siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

182 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Boll. 103
In very ancient times, a .spacious temple, called Tusk-a-chook-a [Tashka
chuka], or the House of the Warriors, stood on the verge of the Kush-tush, the
largest and oldest settlement in the nation, long since deserted. This temple
was in the custody of an order of priests, called Oon-ka-la. When a great vv^ar-
i-ior's bones had been prepared for burial by the Ik-sa-nom-bulla, they sent for
the Oon-ka-la, and even from the most remote village they vrere taken to the
temple. The OoiP-ka-la preceded, chanting a solemn hymn in an unknown tongue,
and the relatives and clansmen followed with loud lamentations. Arriving at
the temple, the priests purified themselves with lu.strations, and administered
to the mourners a beverage called the white dtink. No bystander was allowed
to enter the temple. The priests, holding wands in their hands, passed slowly
round it three times, muttering incantations, and then they took the bones
within the sacred edifice, singing a hymn in a language unknown to the spec-
tators. This was the practice from remote times, until the French and English
traders entered theii- territory, when the Great Temple was struck by lightning
and consumed. This created great alarm throughout the nation ; the temple
was never re-built, and the city of Kush-osh-ah gradually mouldered away.
After this, they began to deposit their dead in the earth. The face of a warrior
was painted red and black, the war colors, and his arms and ornaments placed
in the grave, that he might be able to resist his enemies or kill his game in the
distant shadowy hunting grounds to which he was supposed to have gone.**
Claiborne's reference to the ancient common burial temple by the
" KusJitush " stands entirely by itself, and there is a suspicious resemblance
between the story told of the destruction of this temple and
the historical destruction of the Taensa temple on the Mississippi in
1700,'*^ yet I am inclined to believe that there is a substratum of truth
in what he says, though it is now too late to determine certainly how
much. The town mentioned is evidently that given in my list as
Kashtasha, " place of fleas," which, as we have seen, was once the
capital town of the western band of Choctaw. Halbert locates it on
the south bank of Custusha Creek, " about 3 miles, a little south of
west of West Yazoo town." ^° Perhaps the archeologist may be able to
throw light on this matter. The esoteric language mentioned in the
narrative need have been nothing more than a peculiar or archaic
variety of the common speech. Mention has already been made of
the native disinclination to use the names of the deceased.^^
In referring to the migrations of Indian tribes writers often speak
of the regret of the latter at abandoning " the bones of their
ancestors," and this expression has been used so frequently that it is
generally taken to be rather a product of the romantic imagination
of the white man than answering to any very profound native feeling.
However, in the subjoined note Claiborne seems to indicate a certain
service which these " ashes of the dead " performed in fixing property
rights, family as well as tribal, which throws some light on the origin
of the much used phrase.
« Claiborne, Miss., i, pp. 517-518. ^o See p. 62.
" See Bull. 43, Bur. Amer. Ethn., pp. 266-268. " See pp. 120-121.