About seventy or eighty miles above the confluence of the Oakmulge and Ocone, the trading path, from Augusta to the Creek Nation, crosses these fine rivers, which are there forty miles apart. On the east bank of the Oakmulge this trading road runs nearly two miles through ancient Indian fields, which are called the Oakmulge fields; they are the rich low lands of the river. On the heights of these low lands are yet visible monuments, or traces, of an ancient town, such as artificial mounds or terraces, squares and banks, encircling considerable areas. Their old fields and planting land extended up and down the river, fifteen or twenty miles from this site.1

As Bartram states that the Creeks had stopped here after their immigration from the west, the Hitchiti may not have been in occupancy always. On the other hand, Bartram may have inferred a Creek occupancy from the tradition that the confederacy had there been founded, but this may really have had reference to a compact of some kind between the Hitchiti and the invading Creeks, irrespective of the land actually held by each tribe.

After the Yamasee war the Hitchiti moved across to Chattahoochee River with most of the other Lower Creeks, first to a point low down on that river, later higher up between the Chiaha and Apalachicola.2 In 1761 they were assigned to the traders, George Mackay and James Hewitt, along with the Point towns. Their name occurs in the lists of both Swan and Bartram. In 1797 the trader there was William Grey. Hawkins (1799) gives the following description of the Hitchiti town and its branch villages:

Hit-che-tee is on the left bank of Chat-to-ho-che, four miles below Che-au-hau; they have a narrow strip of good land bordering on the river, and back of this it rises into high, poor land, which spreads off flat. In approaching the town on this side there is no rise, but a great descent to the town flat; on the right bank of the river the land is level and extends out for two miles; is of thin quality; the growth is post oak, hickory, and pine, all small; then pine barren and ponds.

The appearance about this town indicates much poverty and indolence; they have no fences; they have spread out into villages, and have the character of being honest and industrious; they are attentive to the rights of their white neighbors, and no charge of horse stealing from the frontiers has been substantiated against them. The villages are:

1st. Hit-che-too-che (Little Hit-che-tee), a small village of industrious people, settled on both sides of Flint River, below Kit-cho-foo-ne; they have good fences, cattle, horses, and hogs, in a fine range, and are attentive to them.

2d. Tut-tal-lo-see (fowl), on a creek of that name, twenty miles west from Hit-chetoo-che. This is a fine creek on a bed of limestone; it is a branch of Kitch-o-foo-ne; the land bordering on the creek, and for eight or nine miles in the direction towards Hit-che-too-che, is level, rich, and fine for cultivation, with post and black oak, hickory, dogwood and pine. The villagers have good worm fences, appear industrious, and have large stocks of cattle, some hogs and horses; they appear decent and

orderly, and are desirous of preserving a friendly intercourse with their neighbors; they have this year, 1799, built a square.'

Manuel Garcia calls this latter village "Totolosehache." According to an anonymous writer quoted by Gatschet there were, about 1820, six "Fowl towns," Cahalli hatchi, old Tallahassi, Atap'halgi, Allik hadshi, Eetatulga, and Mikasuki. Most of these will be referred to again when we come to speak of Seminole towns. The census of 1832 mentions a Hitchiti village called Hihaje.

After their removal to the west the Hitchiti were placed in about the center of the Creek Nation, near what is now Hitchita station, and their descendants have remained there and about Okmulgee up to the present time. A portion migrated to Florida and after the removal maintained a square ground for a time in the northern part of the Seminole Nation, Oklahoma. Some persons in this neighborhood still preserve the language.

THE OKMULGEE

This tribe also belonged to the Hitchiti group. The name refers to the bubbling up of water in a spring, and in Creek it is called Oiki łako, and Oikewali, signifying much the same thing. The designation is said to have come originally from a large spring in Georgia. One of my informants thought that this was near Fort Mitchell, but probably it was the same spring from which the Ocmulgee River got its name, and this would be the famous "Indian Spring" in Butts County, Georgia. As early maps consulted by me do not show a town of the name on Ocmulgee River, and as the site of the Ocmulgee old fields was occupied by Hitchiti, I believe the Okmulgee were a branch of the Hitchiti, which perhaps left the town on the Ocmulgee before the main body of the people and made an independent settlement on Chattahoochee River. There their nearest neighbors were the Chiaha and Osochi, and the three together constituted what were sometimes known as "the point towns" from a point of land made by the river at that place. Bartram does not give the tribe separate mention, perhaps because he reckoned them as part of the Chiaha or Osochi. The French enumeration of 1750 records them as "Oemoulké," the French census of about 1760 as "Omolquet," and the Georgia census of 1761 gives them as one of "the point towns." Hawkins omits them from his sketch, but mentions them in his notes taken in 1797, where he says:

1 Hawkins' Sketch, in Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., I, pt. 1, pp. 64-65. Hitchiti were also on Chickasaw hatchee Creek. Hawkins, in Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., IX, p. 174.

