THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN TRIBES

THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN TRIBES

The nearest neighbors of the Cherokee to the south were the Creeks or
Muscogee, who found mixed confederacy holding central and southern Georgia
and Alabama. They were known to the Cherokee as Ani′-Ku′sa or Ani′-Gu′sa.
from Kusa, the principal town of the Upper Creeks, which was situated on Coosa
river, southwest from the present Talladega, Alabama. The Lower Creeks,
residing chiefly on Chattahoochee river, were formerly always distinguished as
Ani-Kawi′ta, from Kawita or Coweta, their ancient capital, on the west side of
the river, in Alabama, nearly opposite the present Columbus, Georgia. In number
the Creeks were nearly equal to the Cherokee, but differed in being a
confederacy of cognate or incorporated tribes, of which the Muscogee proper
was the principal. The Cherokee were called them Tsal-gal′gi or Tsûlgûl′gi, a
plural derivative from Tsa′lăgĭ′, the proper name of the tribe.
The ordinary condition between the two tribes was one of hostility, with
occasional intervals of good will. History, tradition, and linguistic evidence
combine to show that the Creeks at one time occupied almost the whole of
northern Georgia and Alabama, extending a considerable distance into
Tennessee and perhaps North Carolina, and were dispossessed the Cherokee
pressing upon them from the north and northeast. This conquest was
accomplished chiefly during the first half of the eighteenth century, and
culminated with the decisive engagement of Tali′wă about 1755. In most of their
early negotiations with the Government the Creeks demanded that the lands of
the various tribes be regarded as common property, and that only the boundary
between the Indians and the whites be considered. Failing in that, they claimed
as theirs the whole region of the Chattahoochee and Coosa, north to the dividing
ridge between those streams and the Tennessee, or even beyond to the Tennesseeitself, and asserted that any Cherokee settlements within those limits were only
their own permission. In 1783 they claimed the Savannah river as the eastern
boundary between themselves and the Cherokee, and asserted their own
exclusive right of sale over all the territory between that river and the Oconee.
On the other hand the Cherokee as stoutly claimed all to a point some 70 miles
south of the present city of Atlanta, on the ground of having driven the Creeks
out of it in three successive wars, and asserted that their right had been admitted
the Creeks themselves in a council held to decide the question between the
two tribes before the Revolution. By mutual agreement, about 1816, members of
either tribe were allowed to settle within the territory claimed the other. The
line as finally established through the mediation of the colonial and Federal
governments ran from the mouth of Broad river on Savannah nearly due west
across Georgia, passing about 10 miles north of Atlanta, to Coosa river in
Alabama, and thence northwest to strike the west line of Alabama about 20 miles
south of the Tennessee. 18
Among the names which remain to show the former presence of Creeks north of
this boundary are the following: Coweeta, a small creek entering the Little
Tennessee above Franklin. North Carolina; Tomatola (Cherokee. Tama′ʻlĭ), a
former town site on Valley river, near Murphy, North Carolina, the name being
that of a former Creek town on Chattahoochee: Tomotley (Cherokee, Tama′ʻlĭ),
a ford at another town site on Little Tennessee, above Tellico mouth, in
Tennessee: Coosa (Cherokee, Kusă′), an upper creek of Nottely river, in Union
county, Georgia: Chattooga (Cherokee, Tsatu′gĭ), a river in northwest Georgia:
Chattooga (Cherokee, Tsatu′gĭ), another river, a head-stream of Savannah:
Chattahoochee river (Creek, Chatu-huchi, “pictured rocks”); Coosawatee
(Cherokee, Ku′să-weti′yĭ, “Old Creek place”), a river in northwestern Georgia;
Tali′wă, the Cherokee form of a Creek name for a place on an upper branch of
Etowah river in Georgia, probably from the Creek ta′lua or ita′lua, “town”;
Euharlee (Cherokee, Yuha′lĭ, said the Cherokee to be from Yufala or Eufaula,
the name of several Creek towns), a creek flowing into lower Etowah river;
Suwanee (Cherokee, Suwaʻnĭ) a small creek on upper Chattahoochee, the site of
a former Cherokee town with a name which the Cherokee say is Creek. Several
other names within the same territory are said the Cherokee to be of foreign
origin, although perhaps not Creek, and may be from the Taskigi language.
