Every family of mankind refers fondly to a Golden
Age, when peace and innocence reigned on earth. The
lost paradise is no monopoly of the Christian, of the
Greek or even of the Old World, since the Inca and the
Aztec were equally confident in the truth of his traditions
describing it. When Columbus compared the happy conditions
he observed in the islands to which he came, with
those of Europe, he declared the inhabitants were close to
the angels in disposition as well as in geography, and he
confidently looked for his Blessed Mountain in all his
wanderings. When the French came into the mouth of
the St. Johns, and were hospitably entertained, Ribault
says : “We entered and explored their country hereabouts,
which is the fairest fruitfulest and pleasantest of all the
world, abounding in honey, venison, wild game, forests,
woods of all sorts and vines with grapes. And the sight
of the fair meadows is a pleasure inexpressible.” Moreover,
the inhabitants seemed hospitable and kind beyond
all experience, while in dignity and fair speech they were
“both courtier-like and wise.”
Yet the first act of these visitors was to build a fort
for fear of these people, and they learned by experience
that men might starve in a land so overflowing with food
that the inhabitants freely gave of their abundance!
Those who seemed “‘like unto angels” came to be denounced
as savages, and to be suspected of witchcraftas
idolaters and necromancers, they were to be exterminated
unless they could be used as slaves! So we are Drone
to pass from one extreme to another; if the Floridians
of that day were disposed to be hospitable and kind, they
were yet men who took offense when robbed and knew
how to repel injury by hostility.
Study and observation have taught us to reject the
theories which marked off the eras in human history as
Ages of Gold and Silver and Bronze, until coming to our
own time, which we called that of Iron, because general
happiness seemed to have fled with Astrea to the stars!
Instead of these divisions we know that in every age are
people of every condition; today we can study the manners
of the people of the Ages of Stone, because we can
now mingle with tribes in like circumstances; even in the
New World, there were, or had been but lately, palaces
of stone, though yet savages of the most brutal characteristics
roamed the interior, while some gentler than their
visitors could be found on the Southern coasts.
The great mistake made by the Europeans was the
assumption that these savages were rising from barbarism,
as their ancestors in England and Germany and
France and Spain had lately risen, as they would have
said, “By the grace of God.” But the truth was, as now
held, that a process of declension was going on; such condition
as followed the downfall of the Roman Empire
in Europe from which these observers were struggling to
rise. The difference was that the American had been isolated,
while in Europe successive waves of migration had
brought advancement and compelled progress.
Science agrees with inspiration that human life began
in Central Asia and flowed outward to Europe. The
first man of whom science finds the trace is the Pithecanthropus
Erectus-barely human in shape and little more
than animal in mind. But the first European is an improvement
on the original, and is known as the Piltsdown
or Neanderthal ; certainly he possessed the land for centuries
from the Thames to the Danube. With him roamed
animals of like shape to those we know-not the monstrous
forms we are digging from the rocks of our land.
Against these he fought for life with flint-headed spears
and clubs ; the flints being first the forms he chose from
accidental breakage, but finally rudely shaped by hand.
Lands rose and sunk ; climates varied and animals
wandered north or south to escape the cold or to follow
the invitation of renewed pasturage ; man lived as best
he might. Next, coming from the east, appeared a superior
race before whose strength and cunning and superior
weapons the Neanderthal vanished ; the Cro-
Magnon gave graceful forms and a fine surface to his
stone implements ; he began to fish, and so lived with less
labor, and he drew forms and painted colors on the walls
of the caves in which he dwelt, for the proof of his
presence; he held Europe for 25,000 years. Then came
the ancestor of the races known to us-the Etruscans of
Italy and the Latins who conquered them, while the
forests of France and Germany were still held by barbarians
not so docile or kind as the Indians discovered in
America.
Thus in Europe there was always movement; in
America the immigration was confined to short distances.
