INDEX

[1]. Agnew, Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, 50 et seq.

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. Chalmers, Caledonia, V, 395.

[4]. In Dr. James B. Adair’s Adair History and Genealogy it is stated that Adair first settled in Pennsylvania, but Ghent in his article on Adair in Dictionary of American Biography, I, 33, refuses to follow him, and it seems, for good reasons. Only one reference in Adair’s book is to Pennsylvania, and that merely to the Pennsylvania Germans.

[5]. History of American Indians, 307.

[6]. Hunter’s Map has a notation which shows that Haig had also made a map or sketch of the region.

[7]. Hist. Am. Inds., 344. See note 194 infra.

[8]. A monopoly of one year’s duration had been offered McGillivray in 1749 on condition that he should win over the Choctaws.

[9]. Adair was not alone in the indulgence of biting criticism of Glen. Gov. Dinwiddie, of Virginia, wrote of him (1755): “He is altogether the strangest possitive assuming Man I ever corresponded with, and there I leave him.” Dinwiddie Papers, I, 508.

[10]. Hist. Am. Inds., 323.

[11]. This pamphlet is referred to in the book. It is not improbable that it was composed by Adair for Roche.

[12]. If this work ever issued from the press, those best versed in the bibliography of South Carolina have never seen or heard of a copy, as they state to the writer.

[13]. From Beaver Creek, in 2 Indian Book (S. C. Archives), p. 56. For other minor or incidental mention of Adair: Ibid., 23; Council Journal, Jan. 26, 1747; Commons House Journal, Feb. 16, 1747, June 1, 1749; May 16 and 23, 1750.

[14]. See text infra.

[15]. Gentlemen’s Magazine (1760) XXX, 45, correspondence from South Carolina of date Nov. 24, 1759.

[16]. S. C. Gazette, Nov. 24, 1759.

[17]. Gentlemen’s Magazine, XXX, 442, 541, 593.

[18]. S. C. Gazette, July 19, 1760.

[19]. Book D, pp. 358, 379, S. C. Archives, and S. C. Gazette of Aug. 2, 1760. The Chickasaws, under Brown and Adair, were by no means pleased by the inactivity of Montgomery at Fort Prince George and less so by his decision to beat a further retreat to Charles Town. For mention of their own activities, see S. C. Gazette of Aug. 2, 1760, based upon communication from that fort of July 14th. “We hear that the Chickasaws who arrived at Fort Prince George the 5th instant have left that fort with disgust after scouting three or four days about it, and that they got a few scalps which they carried with them.” Ibid., of July 26th.

[20]. “The Virginia troops likewise kept far off in flourishing parade, without coming to our assistance.” See notes 139-41 to text, infra.

[21]. S. C. Gazette, Aug. 9, 1760.

[22]. Canadian Archives, Pub. Rec. Off. Papers, C.O., V, 67.

[23]. Infra, pp. 289, 365.

[24]. About the time of Adair’s reputed death-date the Cherokees in large numbers were influenced by British agents to move southward from their Little Tennessee River towards and into Upper Georgia.

[25]. For sketch of Gen. Martin see Williams, Lost State of Franklin, 212, 323, and Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 251, 465; also Weeks, General Joseph Martin, passim. He was among the Overhill Cherokees nearly ten years (1777-1787). Judge Samuel Martin Young, of Dixon Springs, Tennessee, a descendant of Col. Wm. Martin, son of General Martin, and who has in possession papers of both, writes the editor: “I do not doubt that Gen. Martin and James Adair were personally acquainted, for I think they were in the same section of country for some time, several years, perhaps; but that they were ever in any joint work or enterprise, I could not say.” (Jan. 25, 1930.)

[26]. Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 490.

[27]. For the views of a Jew who was acquainted with the Southern tribes, particularly with the Creeks, see n. 22, infra.

[1]. The earliest home of the Shawnee Indians in historic times was on the Cumberland River, in Tennessee, which for a long period was called by the French, and so named on their maps, Chaouanon (Shawnee) Riviere. A branch of the tribe moved from there southward across the Tennessee where the Savannah River took their name. Shortly before 1715 the Chickasaw and Cherokee Indians combined and drove the Shawnees from their long-established settlements on the Cumberland. Haywood says that a part of the tribe returned to the region (about 1745) to be again expelled, going to the Creeks.

The true date seems to be 1749. In a letter of May 4th of that year, Comte de Jony wrote that the “Chaouanons, because of the antipathy of most of the other nations to them, had decided to separate into two bands.... The latter band, after ascending a part of the river of the Cherokis [Tennessee] decided to go and join the Creeks.” Wis. His. Col. XVIII. It is to this band that Adair refers, probably.

The Shawnees, after a stay in Pennsylvania, had settlements on Scioto River in the Ohio Country. They were known as “gypsies of the forest,” and a wandering band is referred to by Adair. Prior to 1700 the Chickasaws and the Shawnees had as allies fought the Illinois Indians. Shea, Early Mississippi Voyages, 60, 66, 120. Lawson (1709) describes them as formerly living on the waters of the Mississippi, “and removed thence to the head of one of the rivers of South Carolina” (the Savannah). History of North Carolina, 100.

