35 Etanie 36. Tuslalahockaka... 37 [27]. Yalacasooche.. or si tåstånȧgi]. Uchee Tustehuka, or Head of Okelawaha. 20 m. W. from the head of St. On the W. side of St. John's 10 m. from Volusia. W. of St. John's, E. of Black Alac Hajo [Ahalak hadjo] 10 m. W. of Walalecooche. Jackson Lewis gave me the name of one later Seminole town, Lanu'tci aba'la ("Across a little mountain"), which I have not been able to identify in the above lists. With the Seminole war we have little to do. As an example of the possibilities of Indian warfare when opposed to European it has no parallel, having dragged through eight years, not including Jackson's first raid into northern Florida, and having cost the United States Government, it is estimated, $20,000,000, the lives of many thousand persons of both sexes, and enormous property losses besides. Mikonopi, who, as I have shown, represented the old Oconee element, was the theoretical head chief of the Indians during this contest, but the brains of native resistance were Osceola, an Indian from Tulsa, and Jumper, who is said to have come from the Upper Towns, but to have been the last survivor of "some ancient tribe." In spite of the prominence of these two Creeks, the Mikasuki and the other older elements as a whole took the most conspicuous parts in it. Although they were outnumbered, and in time nearly overwhelmed, by the later Creek refugees, to whom the popular but erroneous rendering of the term "Seminole," that of "runaways," would more particularly apply, the fact must be emphasized that the primacy in this war belonged to a non-Muskogee people who had in no way been concerned in the great Creek uprising, and that it was therefore at base a war with an entirely separate tribe. We learn from the report of an Indian agent,' writing in 1846, that the year before, shortly after the removal of the Seminole to 1 Ind. Affs. Rept. for 1846, p. 278. the strip of Oklahoma later occupied by them, there were 27 "towns" or bands there which were in 1846 reduced to 25 by the death of two leaders, and the incorporation of their bands with others. The associations of the Creek elements in particular, in Florida, were so little sanctified by time and custom that they were easily destroyed, and progressively, with gradual losses in numbers, these 25 were still further cut down, until within the memory of the older people, only eight towns or neighborhoods supporting square grounds remained, and in 1912 these had been still further reduced to six. The Mikasuki preserve a ground near Seminole, Okla., and the Hitchiti had one near Keokuk Falls, which was given up many years ago. Of the remainder, one, located near Sasakwa, is called Liwahali, and, as I have stated above, contains, besides persons from the Upper Creek town of that name, the descendants of those who once occupied Kan-hatki and Fus-hatchee. Eufaula may be assumed to represent the descendants of that old Seminole colony planted at Teuko teati. According to the people now constituting it, the only Indians other than Eufaula living there are Chiaha. The other square grounds are called Okfuskee, Chiaha, Talahasutci, and Otcisi. Okfuskee and Chiaha bear names of former Creek towns, but I learn that the appellations are quite conventional, although no doubt some of the individuals going by the name are actually descended from people belonging to the town which the name name indicates. Talahasutci is probably the "Talahasochte" of Bartram. There are now no old people belonging to it, but the chief told me he thought it had broken away from Tulsa. On the other hand, some Creek informants insisted that it came either from Abihka or from Abihka through Pakan talahasi. As I have pointed out elsewhere, Pakan talahasi did not come from Abihka, and it is not likely that this town did either. If Hawkins is right in his description of the make-up of the Seminole population it would seem that originally it must have been either a Mikasuki town or a branch of Lower Eufaula. Conclusive evidence is lacking. In Bartram's time the chief was known as the White King (Miko håtki). Otcisi is a name not found among the regular town names of the Creeks proper. One of my oldest informants said that his mother explained it as derived from the custom of going out after hickory nuts (otci) with which to make oil. He thought the town was a branch of Eufaula hopai, but that into it had been gathered people from other places. Otcisi was, however, a name given by Hitchiti-speaking people to the Creeks, and in fact to any who used a language different from their own. Another informant, himself an Otcisi, said that 1 See 1 most of the inhabitants came from Hickory Ground, though a few were from Tälwå łåko. This is, perhaps, the most probable statement, since this man, Yonasi, was the oldest person belonging to that place. The name, as applied to a town, appears as early as 1800 in the diary of Manuel Garcia, a Spanish officer sent to receive the Apalachee fort from Bowles.1 But, as I have already said, the lack of permanence of most Seminole towns, and the frequent change of name which they underwent, has rendered it next to impossible to follow in any connected manner the history of more than a very few groups. At the same time the main outlines of Seminole history and the principal factors entering into it are quite evident. They were at base a portion of the Atsikhata or non-Muskogee people of southern Georgia, around whom had gathered a still more numerous body of refugee Muskogee. These latter obscured their original character to such an extent that its basal separateness was usually unrecognized, and ultimately the language of the invaders overwhelmed that of the original settlers. This fact lends coherence to several early statements like that of Swan that "the Seminoles are the original stock of the Creek, but their language has undergone so great a change that it is hardly understood by the Upper Creeks, or even by themselves in general. It is preserved by many old people, and taught by women to the children as a kind of religious duty; but as they grow to manhood, they forget and lose it by the more frequent use of the modern tongue." 2 Of course, Swan misunderstood the situation. The original Creek language of which he speaks was Mikasuki, which in his time was already being crowded out by Muskogee or Creek proper. THE CHICKASAW The Chickasaw have had a simple, readily traceable history since the time when they first appear in our documents, and although from the point of view of the historian proper they might be made the subject of a long memoir, a short sketch will satisfy my present purpose. Our first notice of them is in the De Soto narratives and there we learn that they then possessed those great warlike qualities for which they were afterwards noted. De Soto passed the winter of 1540-41, from about Christmas to March 4, in what appears to have been the principal Chickasaw town. On the evening of March 3 the Spanish commander made a demand on the Chickasaw chief Archivo Nacional, Sevilla, copy in Edward E. Ayer Coll., Newberry Library. 