2 SMlTHSOxXIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 85 



to the Seminole grounds, but information was obtained regarding one 

 of these, Ochesee Seminole, which had been discontinued in 1912, 

 when I visited the Seminole squares, but was afterwards revived. 



In order to make the material obtained in 1929 intelligible, it will 

 be necessary to give a brief outline of the Creek political, social, and 

 ceremonial organization. 



The name Creek is a shortened form of Ochesee Creek Indians, 

 a name w^hich English traders from South Carolina came to apply 

 to that part of the Indians of the Creek Confederation who were 

 living upon Ocmulgee River in the closing decades of the seventeenth 

 century and the opening years of the eighteenth. The word Ochesee 

 signifies " people of a different speech " in the language of the 

 Hitchiti, one of the minor constituents of the Creek Confederacy, 

 being equivalent to the word Tciloki in the Creek or Muskogee 

 language. It was applied to the Creeks proper or Muskogee by the 

 Hitchiti along with many other tribes, but came in some way to be 

 particularly associated wnth the Muskogee and the river upon which 

 they were then living. 



Anciently there seems not to have been a single term applicable 

 to all of the Muskogee, the latter name having been unknown to 

 the Spaniards who first entered this section. It does not make its 

 appearance until the English had settled in the Carolinas. The origin 

 of the word is uncertain, but there are indications that it was derived 

 from Shawnee, since a band of Shawnee lived for a time near what 

 is now Augusta, Ga., and from a very early period occupied an inter- 

 mediate position between South Carolina and Georgia on the one hand 

 and the Creek Nation on the other. It is probable that there were 

 originally several tribes speaking the same language but having sepa- 

 rate names and that the necessity for a distinguishing term for all 

 did not present itself until the number of non-Muskogee tribes in 

 the Confederation came to be considerable. As to the names of 

 these Muskogee tribes, we seem to have indications of the following : 

 Abihka, Coosa, Okchai, Pakana, Tukabahchee, Hilibi, Eufaula, 

 Kasihta and Coweta (or perhaps an original tribe of which the 

 Kasihta and Coweta were sections). There were some other groups 

 on the lower course of Tallapoosa River, such as the Atasi, Kealedji, 

 and Kolomi, which cannot be definitely placed and may have been 

 independent of these or early subdivisions of them. Of course some 

 may represent people of wholly different connections who had become 

 assimilated to the Muskogee and had lost their own language and 

 customs. This is rendered probable from the fact that we have 



