the English. Then they hastened a way with what speed they could and in less than fourteene dayes arived att ye Tomahittns with theire plunder. Now ye king must goe to give ye monetons a visit which were his frends, mony signifing water and ton great in theire language. Gabriell must goe along with him They gett forth with sixty men and travelled tenn days due north and then arived at ye monyton towne sittuated upon a very great river att which place ye tide ebbs and flowes. Gabriell swom in ye river severall times, being fresh water, this is a great towne and a great number of Indians belong unto it, and in ye same river Mr. Batt and Fallam were upon the head of it as you read in one of my first jornalls. This river runes north west and out of ye westerly side of it goeth another very great river about a days journey lower where the inhabitance are an inumarable company of Indians, as the monytons told my man which is twenty dayes journey from one end to ye other of ye inhabitance, and all these are at warr with the Tomahitans. when they had taken theire leave of ye monytons they marched three days out of thire way to give a clap to some of that great nation, where they fell on with great courage and were as couragiously repullsed by theire enimise. And heare Gabriell received shott with two arrows, one of them in his thigh, which stopt his runing and soe was taken prisoner, for Indian vallour consists most in theire heeles for he that can run best is accounted ye best man. These Indians thought this Gabrill to be noe Tomahittan by ye length of his haire, for ye Tomahittans keepe theire haire close cut to ye end an enime may not take an advantage to lay hold of them by it. They tooke Gabriell and scowered his skin with water and ashes, and when they perceived his skin to be white they made very much of him and admire att his knife gunn and hatchett they tooke with him. They gave those thing to him a gaine. He made signes to them the gun was ye Tomahittons which he had a disire to take with him, but ye knife and hatchet he gave to ye king. they not knowing ye use of gunns, the king receved it with great shewes of thankfullness for they had not any manner of iron instrument that hee saw amongst them whilst he was there they brought in a fatt bevor which they had newly killd and went to swrynge it. Gabriell made signes to them that those skins were good a mongst the white people toward the sun riseing. they would know by signes how many such skins they would take for such a knife. He told them foure and eight for such a hattchett and made signes that if they would lett him return, he would bring many things amongst them. they seemed to rejoyce att it and carried him to a path that carried to ye Tomahittans gave him Rokahamony for his journey and soe they departed, to be short. when he came to ye Tomahittans ye king had one short voyage more before hee could bring in Gabriell and that was downe ye river, they live upon in perriougers to kill hoggs, beares and sturgion which they did incontinent by five dayes and nights. They went down ye river and came to ye mouth of ye salts where they could not see land but the water not above three foot deepe hard sand. By this meanes wee know this is not ye river ye Spanyards live upon as Mr. Needham did thinke. Here they killed many swine, sturgin and beavers and barbicued them, soe returned and were fifteen dayes runing up a gainst ye streame but noe mountainous land to bee seene but all levell,1 Arthur was then sent back to Virginia by the Tamahita chief; and he reached Wood's house June 18, 1674. This narrative leaves a great deal to be desired, and the reliability of much of that reported by Arthur is not beyond question, but the existence of a tribe of the name and its approximate location is established. The narrative is also of interest as containing the 1 Alvord and Bidgood, op. cit., pp. 218-223. only specific information of any sort regarding their manners and customs. For some years after the period of this narrative we hear not a word regarding the tribe, and when they reappear it is on the De Crenay map as "Tamaitaux," on the east bank of the Chattahoochee above the Chiaha and nearly opposite a part of the Sawokli.1 A little later Adair enumerates the "Ta-mè-tah" among those tribes which the Muskogee had induced to incorporate with them. They appear among other Lower Creek towns in the enumeration of 1750, placed between the northern Sawokli town and the Kasihta.3 On one of the D'Anville maps of early date we find "Tamaita" laid down on the west bank of the Coosa not far above its junction with the Tallapoosa. The Koasati town was just below. In the list of Creek towns given in 1761 in connection with the assignment of traderships we find this entry: "27 Coosawtee including Tomhetaws." The hunters of the two numbered 125 and they were located "close to the French barracks" where was the Koasati town from very early times. Thus it appears that some at least of the Tamahita had moved over among the Upper Creeks sometime between 1733 and 1761 or perhaps earlier./ Bernard Romans, on January 17, 