Magazine of History with Notes and Queries

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INDIAN LEGENDS XVIII GREEN-CORN CEREMONIES OF THE CHEROKEES MY main object in the present paper is to record a complete account of the ceremonies which were once practised by the Cherokee Indians, in connection with their principal agricultural pursuit of raising maize or Indian corn. For the great...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INDIAN LEGENDS XVIII GREEN-CORN CEREMONIES OF THE CHEROKEES MY main object in the present paper is to record a complete account of the ceremonies which were once practised by the Cherokee Indians, in connection with their principal agricultural pursuit of raising maize or Indian corn. For the great majority of my facts I am indebted to Mr. Preston Starritt, of Tennessee. While this is the case however, I beg my readers to understand that I shall speak of the tribe in question as it existed in the times of old, when its members were the sole proprietors of the southern Alleghanies. Let us, then, banish from our minds the unhappy relations which brood over the Cherokees at the present time, and, by the aid of our fancy, mingle with the nation as it existed in its pristine glory. The snows of winter have melted from the mountain peaks, the rains are over and gone, the frosts are out of the ground, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. The beautiful valley to which we have journeyed is entirely surrounded with mountains, about five miles square, watered by a charming stream, and inhabited by two thousand aborigines, who are divided into seven clans, and located in seven villages. The ruling men of the tribe have signified to their people that the period for planting corn has arrived, and that they must gather themselves together for the purpose of submitting to the annual ceremonies of purification. For doing this they have a double object; they would, in the first place, expunge from their bodies every vestige of all the colds and diseases with which they may have been afflicted during the past winter; and, in the second place, they would propitiate the Great Spirit, so as to secure his blessing upon the crops which they are about to deposit in the ground. The m...