Owing to the absence of the Author on official duties in the Indian Territory, the Map which should accompany this volume has not been prepared. It will therefore be issued with the second volume. BRINTON'S LIBRARY OF ABORIGINAL AMERICAN LITERATURE. NUMBER IV. A MIGRATION LEGEND OF THE CREEK INDIANS, WITH A LINGUISTIC, HISTORIC AND ETHNOGRAPHIC INTRODUCTION, BY ALBERT S. GATSCHET, OF THE U. S. BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY, WASHINGTON, D. C. VOLUME I. Νᾱφε καὶ μέμνας' ὰπιστεῑν ᾰρθρα ταῦυτα τῶν φρενῶν. _Epicharmus._ PHILADELPHIA: D. G. BRINTON. 1884. PREFATORY NOTE. In the present work, Mr. Gatschet has carried out a much needed investigation. The tribes who inhabited the watershed of the north shore of the Mexican Gulf must always occupy a prominent place in the study of American Ethnology, as possibly connecting the races of North and South America, and those of the Valley of the Mississippi with those of Anahuac and Mayapan. Years ago the general editor of this series stated, in various publications, the problems that region offers, and on finding the remarkable legend of Chekilli, translated it and published it, as pointing to a solution of some of the questions involved. This legend has, at his request, been taken by Mr. Gatschet as a centre around which to group the ethnography of that whole territory, as well as a careful analysis of the legend and its language. The first volume contains the general discussion of the subject, and closes with the Creek version of the Legend and its translation. The second will contain the Hitchiti Version, the Notes, and Vocabulary. One statement of the author, overlooked in the proof reading, seems of sufficient importance to be corrected here. The _Choctaw Grammar_ of the late Rev. Cyrus Byington was published _complete_, and from his _last revision_ (1866-68), not as an extract from his first draft, as stated on page 117. The full particulars are given in the Introduction to the Grammar. THE EDITOR. PREFACE. The present publication proposes to bring before the public, in popular form, some scientific results obtained while studying the language and ethnology of the Creek tribe and its ethnic congeners. The method of furthering ethnographic study by all the means which the study of language can afford, has been too little appreciated up to the present time, but has been constantly kept in view in this publication. Language is not only the most general and important help to ethnology, but outside of race, it is also the most ancient of all; ethnologists are well aware of this fact, but do not generally apply it to their studies, because they find it too tedious to acquire the language of unlettered tribes by staying long enough among them.