MooNEY] NOTES AND PARALLELS 429 



WAsI striki'bJ with hiti staff; the water divides so that they pass tlirmifili safely, ami 

 then rolls hack and prevents pursuit hy their enemies. They then enter a wilder- 

 ness and come to a mountain, and we are treated to the Bible story of Sinai and the 

 tables of stone. Here also they receive sacred fire from heaven, which thereafter 

 they carry with them until the house in w-hich it is kept is at last destroyed by a 

 hostile inva.«ion. This portion of the myth seems to be genuine Indian (see notes to 

 number III, " The ^Mounds and the Constant Fire "1 . 



In thi.« journey "the tril)es marched separately and also the ilaiis. The clans 

 were distinguished liy having feathers of different colors fastened to their ears. They 

 had two great standards, one white and one red. The white standard was under 

 the control of the priests, and used for civil purposes; but the iccl standard was 

 under the direction of the war priests, for purposes of war and alaiui. These were 

 carried when they journeyed, and the white standard erected in front of the build- 

 ing above mentioned [the ark or palladium], when they rested." 



They cross four rivers in all — which accords with the Indian idea of the sacred 

 four — and sit down at last beyond the fourth, after having been for many years on 

 the march. "Their whole jonrney through this wilderness was attended with great 

 distress and danger. At one time they were beset by the most deadly kind of ser- 

 pents, which destroyed a great many of the people, but at length their leader shot 

 one with an arrow and drove them away. Again, they were walking along in single 

 file, when the ground cracked open and a number of people sank down and were 

 destroyed Viy the earth closing upon them. At another time they came nigh perish- 

 ing for water. Their head men dug with their staves in all the low places, but could 

 find no water. At length their leader found a most beautiful spring coming out of a 

 rock.'" 



At one point in this nugration, according to a tradition given to Schoolcraft by 

 Stand Watie, they encountered a large river or other great body of water, which 

 they crossed upon a bridge made by tying grapevines together.^ This idea of a vine 

 bridge or ladder occurs also in the traditions of the Iroquois, Mandan, and other 

 tribes. 



Farther on the missionary already quoted says: "Shield-eater once imiuired if 

 I ever heard of houses with flat roofs, saying that his father's great grandfather used 

 to say that once their people had a great town, with a high wall about it; that oaa 

 certain occasion their enemies broke down a part of this wall; that the houses in this 

 town had flat roofs — thcjugh, he used to say, this was so long ago it is not worth 

 talking about now." ■' 



Fire of cane splints — Bartram thus describes the methoil as witnessed by him at 

 Attasse ( Autossee) among the Creeks about 1775. The fire which .blazed up so mys- 

 teriously may have been kept constantly smoldering below, as described in number 111 : 



"As their virgils [.s/c] and manner of conducting their vespers and mystical fire in 

 this rotunda, are extremely singular, and altogether different from the customs and 

 usages of any other people, I shall proceed to describe them. In the first place, the 

 governor or ofiict'r who has the management of this business, with his servants 

 attending, orders the black drink to be brewed, which is a decoction or infusion of 

 the leaves and tender shoots of the cassine. This is done under an open shed or 

 pavilion, at twenty or thirty yards distance, direi:tly opposite the door of the council- 

 house. Next he orders bundles of dry canes to be brought in: these are previously 

 split and liroken in pieces to about the length of two feet, and then placed obliquely 

 crossways upon one another on the floor, forming a spiral circle round about the 

 great centre pillar, rising to a foot or eighteen inches in height from the ground; and 

 this circle spreading as it proceeds round and round,, often rejieated from right to" 



'Buttrick. Antiquities of the Cherokee Indians, pp. 9-10. 

 2sohoolcraft. Xotes on the* Irotiuois, p. 359, lS-17. 

 sBnttrick, op. cit., p. 10. 