2 Ayer. Coll., Newberry Lib.

3 Misc. Coll., Ala. Hist. Soc., 1, p. 413.

4 See pp. 406-412.

5 MSS., Ayer Coll.

6 Miss. Prov. Arch., I, p. 96.

7 Ga. Col. Docs., vin, p. 522.

Ocmulgee Village, 7 miles [below Hotalgihuyana]. There is a few families, the remains of the Ocmulgee people who formerly resided at the Ocmulgee fields on Ocmulgee River; lands poor, pine barren on both sides; the swamp equally poor and sandy; the growth dwarf scrub brush, evergreens, among which is the Cassine." The mouth of Kinchafoonee creek was 8 miles below.

Manuel Garcia mentions their chief as one of several Lower Creek chiefs with whom he had a conference in the year 1800. He spells the name "Okomulgue." Morse (1822) includes them in a list. of towns copied from a manuscript by Capt. Young. They were then located east of Flint River, near the Hotalgihuyana, and numbered 220.3 They are wanting from the census rolls of 1832, but perhaps formed one of the two Osochi towns mentioned, each of which is given a very large population. On their removal west of the Mississippi they settled in the northeastern corner of the new Creek territory, near the Chiaha. They were among the first to give up their old square ground and to adopt white manners and customs. Probably in consequence of this progress they furnished three chiefs to the Creek Nation-Joe Perryman, Legus Perryman, and Pleasant Porter-and a number of leading men besides.

THE OCONEE

5

In addition to two groups of Muskhogean people bearing this name1 it should be noticed that it was popularly applied by the whites to a Cherokee town, properly called Ukwû'nû (or Ukwû'n), but the similarity may be merely a coincidence. Of the two Creek groups mentioned one seems to be associated exclusively with the Florida tribes, while the second, when we first hear of it, was on the Georgia river which still bears its name. The first reference to either appears to be in a report of the Timucua missionary, Pareja, dated 1602. He mentions the "Ocony," three days' journey from San Pedro, among a number of tribes among which there were Christians or which desired missionaries. In a letter dated April 8, 1608, Ibarra speaks of "the chief of Ocone which marches on the province of Tama." This might apply to either Oconee division. The mission lists of 1655 contain a station called Santiago de Ocone, described as an island and said to be 30 leagues from St. Augustine. As it was certainly not southward of the colonial capital it would seem to have been near the coast to the north, according to the distance given, in the neighborhood of Jekyl Island. At the very same time there was another Oconee mission among the Apalachee Indians called San Francisco de Apalache in the list of 1655; it is given in the

1 Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., IX, p. 173.

Copy MS. in Ayer Coll., Newberry Lib. 'Morse, Rept. on Ind. Aff., p. 364.

• See p. 112.

19th Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 541. "Lowery, MSS.

list of 1680 as San Francisco de Oconi.' This group probably remained with the rest of the Apalachee towns and followed their fortunes.

The main body of the Oconee was located, when first known to Englishmen, on Oconee River, about 4 miles south of the present Milledgeville, Georgia, just below what was called the Rock Landing. In a letter, dated March 11, 1695, Gov. Laureano de Torres Ayala tells of an expedition consisting of 400 Indians and 7 Spaniards sent against the "Cauetta, Oconi, Cassista, and Tiquipache" in retaliation for attacks made upon the Spanish Indians. About 50 persons were captured in one of these towns, but the others were found abandoned.2 On the Lamhatty map they appear immediately west of a river which seems to be the Flint, but the topography of this map is not to be relied on. In the text accompanying, the name is given as "Opponys. Almost all that is known of later Oconee history is contained in the following extract from Bartram:

