Breathmaker

The History and Legacy of the Seminole’s Creator God

De: Charles River Editors

Narrado por: David Van Der Molen

Although traditional Muscogee mythology has mostly been lost to history, a concerted effort spearheaded by modern ethnographers like Troy University anthropologist Bill Grantham has allowed today’s Seminole tribe to reclaim some of their cultural roots and oral traditions, based upon surviving accounts of early European encounters, Christian missionaries, adventurers, travelogues, and various other historical documents. These studies have found that even by the time of first European contact, two distinct Muscogee Creek mythological and cosmological traditions were in place. Scholars have designated them the “Eastern Creek Tradition” (recited in Yuchi, Hitchiti, and Tuskegee oral tradition), and the “Western Creek Tradition” (recited in Muscogee, Alabama, and Koasati oral tradition).

According to Eastern Creek Tradition, in the beginning of time there existed a boundless expanse of water and air inhabited by immortal water and air beings. Coming in a variety of natural forms—human, animal, and others—these beings behaved as humans. They had families, hunted, traveled, waged war, and performed various rituals.

A time arrived when these immortals decided to create the Earth. According to one version, it was Crawfish's decision to retrieve the land from beneath the water, while another tradition attributes a council of beings with the decision. Differing somewhat, Tuskegee myth attributes Eagle, the chief of the immortal beings, with instructing Crawfish to retrieve the land. According to the Yuchi account specifically, soon after the Earth was created, a drop of blood fell from the Sun as it tracked across the sky for the first time, and from where that blood landed, humans sprang. The Yuchi descended from these first humans.

The Western Creek Tradition has a considerably different account. In Muscogee and Alabama mythology, there is virtually no mention of Earth prior to the existence of humans. However, while Muscogee mythology makes no mention of the creation of the universe, Alabama cosmology recited in the early 20th century explains how the “Great Spirit” (largely a Western Native American concept) created the universe and everything in it, with some accounts mentioning that before creation, only water existed.

Like Native American groups west of the Mississippi (and particularly in the Southwest), the Muscogee and Alabama describe humans as having emerged from underground. The Alabama and Koasati describe humans as having been crafted from clay and as living underground before emerging to the surface. According to both Alabama and Koasati creation myths specifically, the two groups came from the underworld together, emerging from the roots of a tree at the mouth of a cave. According to this creation myth, the Alabama sprouted from one side of the roots, and the Koasati came from the other.

The Muscogee human creation myth is essentially the same, except that their appearance is less specific. They emerged “somewhere in the west,” a location described as the “foundation of all things” or the “backbone” of the Earth. Most scholars associate this location with the Rocky Mountains, and they credit the Four Corners area of the United States as being the location for the creation myths of Native American groups like the Pueblo. Though still not commonly understood, Breathmaker became the creator god of the Seminole peoples (the name is also written as Breath Maker and Maker of Breath), and he became the center of a cycle of creation stories.

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