According to Cherokee tradition as given to Haywood nearly eighty years ago
the country about the mouth of Hiwassee river, in Tennessee, was held thethe country about the mouth of Hiwassee river, in Tennessee, was held the
Creeks, while the Cherokee still had their main settlements farther to the north,
on the Little Tennessee. In the Shawano war, about the year 1700, the Creeks
pretended friendship for the Cherokee while secretly helping their enemies, the
Shawano. The Cherokee discovered the treachery, and took occasion, when a
party of Creeks was visiting a dance at Itsâ′tĭ (Echota), the Cherokee capital, to
fall upon them and massacre nearly every man. The consequence was a war
between the two tribes, with the final result that the Creeks were forced to
abandon all their settlements upon the waters of the Tennessee, and to withdraw
south to the Coosa and the neighborhood of the “Creek path,” an old trading trail
from South Carolina, which crossed at the junction of the Oostanaula and
Etowah rivers, where now is the city of Rome, Georgia, and struck the
Tennessee at the present Guntersville, Alabama.
As an incident of this war the same tradition relates how the Cherokee once
approached a large Creek settlement “at the island on the Creek path,” in
Tennessee river, opposite Guntersville, and, concealing their main force, sent a
small party ahead to decoy the Creeks to an engagement. The Creek warriors at
once crossed over in their canoes to the attack, when the Cherokee suddenly rose
up from their ambush, and surrounded the Creeks and defeated them after a
desperate battle. Then, taking the captured canoes, they went over to the island
and destroyed all that was there. The great leader of the Cherokee in this war
was a chief named Bullhead, renowned in tradition for his bravery and skill in
strategy. 19 At about the same time, according to Wafford, the Cherokee claim to
have driven the Creeks and Shawano from a settlement which they occupied
jointly near Savannah, Georgia.
There was a tradition among the few old traders still living in upper Georgia in
1890 that a large tract in that part of the State had been won the Cherokee
from the Creeks in a ballplay. 20 There are no Indians now living in that region to
substantiate the story. As originally told it may have had a veiled meaning, as
among the Cherokee the expression “to play a ball game” is frequently used
figuratively to denote fighting a battle. There seems to be no good ground for
Bartram’s statement that the Cherokee had been dispossessed the Creeks of
the region between the Savannah and the Ocmulgee, in southwestern Georgia,
within the historic period. 21 The territory is south of any traditional Cherokee
claim, and the statement is at variance with what we know through history. He
probably had in mind the Uchee, who did actually occupy that country untilincorporated with the Creeks.
The victory was not always on one side, however, for Adair states that toward
the end of the last war between the two tribes the Creeks, having easily defeated
the Cherokee in an engagement, contemptuously sent against them a number of
women and boys. According to this writer, the “true and sole cause” of this last
war was the killing of some adopted relatives of the Creeks in 1749 a party of
northern Shawano, who had been guided and afterward sheltered the
Cherokee. The war, which he represents as a losing game for the Cherokee, was
finally brought to an end through the efforts of the governor of South Carolina,
with the unfortunate result to the English that the Creeks encouraged the
Cherokee in the war of 1760 and rendered them very essential help in the way of
men and ammunition. 22
The battle of Tali′wă, which decided in favor of the Cherokee the long war
between themselves and the Creeks, was fought about 1755 or a few years later
at a spot on Mountain creek or Long-swamp creek, which enters Etowah river
above Canton, Georgia, near where the old trail crossed the river about Long-
swamp town. All our information concerning it is traditional, obtained from
James Wafford, who heard the story when a boy, about the year 1815, from an
old trader named Brian Ward, who had witnessed the battle sixty years before.
According to his account, it was probably the hardest battle ever fought between
the two tribes, about five hundred Cherokee and twice that number of Creek
warriors being engaged. The Cherokee were at first overmatched and fell back,
but rallied again and returned to the attack, driving the Creeks from cover so that
they broke and ran. The victory was complete and decisive, and the defeated
tribe immediately afterward abandoned the whole upper portion of Georgia and
the adjacent part of Alabama to the conquerors. Before this battle the Creeks had
been accustomed to shift about a good deal from place to place, but thereafter
they confined themselves more closely to fixed home locations. It was in
consequence of this defeat that they abandoned their town on Nottely river,
below Coosa creek, near the present Blairsville, Georgia, their old fields being at
once occupied Cherokee, who moved over from their settlements on the head
of Savannah river. As has been already stated, a peace was made about 1759,
just in time to enable the Creeks to assist the Cherokee in their war with South
Carolina. We hear little more concerning the relations of the two tribes until the
Creek war of 1813–14, described in detail elsewhere; after this their historiesdrift apart.
The Yuchi or Uchee, called Ani′-Yu′tsĭ the Cherokee, were a tribe of distinct
linguistic stock and of considerable importance in early days; their territory
bordered Savannah river on both sides immediately below the Cherokee country,
and extended some distance westward into Georgia, where it adjoined that of the
Creeks. They were gradually dispossessed the whites, and were incorporated
with the Creeks about the year 1740, but retain their separate identity and
language to this day, their town being now the largest in the Creek Nation in
Indian Territory.