1772, when descending the Tombigbee River, mentions passing the "Tomeehettee bluff, where formerly a tribe of that nation resided,"5 and Hamilton identifies this bluff with McIntosh's Bluff, a former location of the Tohome tribe." It is probable that some Tamahita moved over to this river at the same time as the Koasati and Okchai, a little before Romans's time, and afterwards returned with them to the upper Alabama. Memory of them remained long among the Lower Creeks, since an aged informant of the writer, a Hitchiti Indian, born in the old country, claimed to be descended from them. According to him there was a tradition that the Tamahita burned a little trading post belonging to the English, whereupon the English called upon their Creek allies to punish the aggressors. The Tamahita were much more numerous than their opponents, but were not very warlike, and were driven south to the very point of Florida, where they escaped in boats to some islands. This tradition appears to be the result of an erroneous identification of the Tamahita with the Timucua. There is no evidence that the Creeks had a war with the former people. After the above account had been prepared some material came under the eye of the writer tending to the conclusion that Tamahita must be added to that already long list of terms under which the 1 See plate 5; Hamilton, Col. Mobile, p. 190. Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., p. 257. MS., Ayer Coll. Ga. Col. Docs., vin, p. 524. Romans, Nat. Hist. E. and W. Fla., p. 332. story! Yuchi tribes appear in history. In view of the already formidable number of these Yuchi identifications-Hogologe, Tahogale, Chiska, Westo, Rickohockan-he would have preferred some other outcome, but we must be guided by facts and these facts point in one and the same direction. The first significant circumstance is that, with one or two easily explained exceptions, wherever the name Tamahita or any of its synonyms is used none of the other terms bestowed upon the Yuchi occurs. This is true of the De Crenay map (pl. 5), of the French census of 1750,1 and of the list of tribes incorporated into the Creek confederacy given by Adai The only exceptions are where different bands might be under consideration. Thus in the census of 1761 "Tomhetaws" are mentioned in connection with the Koasati living near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, Alabama, while the Yuchi among the Lower Creeks and those which had formerly been on the Choctawhatchee are entered under their proper names.3 Romans, too, speaks of a town of "Euchas" among the Lower Creeks and in a different part of his work of a former tribe called "Tomeehetee" which gave its name to a bluff on the Tombigbee River. These exceptions, however, are not of much consequence. In the second place the names of almost all of the other important Creek tribal subdivisions do occur alongside of the Tamahita. On the De Crenay map and in the French census of 1750 this tribe is located among the Lower Creeks, alongside of the Coweta, Kasihta, Apalachicola, Sawokli, Osochi, Eufaula, Okmulgee, Oconee, Hitchiti, Chiaha, and Tamaki Adair gives them as one of a number of "broken tribes" said to have been incorporated with the Creeks proper, and he seems to have been familiar only with those living among the Upper Creeks, for the others mentioned in connection with them were all settled here, viz, Tuskegee, Okchai, Pakana, Witumpka, Shawnee, Natchez, and Koasati. As incorporated tribes among the Lower Creeks he notes the Osochi, Oconee, and Sawokli. In other places where Tamahita are mentioned among the Upper Creeks we find, in addition to the above, the Okchaiutci, Kan-tcati (Alabama), - people of Coosa Old Town, and Muklasa, while the Tawasa are given in the census of 1750 and on the De Crenay map of 1733 as entirely distinct.5 Taking the Lower Creek towns by themselves we find all of the towns accounted for except the Yuchi towns and two or three which were located upon Chattahoochee River for a very brief period. These last were a Shawnee town, Tuskegee, Kolomi, Atasi, and per 1 MS, in Ayer Coll., Newberry Lib. Hist. Am. Inds., p. 257. Ga. Col. Docs., vin, pp. 522-524. 4 Romans, E. and W. Fla., pp. 280, 332. haps Kealedji. The first two, however, occur independently in Adair's list, and the others are well-known Muskogee divisions which appear alongside of the Tamahita among the Upper Creeks. The Yamasee were also here for very brief periods but at a point much farther down the river than that where the Tamahita are placed. Thirdly, Yuchi are known to have lived at or in the neighborhood of most of the places assigned to the Tamahita. The topography of the De Crenay map is too uncertain to enable us to base any conclusions upon it, but in the census of 1750 the Tamahita are given at approximately the same distance from Fort Toulouse as Coweta and Kasihta, and 3 leagues nearer than Chiaha,, very close to the position which the (unnamed) Yuchi then occupied. As we shall see when we come to discuss the Yuchi as a whole, there was at least one band of Indians belonging to this tribe