siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

24 BUREAU OF AMEEICAN" ETHNOLOGY [Bdll.IOS
their standing with the whole people. It sank them to a degree of infamy and
suspicion from which they have never recovered. To this day they are pushed
aside in decent company and looked upon with scorn and contempt.
The Isht Ahullo, who was so long the bearer of the sacred pole, had always
deported himself as a good, industrious man ; and it was from his management
that the investigation of their conduct, and the flights of the conjuring priests
had been brought about. After a time with the small band of Isht ahuUos
that had been left he completed the mound in good style and, planting the
sacred pole permanently on its top, he desired the chief to call the nation to its
examination, and if the work met with the approbation of the people, he wished
them to receive it and discharge him and his workmen from further duties in
regard to the sacred pole.
When the people came, they gave their approbation of the comely proportions
of the mound by a long continued shout. And by another uproarious shout
congratulated themselves on the certainty that their long journey in the wilderness
had most assuredly ended. At this, the sacred pole began jumping up and
punching itself deeper and deeper into the ground, until it went down slowly
out of sight into the mound. At witnessing the wonderful manifestation of
the settling pole, there were no bounds to their rejoicings, and they danced
and brought provisions, making a glad celebration that continued three days
and nights on the occasion of the departing sacred pole.
Having sufficient ground cleared to produce as much bread as they needed,
and a large surplus, the people had time to construct houses to dwell in and to
keep their surplus provisions dry and safe. They constructed their houses of
earth at Nunih Waya, and that fashion prevailed until the white people came
to live in the nation with them.
The larger game was becoming scarcer and the hunters were extending their
excursions wider. The people, however, were producing such abundant supplies
of corn that they did not require a very great amount of meat and the hunters
were extending their explorations more for the purpose of becoming acquainted
with a wider range of country and for their own satisfaction than from necesfiity.
Time rolled on, the people were healthy, and had increased at a very
great ratio. They had extended their settlements up the Nunih Waya creek,
and out in the country between Nunih Waya and Tuli Hikia creeks, to half a
day's journey; and they were growing corn over the entire district.
About thirty winters after they had stopped at Nunih Waya, a party of hunters
who had progressed a little farther north than usual, fell in with a camp of
hunters belonging to the Chickasha tribe. After finding that they spoke the
same language with themselves, the Chahtas approached their camp in a
friendly manner, and remained several days. The older men amongst them
being familiar with the traditional history of the journeyings of their resi)ec-
ftve tribes, took much pleasure in communicating to each other an account of
their travels. From the point where the two tribes separated, the Chickashas
diverged widely to the left, found an extremely rough and scarce country for
some time, but at length emerging from the mountains on to the wide spread
plains, they found the buffalo and other game plentiful. They continued to
travel, with only an occasional halt, to rest the women and feeble ones, until
they came to the great river, at the place called by them, sakti ahlopuUi (blufiC
crossing)—white people call it now Chickasaw Bluffs, said the old man. They
made shift to cross the great river, and traveling onward, the leader's pole
came to a stand at a place now called Chickasha Old Town in a high and beautiful
country. The leader's pole stood at this place three winters, at the end
of which time the pole was found leaning to the northeast. They set out again,
and crossed another big river (at little prairie, near Huntsville, Alabama). The