Totkv Mocvse New Fire: Creek Folktales

157 Pages·2004·2.93 MB·English

by  Earnest Gouge

Totkv Mocvse
NEW FIRE
Earnest Gouge, circa 1915,
National Anthropological
Archives #1127A.
Totkv Mocvse
NEW FIRE
CREEK FOLKTALES
Earnest Gouge
BY
Edited and Translated by JACK B. MARTIN, MARGARET McKANE MAULDIN, and JUANITA McGIRT
Foreword by CRAIG WOMACK
Also by Jack B. Martin and Margaret McKane Mauldin
ADictionary of Creek/Muskogee, with Notes on the Florida and Oklahoma Seminole
Dialects of Creek(Lincoln, Nebr., 2000)
Publication of this book is made possible in part by a grant from the University of
Oklahoma Press Native Language Fund and Marcia Haag and Loretta Fowler, editors of
Chahta Anumpa:A Grammar of the Choctaw Language.
Proceeds from the sale of this work will go to Felix Gouge on behalf of the Gouge family.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gouge, Earnest, ca. 1865–1955.
Totkv mocvse/New fire : Creek folktales / by Earnest Gouge ; translated by Jack B.
Martin, Margaret McKane Mauldin, and Juanita McGirt ; foreword by Craig Womack.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–8061–3588–3(cloth)
ISBN 0–8061–3629–4(paper)
1. Creek Indians—Folklore. 2. Tales—Southern States. 3. Legends—Southern
States. 4. Creek language—Texts. I. Title: New fire. II. Title.
E99.C9G65 2004
398.2'089'97385—dc22
2003063423
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the
Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library
Resources, Inc. ∞
Copyright ©2004by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of
the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Contents
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii 12. Man races a snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Foreword, by Craig Womack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix 13. Rabbit traps Lion on the other side of the ocean . . . . . . 57
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv 14. Rabbit seeks wisdom from God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Introduction, by Jack B. Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii 15. Two boys become thunder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
About Earnest Gouge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii 16. Tiger helps man defeat a giant lizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
About the Stories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx 17. Rabbit tries to straighten riverbeds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Transcription and Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx 18. Twisted Horn steals man's heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
The Creek Alphabet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxii 19. Old dog saves master from Long Claws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
20. Doe killed by hunter, becomes his wife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
The Stories 21. Buzzard doctors Rabbit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
1. The three brothers and the spotted horse . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 22. Cow wants a knife . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
2. The hunter and his dogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 23. Hunter captured by eagle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3. Tug-of-war between tie-snakes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 24. Whistling man helps hunter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4. The hunters' wives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 25. Hunter taken to the deer cave . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5. The stork father . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 26. Man races a lizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
6. Rabbit steals fire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 27. Turtle tries to look up women's dresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
7. Turtle is beaten by three mothers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 28. Wolf wants to become spotted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
8. Rabbit rides Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 29. Girl abducted by Lion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
9. Turtle races Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
10. The young man who turned into a snake . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
11. Man defeats a giant lizard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Illustrations
Earnest Gouge, circa 1915 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece
Earnest Gouge in later life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Jack Gouge holding medallions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
first page of the Gouge manuscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiv
Photographs of Creek country by Jack B. Martin

Foreword
by Craig Womack
The work of Muskogee (Creek) author Earnest Gouge is part of one of tribal histories, preceded only by Tuscarora writer David Cusick’s 1827
the richest written tribal literary histories in North America, that of the work, Sketches of the Ancient History of the Six Nations. Stiggins’s foun-
Muskogee (Creek) Nation. Simply put, Earnest Gouge is an author, not dational text was not published until 1989,though Swanton and others
an ethnographic respondent, even though we know he was associated had read the manuscript much earlier. Swanton uses the manuscript as a
with John Swanton, the famous southeastern ethnographer who asked source for his own writings on the Southeast. Whether or not Earnest
him to write a collection of Creek stories. Swanton, however, chose not Gouge would have known of Stiggins is difficult to say, though this is a
to include Earnest Gouge’s work in his well-known collection of South- possibility through the Swanton connection and by means of the incredi-
ern Indian stories, possibly due to his inability to translate it. To what ble networking that has always linked the confederacy, even to the
degree Earnest Gouge understood himself as a Muskogee author is diffi- Alabama groups where George Stiggins stayed behind after Indian
cult to say from this side of history. It would be a grave error, however, Removal.
to fail to understand him as a Creek author since we have before us proof Another Muskogee author who crossed paths with John Swanton is
of some such conception on his part: he took pen in hand and produced a G. W. Grayson. Grayson, like George Stiggins, wrote a war narrative, in
book-length manuscript. this case chronicling Grayson’s own experiences as a Confederate officer
When Earnest Gouge wrote these stories in 1915, Muskogee author- in a Creek infantry unit during the Civil War. Like Stiggins’s earlier
ship was already an established tradition though much of it was yet to be work, it is a valuable historical source, particularly for its refusal to
discovered. George Stiggins, writing from his pre-removal home in romanticize warfare. Earnest Gouge almost certainly would have known
Alabama during the 1830s, had authored a book entitled Creek Indian of G. W. Grayson, if not his efforts at authorship. In 1911, just before
History, which took up the subject of the Red Stick War of 1813–14and Gouge started his own stories for Swanton, Grayson met the ethnogra-
became a major source in the next century for John Swanton’s southeast- pher and become a major informant for his collection of southeastern
ern studies and for student of early U.S. history. In addition to a gritty, stories, many of which Gouge himself would soon tell similar versions
compelling account of the war that divided the Creek Nation, Stiggins of. Swanton, in fact, read Grayson’s Civil War chronicle and other
committed to writing important Muskogean narrative patterns, such as shorter pieces he had written about Creek history. Here we discover a
his description of the origins of Creek towns, a theme other Creek fascinating literary conundrum: why does Swanton’s collection of
authors have emphasized in their books. In terms of Native literature “southeastern tales” contain animal stories but no narratives about, for
more generally, Stiggins’s book is one of the earliest Indian-authored example, Creek officers fighting on behalf of the Confederacy with