According to the testimony of a Cherokee mixed-blood named Gansĕ′ʻtĭ or
Rattling-gourd, who was born on Hiwassee river in 1820 and came west with his
people in 1838, a number of Yuchi lived, before the Removal, scattered among
the Cherokee near the present Cleveland, Tennessee, and on Chickamauga,
Cohutta, and Pinelog creeks in the adjacent section of Georgia. They had no
separate settlements, but spoke their own language, which he described as “hard
and grunting.” Some of them spoke also Cherokee and Creek. They had
probably drifted north from the Creek country before a boundary had been fixed
between the tribes. When Tahlequah was established as the capital of the
Cherokee Nation in the West in 1839 a few Yuchi were found already settled at
the spot, being supposed to have removed from the East with some Creeks after
the chief McIntosh was killed in 1825. They perished in the smallpox epidemic
which ravaged the frontier in 1840, and their graves were still pointed out at
Tahlequah in 1891. Shortly before the outbreak of the Civil war there was a
large and prosperous Yuchi settlement on Cimarron river, in what was afterward
the Cherokee strip.
Ramsey states that “a small tribe of Uchees” once occupied the country near the
mouth of the Hiwassee, and was nearly exterminated in a desperate battle with
the Cherokee at the Uchee Old Fields, in Rhea (now Meigs) county, Tennessee,
the few survivors retreating to Florida, where they joined the Seminoles. 23 There
seems to be no other authority for the statement.
Another broken tribe incorporated in part with the Creeks and in part with the
Cherokee was that of the Na′ʻtsĭ, or Natchez, who originally occupied the
territory around the site of the present town of Natchez in southern Mississippi,
and exercised a leading influence over all the tribes of the region. Inconsequence of a disastrous war with the French in 1729–31 the tribe was
disrupted, some taking refuge with the Chickasaw, others with the Creeks, either
then or later, while others, in 1736, applied to the government of South Carolina
for permission to settle on the Savannah river. The request was evidently
granted, and we find the “Nachee” mentioned as one of the tribes living with the
Catawba in 1743, but retaining their distinct language. In consequence of having
killed some of the Catawba in a drunken quarrel they were forced to leave this
region, and seem to have soon afterward joined the Cherokee, as we find them
twice mentioned in connection with that tribe in 1755. This appears to be the last
reference to them in the South Carolina records. 24
Just here the Cherokee tradition takes them up, under the name of Anin′tsĭ,
abbreviated from Ani′-Na′ʻtsĭ, the plural of Na′ʻtsĭ. From a chance coincidence
with the word for pine tree, naʻtsĭ′, some English speaking Indians have rendered
this name as “Pine Indians.” The Cherokee generally agree that the Natchez
came to them from South Carolina, though some say that they came from the
Creek country. It is probable that the first refugees were from Carolina and were
joined later others from the Creeks and the Chickasaw. Bienville states, in
1742, that some of them had gone to the Cherokee directly from the Chickasaw
when they found the latter too hard pressed the French to be able to care for
them. 25 They seem to have been regarded the Cherokee as a race of wizards
and conjurers, a view which was probably due in part to their peculiar religious
rites and in part to the interest which belonged to them as the remnant of an
extirpated tribe. Although we have no direct knowledge on the subject, there is
every reason to suppose that the two tribes had had communication with each
other long before the period of the Natchez war.
According to the statement of James Wafford, who was born in 1806 near the
site of Clarkesville, Ga., when this region was still Indian country, the
“Notchees” had their town on the north bank of Hiwassee, just above Peachtree
creek, on the spot where a Baptist mission was established the Rev. Evan
Jones in 1821, a few miles above the present Murphy, Cherokee county, North
Carolina. On his mother’s side he had himself a strain of Natchez blood. His
grandmother had told him that when she was a young woman, perhaps about
1755, she once had occasion to go to this town on some business, which she was
obliged to transact through an interpreter, as the Natchez had been there so short
a time that only one or two spoke any Cherokee. They were all in the one town,which the Cherokee called Gwalʻgâ′hĭ, “Frog place,” but he was unable to say
whether or not it had a townhouse. In 1824, as one of the census takers for the
Cherokee Nation, he went over the same section and found the Natchez then
living jointly with the Cherokee in a town called Gûʻlăni′yĭ at the junction of
Brasstown and Gumlog creeks, tributary to Hiwassee, some 6 miles southeast of
their former location and close to the Georgia line. The removal may have been
due to the recent establishment of the mission at the old place. It was a large
settlement, made up about equally from the two tribes, but this time the
Natchez were not distinguishable in dress or general appearance from the others,
and nearly all spoke broken Cherokee, while still retaining their own language.
