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SWANTON] CHOCTAW SOCIAL AND CEREMONIAL LIFE 199
He said that when the horned owl (ishkitini) screeched it meant a
sudden death, such as a murder. If the screech owl (ofunlo) was
heard, it was a sign that a child under seven among the connections
of that family was going to die, because in size this is a baby owl.
If a common owl (opa) alighted on a barn or on trees near the house
and hooted, it foreboded death among the near relatives.
The sapsucker (biskinik) is the " news bird." He brings news both
bad and good. If he lights on a tree in your lot early in the morning,
some " hasty " news will come before noon. If he does this late at
night, the news will come before morning.
They believed that the chicken had been put into their yards to
give them a friendly warning of danger. If a chicken crows outside
of its usual time, it is because it foresees bad weather. If one comes
up to the doorstep or into the gallery and crows, it means hasty
news. If a chicken flies up on the roost and crows after reaching it,
there will be trouble in the family. If a hen crows, that means that
the women of the neighborhood are going to fall out.
The old Choctaw claimed that the male eel acted also as the male
of catfish and fish of other kinds. If one had intercourse with a
female eel, the offspring would naturally be eels; if with a mud
catfish, the offspring would be blue catfish ; if with any scale fish, the
young would be channel catfish. It was claimed the different species
of fish were made by intermarriages.
They claimed that though the blacksnake would not harm anyone,
it would try to scare a person. The coachwhip snake would wrap
itself around a person and whip him with its tail, and if a hawk
tried to carry one of these serpents off, it would whip him until the
feathers flew and make him let it go.
The word "NahuUo" (something supernatural or sacred), which
appears above, was probably a generic term applied to spirits that
had never existed as human beings, although Cushman speaks of
them as a race of gigantic hunters who lived in western Tennessee
and the northern parts of Alabama and Mississippi at the period of
the Choctaw immigration." Later the term was applied to the white
people, probably on account of the lightness of their skins.
Cushman also speaks of certain huge animals to which the Choctaw
attributed the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the
Tombigbee Kiver. Some of these native conceptions owed their
origin, or at least their confirmation, to the discovery of mastodon
bones.
He speaks again of "a strange and ancient tradition among the
Choctaw and Chickasaw hunters, before their exodus to their present
place of abode, that, as soon as the horns dropped off, the buck [deer]
^ Cushman, Hist. Inds., p. 207.