No one knows when Europeans and Chickasaws first discussed their religions together. But whether it was with members of Hernando de Soto’s expedition in 1540 or the English or French in the 1680s or ‘90s, it’s likely the Chickasaws thought something had been lost in translation.

Concepts such as forgiving your enemies could not have been more alien and wrong to them or the Indians who had inhabited their world. Misdeeds were forgiven only annually and communally at the Green Corn Ceremony. Murder was never forgiven. In fact, Indian warfare wasn’t based on territorial conquest, but was usually the means to exact blood revenge for deaths of family and clan members.

I also think there is good reason to believe that the Chickasaws would have been much more interested in understanding the non-Indian man’s religion than the other way around.

Why? Because in the Chickasaw world, religion was not just part of their lives, it was central to the way each tribal member lived. A Chickasaw chief, speaking to English cleric John Wesley in 1736, said the beloved ones (deities) were always in the thoughts of the people, in war and peace, before and after battles, “whenever we meet.”

Anthropologist Charles Hudson wrote that “their [Southeastern Indians] belief system was expressed in all phases of their lives.” He elaborated on the statement in detail in his excellent book, The Southeastern Indians. But as Hudson admitted, his understanding was little more than a useful outline of what had been a system of “dazzling complexity” within each tribal society. Given the pervasiveness of religion in their lives, Chickasaws would have been hard pressed to understand cultures in which spirituality could be pigeonholed, ignored or perhaps worst of all, criticized.

And it would have been an arduous and lengthy assignment for any European to fathom the complexity of Chickasaw spirituality even with the aid of a willing hopayi (holy man) and an experienced translator.

In answer to Wesley’s questions about a deity, Chickasaw Chief Postubee (or Pastabe) said they believed there are “four beloved things above: the clouds, the sun, the clear sky and He that lives in the clear sky.” He added that there are “two others with him in the clear sky.” One of those who lives in the clear sky seemed to have superior powers but they didn’t know if he made the other beloved things. They did believe that he made people “out of the ground.”

Such language is difficult to understand let alone interpret or evaluate.

The bewildering number and types of rituals to achieve or maintain purity (and avoid pollution) in everyday life was “so extreme that it strikes us as having been almost obsessive,” Hudson wrote.

Rather than try to understand Native religion, it was far easier for colonials to dismiss it with an epithet, such as “savagery.”

Furthermore, the great majority of colonial officials didn’t regard non-business topics to be important enough to record. These Europeans who developed relationships with Chickasaws were Christians, but they were not missionaries. They had braved sailing across the ocean and risked journeying hundreds of miles inland from the coasts not to save souls but to make money and extend their empires.

That goal must have been evident to the Chickasaws from near the beginning of the contact. Even though the Chickasaws probably thought that the English and French could set aside Christian teachings and principles in order to do business in the New World, they were not free to do so. Tribal members could no more ignore religious teachings and ritual than they could live without oxygen.

This would make them inconsistent and occasionally inconvenient partners for the English, who had sustained contact with the Chickasaws before the French. From sometime between 1685-1695 until at least 1715, the English were in the business of supplying Indian slaves to work the cane fields of the Empire’s Caribbean holdings. In exchange for the slaves, English traders offered the Chickasaws, Muskogee and other smaller tribes guns and ammunition to facilitate capturing slaves.

Chickasaws had no religious problem with slavery. Capturing slaves had been a traditional part of Indian warfare for generations. Moreover, many Chickasaws believed that if they didn’t trade slaves for guns with the English, other tribes might, including some of their enemies, such as the much more numerous Choctaws.

But, if religion played no explicit role in the formation of this Anglo-Chickasaw alliance, the daily practice of tribal religion had substantial impact. For example, a war chiefs’ raid could be called off if a hopayi saw signs in the medicine or nature that the spirits didn’t favor the attack. Cancellation also could result if a warrior’s dream (believed to be instructions from the spirit world) were interpreted to signal impurity or divine displeasure with the plan.

In addition to contending with such uncontrollable events, the English officers and traders often were faced with other fluid situations stemming from religious considerations generally unknown to them. A common example was warriors intent on expeditiously carrying out their religious obligation to avenge the death of a kinsman killed by a member or members of another tribe. Warriors feeling this obligation were uncontrollable not only by the English but also by their own tribal leadership. When the moment was right, after the proper religious rituals had been observed, they set off. At times, their sacred duty conflicted with and trumped English military plans and strategy.

The English considered the bits and pieces they had heard about Chickasaw spiritualism to be superstitious nonsense not worthy of their attention. So what the English seldom, if ever, took into account was that when the Chickasaws changed their military plans, it might not have been a military decision, but a religious one.

