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Updated: May 14, 2025
He and Chief Weatherford led the Red Sticks upon the war trail; but greater in rank than either of them was Monahoe, the ruling prophet, of Menewa's own band. He was the head medicine-chief. He was the Sitting Bull of the Creeks, like the later Sitting Bull of the Sioux. Out went the Red Sticks, encouraged by Monahoe and the other prophets.
The medicine-chief meanwhile stays on earth, still influential. He has some connexion with the great god more intimate than that of other men; at worst he possesses the god's sacred instruments, his ἱερά or ὄργια; he knows the rules for approaching him and making prayers to him. There is therefore a path open from the divine beast to the anthropomorphic god.
They do not at once condemn the medicine-chief as a fraudulent institution, but they tend gradually to say that he is not the real all-powerful θεός. He is only his representative. The real θεός, tremendous, infallible, is somewhere far away, hidden in clouds perhaps, on the summit of some inaccessible mountain. If the mountain is once climbed the god will move to the upper sky.
And so no doubt it sometimes was, especially in later times when man and god were felt as two utterly distinct things. But 'deification' is an unintelligent and misleading word. What is the subsequent history of this medicine-chief or θεός? He is differentiated, as it were: the visible part of him becomes merely human; the supposed supernatural part grows into what we should call a God.
"Recent researches," says Gilbert Murray, "have shown us in abundance the early Greek medicine-chiefs making thunder and lightning and rain." Here is the germ of a Zeus or a Jupiter. If the mountain is once climbed the god will move to the upper sky. The medicine-chief meanwhile stays on earth, still influential.
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