1988 Spring

Indians

Page 4

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Thousand Participate in Plum Bayou Renewal Rites

TOLTEC – Attendance records were broken at the annual world renewal ceremony held at Toltec Mounds this year at the time of the fall equinox.

Members of the Plum Bayou tribe gathered for this most important ceremony of the year. Representatives of tribes from as far away as 200 miles attended the eight-day ceremony, which ended on September 21, 1490.

The equinox, which is when the day and night are of equal length, is an important time because it marks the end of the crop season and harvest and the beginning of the approaching cold season. The kindling of the new fire at this time will ensure the health and well-being of the Plum Bayou people. This is also an important festival of thanks to the gods for the harvest of abundant foods throughout the past year.

In addition to the purification and world renewal rituals, there were dances, games, and contests. The baskets and bowls of food for the feast overflowed, as the great Sun God blessed the people with an abundant harvest.

The biggest community project was replastering the priest’s platform. This platform was damaged in the unusual snow and cold weather of the Month of the Cold Meal (January), and the surface eroded more in the early summer rains. The work crews were organized by the priest’s young assistant.

The men dug the fresh red clay from the ditch on the sunrise side of the town. The ditch had been filling with silt, and needed to be cleaned out. The ditch was deepened in order to reach the proper red clay, which is an arm’s length beneath the surface. The red clay is necessary for the surfacing of the platform.

All people, including youths above the age of 12, participated in carrying loaded caskets of soil. Those men experienced in refinishing the surface were assisted by the men from the outlying villages. Despite the great height of 32 feet, the job was completed in three days. The priest’s house, standing on the top of the platform, also received a new coat of plaster.

The high priest of Toltec led the priests from surrounding villages to the priest’s house on the platform. Here, they performed the sacred rituals and prayers of the eight-day cycle of ceremonies for the thanksgiving of the harvest and for the health and well-being of the Plum Bayou people and the renewal of the world.

The people from the outlying villages also did minor repair and resurfacing of the sacred embankment and ditch around the town. This great ditch and wall were completed 100 years ago with much labor and effort, under the direction of the great chief White Cloud. The areas needing repair were less that one-third of the overall 5,298-foot length. In only two places had erosion damaged the top of the embankment, which is eight feet high. The ditch on the outside was also cleaned out.

While the priests and elder men were bust with the secret ceremonies, families repaired their homes with new roof thatch and walls. On the seventh day of the ceremonies, everyone put out their fires and cleaned their hearths to await the equinox sunrise on the eighth day. Putting out the fires removed the pollution of the old year.

People gathered around the town square for the sunrise ceremony. The priests watched from the top of the platform for the first appearance of the sun on the horizon. With the sunrise, the sacred fire was rekindled in the priest’s house.

Cone torches ignited in this fire were then carried to all the houses to light the new fires. The recently harvested foods were prepared as offering to the gods in this new fire.

The day was then devoted to feasting, dancing, and games. Foods gathered in the harvests had been brought into the town by people from the outlying villages. A variety of dishes was prepared. Hickory and acorn nut meats were pounded and made into breads. The grains from the fall harvests of knotweed (Polygonum), goosefoot (Chenopodium), pigweed (Amaranthus), and corn (Zea mais) were ground to make breads or a gruel mixed with hickory-nut oil. There was a variety of meats, both dried and fresh, with venison, turkey, duck, and passenger pigeon, as well as fish.

The men from the northern villages beat the southern team in the stick ball games. In the women’s ball pole games, the team from the southern villages beat the northern team.

The opening of next year’s ceremonies will be announced by a runner, sent to all the Plum Bayou villages in mid-summer.

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