Ryan Spring

So we have an old story.

You know, it goes back to time immemorial.

But we call it our creation story.

It's one of our origin stories.

And this story basically states that God had created the land, had created the earth, and he wanted to create people to put upon it.

these people to be stewards of the land that he had created.

And so God took yellow clay from a local creek, which we know today as Naniwaya Creek, and he went deep underground and started shaping people out of the clay.

After he had made many, many people, he created an opening in the earth and ushered the people forward to come out to the surface, to the world that he had created.

And so in Mississippi,

there is a mound that we call Nanawaya Chilok, which means it's the cave of creation.

And so there is a cave opening where people came out

on the side of a hill, a natural hill.

And they laid upon the hill.

And so the first group of peoples to come out, they started traveling to the east, to the northeast, to the southeast.

These people traveled out.

They became all of the different tribes that our people are associated with, that we're related to.

And so the last group of people came out and they looked back and they saw that there were no more people coming.

God had stopped creating people.

And so the last group decided to stay at their place of creation and to live there.

And they called themselves the Chata or the Choctaw people.