Tie-Snake
Muscogee · numen · Muscogee traditional religion; continuing · numen
The Tie-Snake, estakwvnayv, is a water spirit of Muscogee (Creek) and broader Southeastern Indian tradition. Outwardly resembling an ordinary black or dark-blue snake, it is held to be enormously strong, seizing and binding people and game and pulling them beneath the surface of rivers and deep pools to drown; one account credits a Tie-Snake with raising a flood that overwhelmed a whole town. The Creek informant Jackson Lewis told John R. Swanton that the creature does not harm human beings but exerts a magnetic, drawing power over game. The Tie-Snake stands as the near double of the great Horned Serpent, the two being sometimes treated as a single being and sometimes distinguished, with the Horned Serpent reckoned the larger.
Domains
- rivers and deep water
- mastery over game
Powers
- to seize people and animals and drag them beneath the water to drown
- to exert a drawing power over game animals
- to call up flood waters strong enough to overwhelm a town
Epithets
- Estakwvnayv
Relations
- rival: Horned Serpent
Sources
- John R. Swanton, Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88, Smithsonian Institution, 1929.
- John R. Swanton, 'Religious Beliefs and Medical Practices of the Creek Indians,' in Forty-Second Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, 1928.