Before Britain was separated from the continent except
by a river, and while Africa was joined to Europe by
more than one natural bridge, variations of climate and
arrangements of land and water may have opened the
way in those remote times to a wave of immigration to
America, but the date was at least too distant to admit
of proof. The Nahua journeyed from Central America;
and the Aztec set up a kingdom in Mexico ; the Inca
conquered to the north and south of Cuzco, but there
was no exchanges of population from continent to continent.
Cities were built in South America and Central
America with which England and Germany and France
of the same period had nothing to compare, but the builders
were content to stay at home and had no dreams of
assimilating and educating any beyond their immediate
neighborhood.
Yet our own territory had but lately been the seat of
a wide empire, and its disintegration did not long precede
the arrival of the Spaniards at Tampa, and the
Frenchmen at the mouth of the St. Johns. Of this empire
the kindred families of the Muscogees were members,
although the headship seems to have been vested in
the Natchez on the Mississippi River. Of their wide
domains the mounds are still the monuments and the
witnesses ; the people of Florida and Georgia still used
mounds and built them when DeSoto passed through
their country. Practically, this race possessed the Southern
States when the white man came; the Algonquins
of New England and Virginia were being driven by the
fiercer Iroquois, while the Cherokee mountaineers were
stoutly holding their own.
Until evidence was found of the decadence of the
Muscogees, Maskokis or Creeks, from a more complicated
social and political condition, the facts observed by
travelers and traders who lived among them were
too marvelous to be credited. How could a people only
beginning to rise above the rudest of savage conditions
have adopted such relations with each other? We are
the heirs of a gradual process of development reaching
beyond the Christian era, yet these earliest inhabitants
of our country enjoyed some advantages to which we are
only beginning to aspire. In much their social and political
organizations resembled ours, but the grades of
rank were more carefully marked, the line of descent was
regarded with greater pride on the one part and deference
on the other; the laws of marriage and the family, for
instance, were at once more absolute and more free. Let
us examine into some of these facts.
Usually we have the savage - scarcely to be distinguished
from the brute, then the hunter, then the
shepherd and next the agriculturist. When we know
the Southern Indian maize was the staple food, and this
grain had been developed from an inferior plant found
only in Guatemala; would mere savages have watched this
plant into usefulness and have preserved the seed for generations
uncounted? Nomads do not accomplish such results;
the Indian who plants remains to reap, and he who
has fields to till holds to his native land. No expressions
of patriotism can be found in Creek literature that the orators
of the Creeks have left us in our comparatively short
acquaintance with them before their extermination or
degradation. While the Indian is responsible for the existence
of maize as we know it, we must see that the
maize is largely responsible also for the Indian at his best.

INDIAN MARRIAGE PROCESSIONS
When a Creek warrior wished to marry, he sent his
mother or his sister to consult the relations of the girl
he had chosen. If his proposals were favorably received,
he sent presents to her female relations; when those were
not returned the two were considered betrothed. Then
he built a house and planted a crop; when the harvest
was ready he brought meat from the hunt, and she came
as his wife to take possession. Either party could demand
a divorce, but the woman could not marry again
till after the next green corn dance, which was never
more than a year since it was an annual festival. The
children were entirely under the guidance of the wife ; in
case of divorce, she took them to her famiIy, and they
always belonged to her gens. All the household goods
were the property of the wife; she could send the husband
out of the house at will. All the men and women of the
town joined in clearing the field for planting; the chief
divided this common field into lots for each family.
After the harvest each family contributed of its crop to
the share of the family of the chief, and this was guarded
to entertain visitors and strangers, for the support of the
fighting bands, and as a reserve against a period of
scarcity. Of this the chief could give a share to the
needs of the European settlers, but when this was exhausted,
he refused to give more; the supplies from private
stocks were soon exhausted, then force was used by
Europeans to extort more.
Each town was a separate community, and each sent
a delegation to the national council. Each town had pub--
lic buildings set about a square so as to form a tetragon;
the government was administered by a Micco and his Old
Men, or cabinet; but they were bound to observe customs
and precedents which were accepted as laws. Over the
national government council presided one chief in time of
peace ; on a declaration of war he was automatically displaced
for some war chief; might not this arrangement
prove a valuable hint to us, in view of our experience
with presidents who are warriors, but not statesmen, and
politicians who are not warriors; only Washington of all
our presidents has been first in war and first in peace.
