implored the god of day to grant them, the ensuing season, an abundance of fruit and grain as good as those which they then offered.

The funeral ceremonies of these people, especially those on the death of a chief or prophet, were very peculiar. The body underwent a sort of embalming, when it was placed in the ground in a sitting posture by the nearest relatives of the deceased. Then food and money were placed by its side, and a conical mound of earth was piled over it, at the foot of which was made a paleing of arrows stuck in the ground. Around this tomb the people gathered in great numbers, some standing, some sitting, and all howling. This ceremony continued three days and nights, after which, for a long time, chosen women visited the tomb three times a day, morning, noon and night. The chief, whilst he was alive, was held in the greatest veneration, for, like the Assyrian kings, he was both monarch and pontiff--the chief magistrate and the high priest. A cruel sacrifice was made to him of every first-born male child, a custom learned from the Central Americans. It symbolized the devotion and surrender of the entire strength of the nation to the chief. Sitting upon a bench on one side of a large circle, a block two feet in height was placed before him. The child was brought by a dancing-girl and placed upon the block, and the young mother, weeping in agony, was compelled to stand near it, to make the offering. A prophet dashed out its brains, and then a group of girls danced around the altar of sacrifice, singing songs.