Furthermore, if they learned that a Chickasaw woman was responsible for altering their military plan, the English disdain would have increased all the more. In English society, military decisions were always made by men. As far as they could see, Chickasaw women were merely laborers whose toil never ended. But in Chickasaw society, the women known as clan mothers were highly respected; they had far more stature than the Europeans understood.

The magnitude of these religious-based problems and misunderstandings with the English and French colonies, respectively, is only hinted at intermittently in the colonial records. Both colonies were in deadly competition for a Chickasaw alliance, which they needed so they could manipulate the tribe to further their economic and imperialistic ends. Few colonists understood that a potential key to gaining more control over the tribe or a faction of it was to improve relations with the religious figures, the hopayi.

Of all the traders the tribe did business with in the 18th century, none was better known to them or trusted than James Adair, who lived among them on and off from 1744 to the mid-1760s. He seemed to have a dual allegiance, to the English colonies in pursing a pro-English, anti-French course, and to the Chickasaws. He sometimes referred to himself as an “English Chickasaw.”

And yet, as important as he knew the hopayi to be, Adair apparently was never able to develop a sustained, fruitful relationship with any of them. In his book, History of American Indians, he describes them as cunning or selfish frauds, undeserving of the power they held over the people. For example, he wrote that the hopayi who “mediate” for the people with the divine spirits, avoided their rain-making obligation until weather conditions were favorable or the people were aroused because of a serious drought. If no rains came despite his rituals for rain making, the hopayi would blame the people for their wicked behavior.

Adair reproduced a discussion he had with a hopayi who was defending himself against the trader’s charge that he had taken a large share of crops to the disadvantage of the elderly and disabled. The “prophet” (to use Adair’s word) defended himself by saying that his sacred work was between himself and the deity. He emphatically told Adair that no one was in a position to judge his work, much less blame him.

But the people’s faith in hopayi was tested as the 18th century progressed and the tribe’s population dwindled--due to casualties caused by almost continuous warfare and intermittent epidemics of deadly disease. Why couldn’t these holy men protect tribal members against these periodic terrible epidemics of small pox, influenza and measles? The hopayi had an answer: the impure people had brought these hardships on themselves.

After the slave trade ebbed and ended in the years following the Indian uprisings against the English (called the Yamasee War) in 1715, the deerskin trade became increasingly important. Even so, it had been a major industry between 1699 and 1715; Charles Hudson noted that the English colony of Carolina exported an average of 54,000 deerskins per year. By contrast, the French colony of Louisiana exported nearly 50,000 deerskins per year. Chickasaw factions allied with one colony or the other provided a significant portion.

When the trading path was reopened after the Yamasee War, more and more traders came into Chickasaw country to trade for deerskins, reflecting the insatiable demand of the Europeans for leather. To survive against the relentless attacks of the French allied tribes, it was essential to keep the supply of guns and ammunition coming into their villages. So the Chickasaws and other English allies were obliged to kill deer in ever greater numbers. They participated in killing so many deer throughout the 18th century that Hudson wrote that it rivaled the slaughter of the buffalo herds on the Great Plains.

Such killing brought about a fundamental change in the way Native people lived with animals and practiced their traditional religious beliefs. Formerly, hunters scrupulously observed religious rituals before, during and after killing an animal. According to Adair, after a hunter killed a buck, he observed a ritual sacrifice to the great spirits by burning the carcass on a fire of green wood. Then, Adair wrote that the hunter “purifies himself in water” to be “secure from temporal evils. In the past, every hunter observed the very same religious economy; but now [about 1770] it is practiced only by those who are the most retentive of their old religious mysteries.”

Adair didn’t identify the hunter’s tribe, but the remark reflects the gradual undermining of spiritualism among the Southeastern tribes, including the Chickasaws, primarily due to their dependence on trade with colonial governments. By the 1830s, this gave the U.S. the leverage needed to remove these tribes west of the Mississippi. He made a similar observation regarding the tribes’ annual renewal, the green corn ceremony. Adair noted that by the 1760s, the Indians had lengthened their dances and shortened the time of their “fasts and purifications.”

By the end of the 18th century, the great chiefs of the tribe, Paya Mattaha, Mingo Houma and Piomingo, had passed away and the next generation of leaders, the mixed-blood Colbert brothers, were ascending in power as the tribe’s land base was dwindling and numerous non-Indian settlers were moving onto tribal land. At this crucial juncture in tribal history, the leading edge of American missionaries was arriving, offering Christian ministry, education and English lessons for the new era.

This new path, the tribe was told, led to salvation.

Readers may contact Richard Green at 405-947-5020