among the Upper Creeks, remnants apparently of the Choctawhatchee band. The Tamahita which figure in this section of the Creek country may, therefore, have been a part of these/I believe, however, that there was a second band of Yuchi here, which had had a somewhat different history. When we come to discuss the Yuchi Indians we shall find that a section of these people, called generally Hogologe or Hog Logee, accompanied the Apalachicola Indians and part of the Shawnee to the Chattahoochee River about 1716. The Apalachicola were satisfied with this location, but some time later the Shawnee migrated to the Tallapoosa, and I think it probable that at least a part of the Hogologe Yuchi went with them. We know that relations between these two tribes must have been intimate for Bartram was led to believe that the Yuchi spoke "the Savanna or Savanuca tongue," and Speck testifies to cordial understandings between them extending down to the present time But Hawkins gives us something more definite. In a diary which he kept during his travels through the Creek Nation in 1796 he states, under date of Monday, December 19, when he was following the course of the Tallapoosa River toward its mouth and along its southern shore, "half a mile [beyond a large spring by the river bank is] the Uchee village, a remnant of those settled on the Chattahoochee; half a mile farther pass a Shawne village." In his Sketch, representing conditions a few years later, he says, in the course of his description of the same Shawnee village, "Some Uchees have settled with them," and there is every reason to believe that they were the Yuchi who had formerly occupied a town of their own half a mile away Last of all, we must not lose sight of the fact that the origin of the Tamahita, like that of the Yuchi, may be traced far north to the 1 Bartram, Travels, p. 387; Speck, Anth. Pub., U. of Pa. Mus., I, p. 11. Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., IX, p. 41. See p. 320; also plate 8. Tennessee mountains. It seems rather improbable that a tribe from such a distant country could have settled among the Creeks and, after living in closest intimacy with them for so many years, have passed entirely out of existence without any further hint of their affiliations or any more information regarding them. And the fact that they and the Yuchi share so many points in common and appear in the same places, though practically never side by side, must be added to this as constituting strong circumstantial evidence that they were indeed one and the same people. THE ALABAMA Next to the Muskogee themselves the most conspicuous Upper Creek tribe were the Alabama, or Albamo. As shown by their language and indicated by some of their traditions they were connected more nearly with the Choctaw and Chickasaw than with the Creeks. Stiggins declares that the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Hitchiti, and Koasati languages were mutually intelligible,' and this was true at least of Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Koasati. According to the older traditions the Alabama had come from the west, or perhaps, rather from the southwest, to their historic seats, but these traditions do not carry them to a great distance. Adair, referring to the seven distinct dialects reported as spoken near Fort Toulouse, said that the people claimed to have come from South America.2 The following account of their origin was obtained originally from Se-ko-pe-chi ("Perseverance"), who is described as "one of the oldest Creeks, . in their new location west of the Mississippi," about the year 1847, and was published by Schoolcraft: 3 The origin of the Alabama Indians as handed down by oral tradition, is that they sprang out of the ground, between the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers. . . . The earliest migration recollected, as handed down by oral tradition, is that they emigrated from the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers to the junction of the Tuscaloosa [Tombigbee ?] and Coosa [Alabama ?] Rivers. Their numbers at that period were not known. The extent of the territory occupied at that time was indefinite. At the point formed by the junction of the Tuscaloosa and Coosa Rivers the tribe sojourned for the space of two years, after which their location was at the junction of the Coosa and Alabama Rivers, on the west side of what was subsequently the site of Fort Jackson. It is supposed that at this time they numbered fifty effective men. They claimed the country from Fort Jackson to New Orleans for their hunting-grounds. They are of the opinion that the Great Spirit brought them from the ground, and that they are of right possessors of this soil. 1 Stiggins, MS. 2 Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 267-268. Ind. Tribes, I, pp. 266-267. The name Coosa was once extended over the Alabama as well as the stream which now bears the name; there is some reason to think that the Tombigbee may occasionally have been called the Tuscaloosa. At any rate this construction would reconcile the present tradition with the one following. |