All differences between the towns, which were in much
like our States, were submitted to a body composed of
the Peace Chief and the Ancients, which might have
suggested our Supreme Court to Jefferson, had he known
of the Indian institution, of which there is no proof; but
the Muscogees preceded him in the only, feature of our
government that was original; since it is not the same as
the old Greek Areopagus. But our constitution-makers
are justly lauded throughout civilization, though they
had knowledge of experiments of peoples of whom the
Muscogees had never heard ; many of them were scholars
as well as statesmen, and all of them had the inheritance
of centuries of regular government under the English law;
what shall be said of the men who set up the Muscogee
system?
In practice, the matrons of the Creek nation had the
deciding voice in questions of peace and war; practically
they could interpose a veto when a decision for war had
been rendered. Have we gone so far as this? Do the
suffragettes even demand so much?
We have heaps of volumes of law enacted for the
preservation of fish and game; these needed no protection
from the Indians, although the woods and waters furnished
the tables of the inhabitants of the country.
There were no beggars among the Muscogees, because
each man or woman had tasks which must be done,
and for these food and clothing were paid unfailingly;
while one family had a surplus there could be no hunger.
There were no prisons ; for all offenses except murder
punishment was prescribed, but if the offender chose to
absent himself till after the occurrence of the annual
festival, no mention of the offense was permitted. If a
murderer took himself out of the country his absence was
accepted as sufficient; if he returned he met the executioner.
Thus the public was relieved of the most burdensome
taxes of our systems ; the Creeks had no policemen,
no prisoners or prison-keepers; a judge was honored
when the parties to a difference accepted him as arbiter
and made no charge, but he was not compelled to serve
nor the disputants expected to pay for his services.
If scandal arose because of the talk of a woman, the
matrons investigated the case and punished the guilty
party in case the charges were not proved. If a man
made the charge the warriors investigated and punished.
Before he had been degraded by contact with the
white man, the Indian was provident in proportion to
his needs; it was more honorable to give freely than to
amass property, as it is among the Arabs of the desert.
He did not consider himself bound in honor to give his
enemy a fair show; he proposed to kill when he went to
war, and did not desire to be killed. In contrast to the
habits of the Iroquois, the Muscogees were kind in peace
and placable in war; a tribe that felt itself too weak to
fight would be admitted into the Confederacy on equal
terms, and it was by such accessions that the Muscogees
increased in number, while their kindred, the Chickasaws
and Choctaws, declined. Bar-tram, Duval, Pickett, Milfort,
and all the other observers report that the Muscogees.
were tall and straight, athletic and handsome. Certainly
they were devoted parents, as are the Seminoles today.
It is often said that the Indian was treacherous and
cruel to his enemies; the charge may be admitted if it is
allowed that we treated them worse than they treated us.
The Muscogee was an agriculturist and not a simple
hunter. We doubt if a like population of white people
would be able to feed a wandering body of five hundred
men, as the Muscogees fed the army of DeSoto. Time
and time again we find such remarks as this in October
and other harvest months: “‘Thenceforward the country
was well inhabited, producing much corn, the day leading
by many habitations like villages.” “The Indians
never lacked meat. With arrows they got abundance of
deer, turkeys, conies (hares) and other animals, being
very skillful in killing game, which the Christians were
not.” “The country was delightful and fertile, having
good interval land upon the streams ; the forest was open
with abundance of walnut and mulberry trees.” “There
was abundance of lard in calabashes (great gourds)
drawn like olive oil which the inhabitants said was the
fat of bears. There was likewise much oil of walnuts
which; like the lard, was clear and of good taste, and
also a honeycomb which the Christians had never seen
before, nor Saw afterwards, nor honey, nor bees, in all
the country.” Yet honey was soon found to be a staple
article of trade.