3 T. H. Lewis discusses the location of the Chickasaw towns which De Soto visited in the National Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 57-61, 1891-92, criticizing the earlier investigations of Claiborne. The last word has evidently not been said on this subject, for carriers so that he could set out in the morning, but early on that very day the Indians suddenly fell upon the camp in four bands, got past the sentinels with fire concealed in little pots after the manner of Gideon-set fire to the town, and attacked the Spaniards so unexpectedly that only two were able to mount their horses, most of which ran away or were killed. The men on foot were also in such confusion that, had the Indians been aware of their advantage and pressed it, the chroniclers testify that not a soul would have survived. As it was, mistaking the horses running wildly about for cavalry preparing to charge them, the Indians became frightened and fled. Next day the badly shattered European force moved to a smaller town a league away, where the Chickasaw chief himself usually lived. There they set up a forge with bellows of bear skins and began to manufacture new saddles and spears, and to retemper their weapons. Fortunately for them the Indians left them in peace. until the new weapons had been completed, and eight days later, when they ventured an assault, they were easily beaten off. The Chickasaw thus have the distinction of being the tribe which came nearest to putting an end to De Soto and his entire army, and the escape of the whites was due rather to a number of fortuitous and unexpected circumstances than to their own foresight or bravery. In the interest of history and ethnology we may consider ourselves fortunate that the disaster was averted. Neither the expedition of De Luna nor that of Pardo reached this tribe, although the Napochies with whom De Luna fought were probably, in part at least, identical with the Napissa, noted by Iberville in 1699 as having united with the Chickasaw. Spanish documents of the seventeenth century again mention them, but they do not reemerge into clear light until the settlement of Carolina and Louisiana. Woodward, in the account of his Westo discovery, dated 1674, mentions Chickasaw in connection with the Kasihta and Chiska Indians. English traders had reached the Mississippi by 1700 and their first settlements among the Chickasaw must have been made at the same period (see pl. 6). From then on the Chickasaw formed a base for the extension of British trade and British power, and they remained firmly attached to their English allies until the period of the American Revolution. Shortly before 1715 the Chickasaw and Cherokee drove the Shawnee Indians from their long-established settlements on Cumberland River. In 1745 a band of Shawnee returned to this region but were 1 Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, 1, pp. 100-108; II, pp. 22-24, 131-135. 3 Margry, Déc., IV, pp. 164, 180, 184. 4 S. Car. Hist. Soc. Colls., v, p. 461; and p. 307. Hanna, The Wilderness Trail, 1, p. 131. shortly afterwards driven out and retired among the Creeks. Haywood thus records the Chickasaw tradition regarding the event: The Chickasaws formerly claimed for their nation, exclusively, all the lands north of the Tennessee, and they have denied that the Cherokees were joined with them in the war against the Shawnees when they were driven from their settlements in Cumberland. They said that the Shawnees first came up the Tennessee in canoes, and thence up Bear Creek thirty miles; and there left their canoes, and came to war with the Chickasaws, and killed several of their nation. The Chickasaw chiefs and warriors embodied and drove them off. From thence they went to the Creeks, and lived with them for some time. They then returned and crossed at the Chickasaw Old Field, above the Muscle Shoals. From thence they went to Duck River and the Cumberland River, and settled there; and the Chickasaws discovered their settlements. Two of the chiefs of the Chickasaws who were in those days their principal leaders-the one named Opoia Matehah and the other Pinskey Matehah-raised their warriors and went against the Shawnees, and defeated them and took all their horses and brought them into the nation. The Cherokees, they said, had no share in the conquest, and that they drove the Shawnees themselves, without any assistance from any red people. Haywood adds that "this information is contained in a public document of the nation, signed by Chenobee, the king, Maj. George Colbert, and others." 2 This is part of a brief against the claims of the Cherokee to land north of the Tennessee and must be interpreted in the light of that fact, nor must too much confidence be placed in the particular narrative given, since the mythizing tendency always lays hold of such events, and, moreover, events belonging to several different years may be crowded together to set off one main fact. 3 French writers hold the Chickasaw, or the British traders through them, responsible in large part for the Natchez uprising of 1729, and from what Adair tells us there was evidently ground for the accusation. At any rate, after the Natchez had been defeated and driven away by the Louisiana French, the latter turned their attention to the Chickasaw as allies of those implacable foes, and Bienville undertook to crush them by two simultaneous movements against their towns, from the north and south. The movements were not synchronized, however, and resulted in utter failure. D'Artaguette led 140 whites and about 300 Indians from his post on the Illinois, but between the Mississippi River and the Chickasaw country they were set upon by Indians and their English allies at the town of Hashuk humma, their leader and a few others were captured and burned to death, and the rest of the force killed or dispersed. The army approaching from the south consisted of 500 French and numerous Choctaw allies. They attacked one of the palisaded villages of the Chickasaw, but were repulsed with heavy loss and retreated to Mobile. The Chickasaw on their side are said to have had 60 killed, 4 1 Hanna, Wilderness Trail, п, p. 241. Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 353–354. |