254 BELIEFS AND USAGES OF CHICKASAW [PTH. ANN. 44 
believed that the animal in question would bring on a certain disease, a matter 
10 be elaborated presently. Nevertheless it is worth while to take note of the 
things from which they abstained in his time, even though we fail to discover 
in that traces of a Jewish origin. He says that they refused to eat all birds of 
prey and birds of night, and a little further on he mentions specifically eagles, 
ravens, crows, buzzards, swallows, bats, and every species of owl. He also adds 
flies, mosquitoes, and gnats. They did not eat carnivorous animals or such as 
lived on nasty food, as hogs, wolves, panthers, foxes, cats, mice, rats. All beasts 
of prey except the bear were “unhallowed”’; also all amphibious quadrupeds, 
horses, fowls, moles, the opossum, and all kinds of reptiles.“ He says that the 
old traders could remember when they first began to eat beaver.* 
Hogs and domestic fowls were probably tabooed at first because strange to 
the Indians and in the case of the hog because it is a heavy, awkward looking 
animal and might communicate such properties to the eater. 
“When swine were first brought among them, they deemed it such a horrid 
abomination in any of their people to eat that filthy and impure food, that they 
excluded the criminal from all religious communion in their circular town- 
house, or in their quadrangular holy ground at the annual expiation of sins, 
equally as if he had eaten unsanctified fruits. After the yearly atonement was 
made at the temple, he was indeed readmitted to his usual privileges.” © 
From want of any independent information on this point this must be left 
without comment. Of course, Adair is anxious to make the most of such a 
taboo in his desire to establish a Hebrew origin for his red friends, and this is 
naturally extended to the opossum, after which the Indians named the hog. 
Still, what he says may be true, that ‘‘several of the old Indians assure us, 
they formerly reckoned it as filthy uneatable an animal, as a hog.”” The 
instances which Adair gives in proof of the existence of these taboos all tend 
to prove that they abstained from them generally for fear of some disease or 
limitation which the animal might communicate. He says that they abstained 
from swallowing flies, mosquitoes, or gnats because they believed that they 
bred sickness or worms, “according to the quantity that goes into them.” ”* 
Upon one oceasion Adair shot a small fat hawk which he strongly importuned 
an old woman to take and dress, but although there was no meat of any kind 
in camp, “she, as earnestly refused it for fear of contracting pollution, which 
she called the ‘accursed sickness,’ supposing disease would be the necessary 
effect of such an impurity.”"’ Again he says that “they abhor moles so ex- 
ceedingly that they will not allow their children even to touch them for fear 
of hurting their eyesight ; reckoning it contagious.” ™ 
Other food taboos mentioned by Adair are against eating an animal that had 
died of itself, a young animal newly weaned, and blood. The first of these 
may be commended as a taboo of real medicinal value and the reason given by 
themselves, that the animal might have died of a contagious disease, is just 
as valid to-day. Adair has the following to say regarding this taboo. 
“None of them will eat any animal whatsoever if they either know or suspect 
that it died of itself. I lately asked one of the women the reason of throwing 
a dung-hill fowl out of doors on the cornhouse; she said that she was afraid, 
Oophe Abecka Hakset Illeh, ‘it died with the distemper of the mad dogs,’ and 
that if she had eaten it it would have affected her in the very same manner. 
I said, if so, she did well to save herself from danger, but at the same time it 
seemed she had forgotten the cats. She replied, ‘that such impure animals 
st Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 16, 130-134. %Tpid., p. 131. 
8 Tbid., p. 132. 2 Tbid., pp. 130-131. 
0 Tbid., p. 133. 8 Tbid., p. 133. 
 Tbhid., p. 16. 