Bartram testifies that in a residence of several months
in an Indian town, he never heard a man speak angrily
to a woman ; he never heard of a man cruelly treating a
child ; he never heard of a family contention about children or
property. Others have testified that in a Muscogee
Village theft was unknown; a trader’s property was
entirely safe if left exposed to public view, exactly as
our show windows are used for advertisement, There
was no hunger; there was no overwork. If it be true that
the Indians were never afflicted with consumption and
other diseases of kindred character, there is a disease
of the feet caused by intrusion of a germ, due to lack
of sanitation, but the germ was imported from Africa
and was never heard of in aboriginal America. Smallpox
is a filth disease; America never heard of it till a
negro in the train of Narvaez brought it to Mexico. One
other instance: The water at Hot Springs in Arkansas
is a specific for certain diseases; the government of the
United States obtained possession of the springs and admitted
all to them, but those who cannot pay must take the
refuse after the rich have had the benefit. All aboriginal
America had the free use of such waters, in Arkansas
and at Saratoga and in Virginia; doubtless in North
Carolina also. Members of tribes at war with those
about these springs could pass freely with their families
and were allowed to remain as long as they desired, the
friends of the diseased hunting freely while taking the
treatment. There was no ownership of such provisions
for health, just as there was only tribal ownership of
lands ; the man who could not support a family under
such conditions must be worthless indeed. Age was
honored - the public holding that a support was amply
repaid in the advice given by the experienced.
Let it not be understood that all the tribes were living
under these conditions ; we speak only of the Muscogees,
who were the Apalachees of Florida; not even their kindred,
the Choctaws and the Chickasaws, were so happy in
all respects. But if there were inferior peoples among
the aboriginees of America, there were others deserving
to rank with the Creeks - men of ability and virtue came
from each of the principal stocks. Let us not lightly estimate
warriors who went down before greater numbers
and better weapons; the orators whose eloquence was not
taught by other civilizations, nor the statesmen who
could organize confederacies of independent populations
and gain the ends without force, which in Europe must
be imposed by the swords of knights and the armies of
retainers on unwilling subjects. On the original inhabitants
of continental Europe the Romans forced the lessons
they derived from the Greeks, who had drawn upon the
deeper springs of Egyptian thought; after the Romans
came the Northern nations, and from the resulting mixtures
the men who discovered America found the strength
to overcome the Indians, who had no such advantages
of diverse thought, manners and organizations. Remains
the charge that the native races of America were cruel.
Today who can accuse them of superiority in this particular
without reckoning the advantages of Christianity
for the Europeans now slaughtering each other?
Still, they are accused of worshipping the powers of
nature only; if their conquerors were better taught, to
what influence should credit be given? What were the
Celtic and Teutonic Races before they were baptised
into a faith drawn from Asia? What sort of religion
animated the minds of those who exterminated the populations
of the New World?

Spaniard and Puritan accused the Indians of being
enchanters; witches and warlocks, children of the
devil, and predestined to eternal punishment; read the
accusation and be convinced that the accused were better
than their defamers. Were they thriftless? What need
for flocks and herds, had the people for whom nature
provided parks and game, that must be defended against
a starving peasantry by the aristocracy of Europe? Is it
not better to sustain a community without beggars or prisoners
than one in which the suffering outnumber the millionaires
and the comfortable or prosperous? Is not the
child without clothes, a better proof of paternal care than
one condemned to slavery in a factory, before body or
mind is mature? Is not the sufficient meat and bread
of the savage better than the kickshaws of civilization,
which leave the stomach craving? Is not the free forest
better than the little parks of the city, plastered with
notices to keep off the grass? Might not the mind and
body be healthier with the teaching which made theft and
falsehood unknown, than one that had collected the
vices along with the wisdom of books? Perhaps we
might do well to admit it were well if we had tried to
learn something from the Indian instead of demanding
that he learn from us or die.

[Source: Vol III, July 1924, No. 1, Florida Historical Society Quarterly]

contributed by Kim

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