As most of the Indians had come under Christian influences so far as to have
quit dancing, there was no townhouse. Harry Smith, who was born about 1820,
father of the late chief of the East Cherokee, also remembers them as living on
Hiwassee and calling themselves Na′ʻtsĭ.
Gansĕ′ʻtĭ, already mentioned, states that when he was a boy the Natchez were
scattered among the Cherokee settlements along the upper part of Hiwassee,
extending down into Tennessee. They had then no separate townhouses. Some of
them, at least, had come up from the Creeks, and spoke Creek and Cherokee, as
well as their own language, which he could not understand, although familiar
with both of the others. They were great dance leaders, which agrees with their
traditional reputation for ceremonial and secret knowledge. They went west with
the Cherokee at the final removal of the tribe to Indian Territory in 1838. In
1890 there was a small settlement on Illinois river a few miles south of
Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, several persons in which still spoke their own
language. Some of these may have come with the Creeks, as an agreement
between Creeks and Cherokee about the time of the Removal it had been
arranged that citizens of either tribe living within the boundaries claimed the
other might remain without question if they so elected. There are still several
persons claiming Natchez descent among the East Cherokee, but the last one
said to have been of full Natchez blood, an old woman named Alkĭnĭ′, died about
1895. She was noted for her peculiarities, especially for a drawling tone, said to
have been characteristic of her people, as old men remembered them years ago.
Haywood, the historian of Tennessee, says that a remnant of the Natchez lived
within the present limits of the State as late as 1750, and were even then
numerous. He refers to those with the Cherokee, and tells a curious story, whichseems somehow to have escaped the notice of other writers. According to his
statement, a portion of the Natchez, who had been parceled out as slaves among
the French in the vicinity of their old homes after the downfall of their tribe, took
advantage of the withdrawal of the troops to the north, in 1758, to rise and
massacre their masters and make their escape to the neighboring tribes. On the
return of the troops after the fall of Fort Du Quesne they found the settlement at
Natchez destroyed and their Indian slaves fled. Some time afterward a French
deserter seeking an asylum among the Cherokee, having made his way to the
Great Island town, on the Tennessee, just below the mouth of Tellico river, was
surprised to find there some of the same Natchez whom he had formerly driven
as slaves. He lost no time in getting away from the place to find safer quarters
among the mountain towns. Notchy creek, a lower affluent of Tellico, in Monroe
county, Tennessee, probably takes its name from these refugees. Haywood states
also that, although incorporated with the Cherokee, they continued for a long
time a separate people, not marrying or mixing with other tribes, and having
their own chiefs and holding their own councils; but in 1823 hardly anything
was left of them but the name. 26
Another refugee tribe incorporated partly with the Cherokee and partly with the
Creeks was that of the Taskigi, who at an early period had a large town of the
same name on the south side of the Little Tennessee, just above the mouth of
Tellico, in Monroe county, Tennessee. Sequoya, the inventor of the Cherokee
alphabet, lived here in his boyhood, about the time of the Revolution. The land
was sold in 1819. There was another settlement of the name, and perhaps once
occupied the same people, on the north bank of Tennessee river, in a bend
just below Chattanooga, Tennessee, on land sold also in 1819. Still another may
have existed at one time on Tuskegee creek, on the south bank of Little
Tennessee river, north of Robbinsville, in Graham county, North Carolina, on
land which was occupied until the Removal in 1838. Taskigi town of the Creek
country was on Coosa river, near the junction with the Tallapoosa, some distance
above the present Montgomery, Alabama. We find Tasquiqui mentioned as a
town in the Creek country visited the Spanish captain, Juan Pardo, in 1567.
The name is evidently the same, though we can not be sure that the location was
identical with that of the later town.
Who or what the Taskigi were is uncertain and can probably never be known,
but they were neither Cherokee nor Muscogee proper. It would seem mostprobable that they were of Muskhogean affinity, but they may have been an
immigrant tribe from another section, or may even have constituted a distinct
linguistic stock, representing all that was left of an ancient people whose
occupation of the country antedated the coming of the Cherokee and the Creeks.
The name may be derived from taska or tasha′ya, meaning “warrior” in several
of the Muskhogean dialects. It is not a Cherokee word, and Cherokee informants
state positively that the Taskigi were a foreign people, with distinct language and
customs. They were not Creeks, Natchez, Uchee, or Shawano, with all of whom
the Cherokee were well acquainted under other names. In the townhouse of their
settlement at the mouth of Tellico they had an upright pole, from the top of
which hung their protecting “medicine,” the image of a human figure cut from a
cedar log. For this reason the Cherokee in derision sometimes called the place
Atsĭnă′-kʻtaûñ, “Hanging-cedar place.” Before the sale of the land in 1819 they
were so nearly extinct that the Cherokee had moved in and occupied the ground.
