As to the origin of things, the Muskogee had obscure traditions. They believed that the solid land had come from the expansion of a bit of earth brought from the edges of the world or from the bottom of the ocean. They also told of a flood, but their story of human origins did not concern any tribes except their own and a few believed to be related closely to theirs. They thought that after their ascent from the world beneath at the point in the far west called “the navel of the world,” they had traveled toward the southeast for a long time, led by their Medicine Maker, who, in turn, was guided by a staff, stuck upright in the ground every night and found inclining in the direction to be taken every morning. In the meantime, four “light beings” from the corners of the world had brought the knowledge of the poskita to them and had lighted their first poskita fire. During this period, ties of friendship sprang up between the several Muskogee tribes, and some that were not Muskogee. Two of the leading tribes, the Kasihta and Coweta, formed an agreement by which they were to play ball with each other at intervals, but were never to fight and as other towns or tribes became allied with these, they also became allied in the ball games until there came to be two classes of towns with about twenty-five on a side. Those headed by Kasihta were dedicated to peace and those headed by Coweta to war....
One day—it was toward the end of summer—Tokulki and the Medicine Maker strayed some distance eastward of the town and sat down upon the side of a hill, where the older man reviewed the more important particulars of his teaching more impressively than ever before. After a time he paused, and then he said: “I have told you all that I know; this is what the Medicine Maker who was before me, and all of the knowers and the doctors have told me. It must be so. I believe it. Yet perhaps it is not all the truth. I think we are not to understand some of the things that they tell just as they sound; they have another meaning. Sometimes we can see what this other meaning is; sometimes we can not. Perhaps, too, like the poskita fire, it has become fouled by much contact with common things, by much repeating. Perhaps Hisakita-imisi did not tell our grandfathers all that he had in mind to tell. But much of it is good, and it is for the good of our people. So use what seems to you good! And the rest you need not use. And if Hisakita-imisi seems to tell you something that is better, if you think it is better for your people, use it! It is what he must have intended from the beginning. I tell you this because I feel that your times will not be like my times. The plant dies. In the spring the plant comes up again. It is the same plant, and yet it is not the same plant. It is like, but it is unlike.