Green Corn Dance

Traders called it the Busk, a corruption of the Muscogee word puskita, or posketv, meaning a fast. For the Muscogee it is the central ceremony of the year: a new year, a thanksgiving to Hesaketvmese, the Breath Maker, for the first fruits, and a time of purification and forgiveness. The Mekko offers a little of each new crop, the women dance the Ribbon Dance and the men the Feather Dance, and the new fire is tended until the next year's ceremony. Muscogee tribal towns and stomp dance grounds still hold it, usually in late June or July.

What the plaque says

Green Corn Dance Greatest ceremonial rite of Creek Indians was Green Corn Dance. It was held at time of year before corn had fully matured and while grains were soft. Dance was celebration of harvest season and was of intense religious devotion. In preparation for festival old fires were extinguished and new ones lighted from old fire embers. Main fire was placed in center of square area. Around this central fire men, women, and children, dressed in colorful costumes, danced, chanted, and sang. After rites were completed, green corn was served to all. Choctaws and other tribes had similar ceremonies. This marker erected in vicinity where Creeks held green corn dances. Oklahoma Historical Society 1966

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Honey Springs Battlefield — 18 mi
  The July 17, 1863 battlefield on the Texas Road, the largest fight in Indian Territory, where Cherokee and Muscogee regiments fought on both sides and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry held.
• Robbers Cave State Park — 25 mi
  A sandstone cave in the Sans Bois Mountains north of Wilburton, wrapped in outlaw stories, and the park that Boy Scouts, prison labor and the CCC built around it.
• Muscogee (Creek) Nation Council House — 32 mi
  The Muscogee (Creek) Nation's 1878 stone capitol on the Okmulgee square, where the House of Kings and House of Warriors met, lost at statehood and bought back by the Nation in 2010.

More markers nearby

• Paul Henry Carr — 13 mi
• Webbers Falls — 30 mi
• Samuel Checote — 32 mi