Tie-Snake
Muscogee · numen · Muscogee traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
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
- EstakwvnayvJohn R. Swanton, Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88, Smithsonian Institution, 1929. (secondary)
Relations
- rival: Horned SerpentCreek tradition pairs the Tie-Snake with the great Horned Serpent as its close counterpart; the two are sometimes told of as one being and sometimes distinguished, the Horned Serpent being the larger and more powerful of the pair.Bill Grantham, Creation Myths and Legends of the Creek Indians, University Press of Florida, 2002. (secondary)
Sources
- The Tie-Snake (estakwvnayv) is a powerful water serpent of Muscogee and wider Southeastern tradition that seizes people and game and drags them underwater, and that holds a drawing power over game animals.: John R. Swanton, Myths and Tales of the Southeastern Indians, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 88, Smithsonian Institution, 1929. (secondary); 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. (secondary)