Abstract
MR. JOHN R. SWANTON during the summer of 1929 visited the Creek country with the view of obtaining further information relating to the ‘square grounds’ or sacred areas in which the Creek Indians celebrate their busks and other annual ceremonies. His report is now published in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 85, No. 8. The ‘square grounds’ are intimately connected with Creek ceremonial, social and political organisation. According to tradition, after the formation of the Creek con-deferacy, the Kasihta and Coweta, the two divisions of the Muskogee element in the Lower Creeks, who lived on the river, now the boundary between Alabama and Georgia, having defeated all their enemies, instituted periodical ball-games as a kind of moral equivalent for war. As friendly relations were established with other Indians and they were admitted to the confederacy, they joined with one side or the other and the dual system became general, the Kasihta becoming known as the ‘white’ side and the Coweta as the ‘red’.
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Ceremonial Games and Social Organisation among the Creek Indians. Nature 129, 660–661 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129660b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129660b0