4

Our encampment was fixed on the site of the old Ocone town, which, about sixty years ago, was evacuated by the Indians, who, finding their situation disagreeable from its vicinity to the white people, left it, moving upwards into the Nation or Upper Creeks, and there built a town; but that situation not suiting their roving disposition, they grew sickly and tired of it, and resolved to seek an habitation more agreeable to their minds. They all arose, directing their migration southeastward towards the seacoast; and in the course of their journey, observing the delightful appearance of the extensive plains of Alachua and the fertile hills environing it, they sat down and built a town on the banks of a spacious and beautiful lake, at a small distance from the plains, naming this new town Cuscowilla; this situation pleased them, the vast deserts, forests, lake, and savannas around affording abundant range of the best hunting ground for bear and deer, their favourite game. But although this situation was healthy and delightful to the utmost degree, affording them variety and plenty of every desirable thing in their estimation, yet troubles and afflictions found them out. This territory, to the promontory of Florida, was then claimed by the Tomocas, Utinas, Caloosas, Yamases, and other remnant tribes of the ancient Floridians, and the more Northern refugees, driven away by the Carolinians, now in alliance and under the protection of the Spaniards, who, assisting them, attacked the new settlement and for many years were very troublesome; but the Alachuas or Ocones being strengthened by other emigrants and fugitive bands from the Upper Creeks [i. e., the Creeks proper], with whom they were confederated, and who gradually established other towns in this low country, stretching a line of settlements across the isthmus, extending from the Alatamaha to the bay of Apalache; these uniting were at length able to face their enemies and even attack them in their own settlements; and in the end, with the assistance of the Upper Creeks, their uncles, vanquished their enemies and destroyed them, and then fell upon the Spanish settlements, which also they entirely broke up."

We know that the removal of this tribe from the Oconee River took place, like so many other removals in the region, just after the Ya

1 See p. 110.

Serrano y Sanz, Doc. Hist., p. 225.

Am. Anthrop., n. s. vol. x, p. 571.

4 Bartram calls all of the Creeks, Upper Creeks, and the Seminole of Florida, Lower Creeks.

• Bartram, Travels, pp. 378-379.

masee outbreak of 1715, and the movement into Florida about 1750.1 Their chief during most of this period was known to the whites as "The Cowkeeper." Although Bartram represents the tribe as having gone in a body, we know that part of them remained on the Chattahoochee much later, for they appear in the assignments to traders for 1761, and in Hawkins's Sketch of 1799, while Bartram himself includes the town in his list as one of those on the Apalachicola or Chattahoochee River. The list of towns given in 1761 includes a big and a little Oconee town, the two having together 50 hunters. Their trader was William Frazer.2 Hawkins describes their town as follows:

O-co-nee is six miles below Pa-la-chooc-le, on the left bank of Chat-to-ho-che. It is a small town, the remains of the settlers of O-co-nee; they formerly lived just below the rock landing, and gave name to that river; they are increasing in industry, making fences, attending to stock, and have some level land moderately rich; they have a few hogs, cattle, and horses."

They are not represented in the census of 1832, so we must suppose either that they had all gone to Florida by that time or that they had united with some other people. Bartram's narrative gives, not merely the history of the Oconee, but a good account also of the beginnings of the Seminole as distinct from the Creeks. When we come to a discussion of Seminole history we shall find that the Oconee played a most important part in it, in fact that the history of the Seminole is to a considerable extent a continuation of the history of the Oconee.

THE TAMAŁI

In

It is in the highest degree probable that this town is identical with the Toa, Otoa, or Toalli of the De Soto chroniclers, the -lli of the last form representing presumably the Hitchiti plural -ati. Be that as it may, there can be little question regarding the identity of Tamałi with the town of Tama, which appears in Spanish documents of the end of the same century and the beginning of the seventeenth. 1598 Mendez de Canço, governor of Florida, writes that he plans to establish a post at a place "which is called Tama, where I have word there are mines and stones, and it is a very fertile land abounding in food and fruits, many like those of Spain." It was said to be 40 leagues from St. Augustine. In a later letter, dated February, 1600, is given the testimony of a soldier named Gaspar de Salas, who had visited this town in the year 1596. He undertook this expedition in company with the Franciscan fathers, Pedro Fernandez de Chosas and Francisco de Veras. He found the

1 See pp. 398-399.

'Ga. Col. Docs., vш, p. 522.

Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., III, p. 65.

Bartram, Travels, p. 462.
See p. 12.

Serrano y Sanz, Doc. Hist., p. 138.