siOBX; - Smithsonian Institution

30 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 103
warriors together for the purpose of organizing a code of laws for their government.
At this place of rest, Nunnih Waiya, they built strong fortifications
in order to protect themselves from any foe who might conceive hostile intentions
against them. Whether or not they were ever assailed is unknown.
The remains of the fortress, however, are still to be seen in Mississippi. A
long time did not elapse before their newly acquired territory was found to be
too limited to hold their rapidly increasing numbers, and they were in consequence
compelled to spread themselves over the adjacent country, and form
themselves into villages. It is a well authenticated fact that from this outpouring
or scattering, sprang the Indians called Shukchi, Hummas and
Yazoos.
The comma between "Shukchi " and " Hummas " is a typograph-
ical error, the name of the tribe being Shukchi Hummas. This tribe
is indeed known to have been related to the Choctaw and Chickasaw
in language, but Adair makes it as old as either of them. The Yazoo
proper were in no way related to the Choctaw ; Folsom has no doubt
confused them with the Choctaw towns called Yashu or Yazoo.
Cushman combats the tradition that would bring the Choctaw out
of Nanih Waiya hill itself, attributing it to a misunderstanding on
the part of some white people who had interrogated Choctaw living
at or on the mound and thought that their questioners wished to
know from what part of it they themselves had just come. Since
Nanih Waiya does not seem to have been occupied permanently
after white contact, such a misunderstanding is improbable, though
it is more than likely that the application of the term " mother hill
to this mound and the similarity of waiya and waya, as mentioned
above, may have had something to do with it. Folsom seems to
imply that the term waiya referred to the bending back of the
sacred pole when it was planted in the ground at this spot. Fre-
quently a number of folk explanations spring up about a name that
has become prominent in the lives of a people. Cushman also adds
some remarks regarding ceremonial offerings made here which are of
interest. I do not find them noted elsewhere. He says
As an evidence of their admiration and veneration for this ancestral memento,
the Choctaws, when passing, would ascend it and drop into the hole at its top
various trinkets, and sometimes a venison ham, or dressed turkey, as a kind of
sacrificial offering to the memory of its ancient builders, who only appeared
to them through the mists of ages past; and as the highest evidence of their
veneration for this relic of their past history, it was sometimes spoken of by
the more enthusiastic as their Iholitopa Ishki (Beloved mother).-'
The following version was recorded about the middle of the nineteenth
century by an American traveler, Charles Lanman. He
obtained it, he tells us, from " the educated Choctaw Pitchlyn," who
can have been none other than the well-known Choctaw chief Peter
21 Cushman, Hist. Choc, Chick, and Natchez Inds., pp. 361-362.
2- Ibid., p. 293.