r 
; 
THE MOUNDS OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 541 
ascribes it to the fear lest the French should violate these last resting- 
places of the dead,* as they had done with the temple of Oumast a few 
years before. 
Some twenty-five years later, in the time of Adair, who lived and 
traded among the Chickasaw s, Creeks, and Choctaws for many years 
subsequent to 1735, the change was even more perceptible. It is true . 
that the tribes constituting the Creek or Muscogee confederacy kept 
up many of the peculiar usages of the Natchez, and continued to vene- 
rate the sun, as they certainly did down to a comparatively recent 
period; and in describing their religious ceremonies, Adair still speaks 
of a “sacred fire,” ‘‘holy places,” “ synhedria,” ete.;§ but it is evident 
that in so doing he has been betrayed by his wild notions as to the 
identity of the American Indians with the lost tribes of Israel, into the 
adoption of a terminology that is not warranted by the facts. Temples 
such as the one described among the Tensas, and which, as we have 
seen, were once common among all the Floridian tribes, no longer ex- 
isted, and in their stead we find the state house, rotunda, hot house, or 
simple council chamber, such as it was known to the Creeks and Chero- 
kees. In connection with the disappearance of the temples proper 
among these nations, there seems to have been a corresponding decrease 
in the number and purity of their religious rites and ceremonies. Du 
meutions the fact, ascribing it to the decrease in population, 
whilst Adair,{{ mourning over what he is pleased fo consider the religious 
degeneracy of the times, complains that “their primitive rites are so 
corrupted within the space of the last thirty years that, at the same rate 
of declension, there will not be long a possibility of tracing their origin 
but by their dialects and war customs.” Especially is this said to be 
true of the Cherokees, whom he stigmatizes as a nest of apostate 
hornets.** 
A few years later, say during the last quarter of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and the change is complete. A temple is no longer even spoken 
of, though the council house, which seems to have taken its place as the 
scene of their religious rites and festivities, inherited something of its 
sacred character. It was still placed upon an artificial mound,tt as it 
had been among the Quapaws of Arkansas,it the Natchez of Louisiana,§§ 
*Charlevoix, Letters, p. 313: London, 1763. 
tLafitan, Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, vol. 1, p. 168: Paris, 1724. 
tNuttall, Travels into the Arkansa Territory, p. 277: Philadelphia, 1821. 
§ Adair, History of the North American Indians, pp. 30 and 98, et seg.: London, 1775 
|| History of Louisiana, vol. 1, p. 210: London, 1765. 
q History of North American Indians, pp. 81 and 98. 
** North American Indians, p. 81. 
tt Bartram, Travels through Plorida, p. 367, et seq.: Philadelphia, 1791. See also 
MSS. of the same author quoted by Squier in Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 
res II, pp. 186, et seg., and Adair, North American Indians, p. 421. 
tLa Vega, Conquéte dela Floride, seconde partie, p. 89: Paris, 1709. 
H Du Pratz, vol. u, p. 211: Bentler: 1763. Father Le Petit, in Hist. Coll. of Louisi- 
ana, part I, note to p. 140. 
