Belief systems of the Southeast Indians
The cosmos, basic categories and concepts.
The world: a great flat island resting on the surface of the water and suspended from the vault of the sky by four cords at each of the cardinal directions, north, south,east and west. The island is circular and cross cut by four directions.
Diagram: shell gorget.
Above this world is the sky vault, an inverted bowl of rock which rose and fell each day at dawn and dusk so that the moon and sun could pass beneath it.
There were three worlds: this world, the upper world, the sky vault and the under world beneath the earth and waters.
This world had seven layers or concentric stepped levels within the bowl. At the beginning there was only the upper world and under world, this world was created later.
The upper world is categorized by expectableness, predictability, consistency, and is grander and purer than this world. The upper world is characterized by boundaries, limits, periodicity, stability, and past time. Creatures in the upper world were larger but had many of the same features. There were also chiefs and councils in the upper world but they were capable of magical transformations.
The underworld was a world of ghosts, monsters, cannibals and man killer witches. The underworld was an inverted upper world, and the opposite of this world, for example the seasons in the underworld were opposite the seasons in this world.
The under world was associated with disorder, change, inversions, madness invention, fertility and future time.
The occupants of the upper world include the sun, as a god, sometime male, sometime female (Cherokee), the apportioner as in day and night and life and death. The earthly representative of the sun was fire, sometimes an old woman. Like the sun, it was appropriate to feed a piece of each meal to her. One could become sick if they urinated into a fire. The sun, and fire was addressed as “ancient red” and ancient white.”
Among the Creek the sun was the principal deity, the master of breath, they believed that if anyone did anything wrong in the presence of a fire the sun would be immediately informed.
The Choctaw believed the sun watched with its “great blazing eye” and that as long as the eye was on them they were all right.
Some groups built fires in the shape of a cross, the four directions, and some built fires in a circle, encompassing everything.
The moon had different associations for different groups.
The Cherokee called the moon the sun’s brother with implications of an incestuous relationship. They also called the moon our grandparent.
Other groups associated the moon with things female, rain, fertility, and menstruation
To live in this world meant trying to maintain a balance between the upper and under worlds.
Fire, from the upper world, was opposed to water, from the under world. It was up to man to keep the two apart.
The Cherokee had a river deity, the long man, a giant with his head in the foothills and his feet far down in the lowlands, pressing always, restless to attain a certain goal and speaking in murmurs only a priest could interpret.
The Cherokee had an origin story in which there was only the upper and under worlds. Then the middle, this world was created. The creatures of the upper world saw the middle world and came down to live. When they came to the middle world, however, they began to degenerate, to grow smaller. Many of the upper world saw what was happening and left, but the ones who had degenerated could not leave and became the creatures we have in this world now.
Analyzing this story what we have is that ideal types, bigger animals came down to the earth to live but left, leaving behind less than ideal types who degenerated into the forms the Cherokee knew.
This is an interesting story if one considers the early megafauna that went extinct and makes one wonder if this story is an artifact of that long ago time.
This world became populated with three non-spiritual beings, men, animals and plants. Men and plants became friends while men and animals are opposed. Plants are very important in treating disease and in medicine among the Cherokee.
There were three categories of animals: four footed such as deer, birds such as eagles and vermin such as snakes, lizards, frogs, fish and insects. Each category was broken down so that Indians had names for all the species that were important to them.
There were symbolic associations with some animals.
The falcon can dive and kill instantly, consequently the forked eye design found on gorgets as far back as the Hopewellian period.
Creek hunters would carry a pouch with red ochre and a crystal. They would open the pouch to the rays of the sun and then paint marks around their eyes in the likeness of the forked falcon eye.
The falcon was also the model for the “tlanuwa” a huge bird of prey in Cherokee oral traditions. The bird was said to swoop down and kill its victims with its large sharp breast.
The eagle was associated with the upper world and peace and perfect order.
The kingfisher was invoked by Cherokee shamans to pluck out objects from peoples bodies that have magically intruded. The kingfisher flies down and plucks fish out of the water.
Buzzards were invoked in healing because the Turkey Buzzard is able to expose itself to dead things and live.
The long eared owl was considered an ill omen and a witch
The red bellied woodpecker was associated with swiftness, cunning and war.
The ivory billed woodpecker was often depicted in motifs and may have had a similar meaning.
The wild turkey was also associated with war. One of the war hoops sounded like a turkey gobble.
Under world monsters would come up from the under world through rivers, lakes, waterfalls and mountain caves.
The uktena combined features of all three categories of animals, a scaly body, deer horns and wings and it had a diamond shaped crest on its forhead.
The koasatis was a snake – crawfish, a snake with horns that lived in streams and would climb up on the shore and wrap itself around a body and pull it into the water.
Southeast Indians believed that the four cardinal directions were associated with certain forces and entities.
East: the sun, red, sacred fire, blood, life success
West: moon, souls of the dead, black, death
North: cold, blue or purple, trouble and defeat
South: warmth, white, peace, happiness
The Cherokee believed thunder, Kanati, the red man lived above the sky vault in the east. The red man was good and only killed white men. They called him “white “ so as not to offend him.
Kanati was opposed to the red man, black man, above the vault in the west.
Colors also had symbolic meaning:
Brown: upward
Yellow and blue: trouble
The upper world also had four quadrants:
Red man, red bear, red sparrow and hawk: East
West: black man, black bear
Number also had symbolic meaning
Four: everything in the known world
Seven: the highest degree of ritual purity, a level only the owl and cougar could attain and certain plants: spruce, cedar, pine, laurel holly
The cougar was the most perfect four footed animal.
Cedar was pure and sacred because it was aromatic and did not rot. Cedar was used to make litters for the dead in Cahokia and Spiro
Fire sets man apart from the another animals
There is a story among the Cherokee that illustrates the importance of fire in setting man apart from the other animals. All the animals were gathered on the shore of a large lake. In the middle of the lake was an island with fire. All the animals tried to get to the island and get the fire, but only the spider was able to spin a sail and be carried by the wind to the island, and then capture the fire in a web and bring it back and give it to the people. Once people had fire they became civilized, as in different from the other animals.
The spider was an ally in the story above and spiders also appear often on motifs.
There were ambiguous animals and plants that because they exhibited characteristics from more then one category made them powerful or dangerous or both.
The bear was a four footed animal that ate the same things as people and could go on two feet. There was an interesting story about the origin of bears. It seems there was a tribe of people who saw that the animals did not have to work to live. They did not make shelters, they did not plant anything or cook their food. So the tribe decided to go live in the woods like the animals. After a while, however, they began to degenerate and become less like people and more like animals. When they saw what was happening to them they tried to go back but they had degenerated too far, to a state in between people and animals, in essence, bears.
Other ambiguous animals: flying squirrel, bat
Also some ambiguous plants: the Venus flytrap, pitcher plant, these were plants that ate bugs unlike other plants, as if they were hunting plants. Indians ascribed power to the roots of these plants.