siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

10 BtTREAtJ OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bdll.103
To one somewhat familiar with the ethnology of the southeastern
tribes this series of mounds is not at all difficult to interpret. The
large mound is without doubt that upon which the public buildings
were placed. From what Halbert says, the smaller mound is identified
as a burial mound, while the engirdling rampart is undoubtedly
just what almost every visitor to the spot from Adair down has
taken it to be, the remains of a work defending the settlement about
the mounds and undoubtedly crowned with a stockade interrupted
at intervals by towers. It was in such a good state of repair when
Adair wrote that it does not seem likely it had been long abandoned.
The first and most natural supposition is that this was a Choctaw town
stockaded to protect their northern frontier against the Chickasaw.
We know from several of the older writers that the stockaded towns
of the Choctaw were on their east against the Creeks and their
north against the Chickasaws; indeed, the compiler of the French
Relation of 1755 mentions a town called " Ougoulatanap," " War-
riors' town," which he describes as " near the Chiquachas on the trail
from the Alibamons, and has a fort, because these two nations are
very often at w^ar together." This may have been on the site of
Nanih Waiya itself, although from Adair's description it is probable
that the latter had been abandoned as a permanent native residence
shortly before French and English explorers arrived, a fact which
would not have prevented the appearance of those " bullets and other
relics of European manufacture " to which Halbert refers, since the
place no doubt had many temporary occupants long after it had been
given up as a permanent residence. The large mound is of a type
characteristic of the Creeks, Chickasaw, and lower Mississippi tribes
rather than the Choctaw, a possible indication that the group repre-
sents two distinct periods and as many distinct tribes.
Several later versions of the migration legend may now be given.
The first is from Catlin (1832-1839) :
The Choctaws a great many winters ago commenced moving from the country
where they then lived, which was a great distance to the west of the great
river and the mountains of snow,, and they were a great many years on their
way. A great medicine man led them the whole way, by going before with a
red pole, which he stuck in the ground every night where they encamped. This
pole was every morning found leaning to the east, and he told them that they
must continue to travel to the east until the pole would stand upright in their
encampment, and that there the Great Spirit had directed that they should
live. At a place which they named Nah-ne-ioa-ye (the sloping hill) the pole
stood straight up, where they pitched their encampment, which was 1 mile
square, with the men encamped on the outside and the women and children in
the center, which remains the center of the old Choctaw Nation.12
Nanih Waiya is hardly the center of the old Choctaw Nation except
in a metaphorical sense. Somewhat older is the version which Gat-
" Smithsonian Report for 1885, Part II, p. 213.