+490+. The Cherokees, belonging to the southern division of the Iroquois stock (living formerly in Tennessee and North Carolina), killed the animals they respected, but with ceremonies. Their Green Corn dance, the object of which was to insure a good crop, was expiatory, and was accompanied by a general amnesty.[842] +491+. Wyandot (Huron) myths[843] account for their Snake and Hawk clans by stories of marriages between women and a snake or a hawk; here human beings are assumed to have existed before the genesis of the clan (a difference from the Australian scheme), but it is true that the clan is held to have descended in part from an animal. +492+. In the great Algonkin stock[844] the evidence for a distinct totemic organization is similarly indefinite. The Lenâpé (Delawares), who were agricultural and well advanced in manufacture, gave prominence to families rather than to clans, and the totem was a badge. The Ojibwas, hunters (dwelling by the Great Lakes and in the valley of the St. Lawrence),[845] also used their sacred animal forms as badges; whether they ate such animals or claimed descent from them we are not informed. The friendly relation existing between the Otter and Beaver clans is explained by a story of a marriage between an Otter clansman and a Beaver woman. For the Potawatamies it was lawful to kill and eat the totem. The Ottawas (of Canada) and the combined Sauks and Foxes (of the Mississippi Valley) had traditions of descent from the totem. The Menomini (of the same region) would kill the totem, but always with an apology to it; their myths embody varying conceptions of the relation of eponymous animals to clans: sometimes the origin of a clan is referred to the action of a supernatural being who changed a bear, for example, into a man, or to adventures of animals; sometimes eponymous birds (eagle and hawk) are described as being spirits or deities. Such introduction of supernatural beings involves a deviation from the conception of the eponymous animal as independent creator of a clan.[846] +493+. For the tribes bordering on the Gulf of Mexico no signs have been preserved of an organization based on the relation between clans and eponymous animals, plants, and other objects. The great Maskoki stock (including Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chickasas, and some other less important tribes) had a well-formed political system, and their religion was represented by the Chief Magician or Priest (Medicine Man). They performed magical ceremonies for increase of food, but these were tribal, and the Creek annual fast (_puskita_, busk) had high religious and ethical significance.[847]