Silence reigned over nature and man.  Not a word was uttered among the countless multitude that thronged the hill-sides and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the gods.  At length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, low sobs and ejaculations were whispered among the eager masses.  As the sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians.  Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise.  Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate multitudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their gods, and the preservation of their race for another cycle.  At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the “New Fire” from hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire.  Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical center of the realm.  In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the gods to their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of gratitude and relief from impending doom.

* * * * *

=_Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From “The History of Alabama.”

=_137._= THE INDIANS AND THE EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA.

During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house.  For twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation.  Their green-corn dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all fresh in my recollection.  In my intercourse with them I was thrown into the company of many old white men called “Indian country men,” who had for years conducted a commerce with them.  Some of these men had come to the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig persecution.  They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting men with whom I ever conversed.  Generally of Scotch descent, many of them were men of some education.  All of them were married to Indian wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children....  I often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful Tallapoosa.  As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related to me the traditions of their country.  I occasionally saw Choctaw and Cherokee traders, and learned much from them.  I had no particular object in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early history of Alabama.