Adair, in 1775, mentions the Tae-keo-ge (sic—a double misprint) as one of
several broken tribes which the Creeks had “artfully decoyed” to incorporate
with them in order to strengthen themselves against hostile attempts. Milfort,
about 1780, states that the Taskigi on Coosa river were a foreign people who had
been driven wars to seek an asylum among the Creeks, being encouraged
thereto the kind reception accorded to another fugitive tribe. Their request
was granted the confederacy, and they were given lands upon which they
built their town. He puts this event shortly before the incorporation of the Yuchi,
which would make it early in the eighteenth century. In 1799, according to
Hawkins, the town had but 35 warriors, “had lost its ancient language,” and
spoke Creek. There is still a “white” or peace town named Taskigi in the Creek
Nation in Indian Territory. 27
The nearest neighbors of the Cherokee on the west, after the expulsion of the
Shawano, were the Chickasaw, known to the Cherokee as Ani′-Tsĭ′ksû, whose
territory lay chiefly between the Mississippi and the Tennessee, in what is now
western Kentucky and Tennessee and the extreme northern portion of
Mississippi. By virtue, however, of conquest from the Shawano or of ancient
occupancy they claimed a large additional territory to the east of this, including
all upon the waters of Duck river and Elk creek. This claim was disputed the
Cherokee. According to Haywood, the two tribes had been friends and allies in
the expulsion of the Shawano, but afterward, shortly before the year 1769, theCherokee, apparently for no sufficient reason, picked a quarrel with the
Chickasaw and attacked them in their town at the place afterward known as the
Chickasaw Old Fields, on the north side of Tennessee river, some twenty miles
below the present Guntersville, Alabama. The Chickasaw defended themselves
so well that the assailants were signally defeated and compelled to retreat to their
own country. 28 It appears, however, that the Chickasaw, deeming this settlement
too remote from their principal towns, abandoned it after the battle. Although
peace was afterward made between the two tribes their rival claim continued to
be a subject of dispute throughout the treaty period.
The Choctaw, a loose confederacy of tribes formerly occupying southern
Mississippi and the adjacent coast region, are called Ani′-Tsa′ʻta the
Cherokee, who appear to have had but little communication with them, probably
because the intermediate territory was held the Creeks, who were generally at
war with one or the other. In 1708 we find mention of a powerful expedition
the Cherokee, Creeks, and Catawba against the Choctaw living about Mobile
bay. 29
Of the Indians west of the Mississippi those best known to the Cherokee were
the Ani′-Wasa′sĭ, or Osage, a powerful predatory tribe formerly holding most of
the country between the Missouri and Arkansas rivers, and extending from the
Mississippi far out into the plains. The Cherokee name is a derivative from
Wasash′, the name which the Osage call themselves. 30 The relations of the
two tribes seem to have been almost constantly hostile from the time when the
Osage refused to join in the general Indian peace concluded in 1768 (see “The
Iroquois Wars”) up to 1822, when the Government interfered to compel an end
of the bloodshed. The bitterness was largely due to the fact that ever since the
first Cherokee treaty with the United States, made at Hopewell, South Carolina,
in 1785, small bodies of Cherokee, resenting the constant encroachments of the
whites, had been removing beyond the Mississippi to form new settlements
within the territory claimed the Osage, where in 1817 they already numbered
between two and three thousand persons. As showing how new is our growth as
a nation, it is interesting to note that Wafford, when a boy, attended near the site
of the present Clarkesville, Georgia, almost on Savannah river, a Cherokee scalp
dance, at which the women danced over some Osage scalps sent their
relatives in the west as trophies of a recent victory.Other old Cherokee names for western tribes which can not be identified are
Tayûñ′ksĭ, the untranslatable name of a tribe described simply as living in the
West; Tsuniya′tigă, “Naked people,” described as living in the far West; Gûn′-
tsuskwa′ʻlĭ, “Short-arrows,” who lived in the far West, and were small, but great
fighters; Yûñ′wini′giskĭ, “Man-eaters,” a hostile tribe west or north, possibly the
cannibal Atakapa or Tonkawa, of Louisiana or Texas. Their relations with the
tribes with which they have become acquainted since the removal to Indian
Territory do not come within the scope of this paper.

 

Source:
Myths of the Cherokee, James Mooney