For generations, from their stronghold on the Scioto, they made war on the Overhill Cherokees, with only brief intervals of peace. On the Shawnees, see: Haywood, History of Tennessee, 426; Hanna, The Wilderness Trail, II, 240; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, XL, 145; Margry, Decouvertes, III, 589; Schoolcraft, Historical Information ... Indian Tribes, IV, 256; Swanton, Early History of the Creeks, 317, 415; Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Indians, pt. ch. 10, and Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokees, 494.

[2]. p. 7 post.

[3]. Since a newborn infant of Indian parentage is of varying degrees of dusky red, Adair’s argument is that the color was produced by exposure and the use of cosmetics by previous generations; not that each individual is born white and later takes on a copper color.

[4]. Speaking of the Indians of the Mississippi River region, John Lawson in his History of North Carolina (1710) says, p. 133: “They are the hardiest of all Indians, and run so fast that they are never taken; neither do any Indians outrun them if they are pursued.” See also, Williams, Memoirs of Lieut. Henry Timberlake, 79.

[5]. Schoolcraft says the hair of Indians is invariably cylindrical in structure; that of Caucasians oval.

[6]. Confirmation: Schoolcraft, Historical Information, II 322; Cushman, History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw and Natchez Indians (1899), 204. Cushman says, however, that the Choctaws and Chickasaws of unmixed blood have no hair on any part of the body except the head and, on the chins of males, a bare patch of beard.

[7]. Compare the account of Wm. Bartram in Travels (1793), p. 499; of Du Pratz in History of Louisiana, (1763) II, 231, and of Lawson, History of Carolina (1712) p. 190.

[8]. Stroudwater, as Wm. Byrd II, called it at an earlier day; cloth manufactured in Stroud, Gloustershire, England, and widely sold to early Indian traders for blankets or garments; usually scarlet-dyed.

[9]. Therefore, the Choctaws were called by the traders Flat-Heads (Fr. Têtes Plates) a term that came into general use as descriptive of the tribe. See on artificial head deformation, Catlin, North American Indians, and Hodge, Handbook of American Indians, I, pp. 97, 465. Dumont gives as reason: “So that when they grow up they may be in better condition to bear all kinds of loads.” Memoires Historique sur La Louisiane (1753) I, 140.

[10]. “The Choctaws were superior orators. They spoke with good sense, and used the most beautiful metaphors. They had the power of changing the same words into different significations, and even their common speech was full of these changes.” Pickett, History of Alabama, (Ed. 1896) 127.

[11]. Red Shoes, a noted chief of the Choctaws, is frequently mentioned in later chapters. For sketch, p. 335M.

[12]. Mooney witnessed a confirmation among the Cherokees of the Eastern Band, in North Carolina: “A man standing one night upon a fish trap was scented by a wolf, which came so near that the man was compelled to shoot it. He at once went home and had the gun exorcised by a conjurer.” Myths of the Cherokees, 448.

[13]. Mooney gives Cherokee myths built upon Tlanuwa (the great hawk). On the north bank of Little Tennessee River, in Blount County, Tennessee, is a high overhanging cliff in which is a cave, the place where lived the mythic great hawk. Myths of the Cherokees, 315. A reciter of one of the myths insisted that the whites must also believe in it, as evidence pointing to a coin of the United States and to what he called the Tlanuwa, holding in its talons the arrows and in its beak the serpent of the myth. Ibid., 466.

[14]. Confirmed as of later date: Cushman, op. cit., 487.

[15]. Bartram, Travels, p. 495, says “These Indians are by no means idolaters, unless their puffing tobacco smoke towards the sun, and rejoicing at the appearance of the new moon may be so termed. So far from idolatry are they that they have no images amongst them, nor any religious rite or ceremony that I could perceive; but adore the Great Spirit, the giver and taker away of the breath of life, with the most profound and respectful homage.” Timberlake’s observations as to their belief in a Great Spirit and future rewards and punishment: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 87; see also, Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country, 80. DeBrahm, who was at Fort Loudoun among the Cherokees, (1756) says that the “Indians have a scant knowledge of a Divine Being which extends no farther than that they believe he is good; the Cherokees call him Hianequo, the great man, whom the Catawbas call Rivet, the overseer; but they pay no adoration to him, nor anything existing.” Plowden, Documents Connected with the History of South Carolina, 221. The same testimony as to their belief in a Supreme Being is borne by Wm. Byrd II in his History of the Dividing Line. Of the Chickasaws, Rev. John Wesley wrote from Georgia in 1736: “They have so firm a reliance on Providence and so settled a habit of looking up to a Superior Being in all occurrences of life, etc.” Ga. Col. Rec., XXI, 220. But see as to adoration of the sun by the Natchez: Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 381, 168 et seq., and his Early History of the Creeks, 381; Hodge, Handbook, II, 365. The theory has been held that the Southern Indians were advanced beyond some others because of the teaching of the Spanish missionaries among the Gulf and South Atlantic Indians at a very early period, such as Cabeca de Vaca (1528) who wrote: “We told them by signs, which they understood, there was One whom we called God, who created the heaven and the earth.”

[16]. See preceding note. A native halfbreed Cherokee, Elias Boudinot, a very intelligent man and at one time editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, says of his people: “They cannot be called idolaters, for they never worshipped images.” Foster, Cherokee Literature, 11. Of the Choctaws, Israel Folsom, a Choctaw, says: “They never worshipped idols, and believed in the existence of a Great Spirit.” Cushman, History of Choctaws, etc., 362. Whatever may have been the case with the Southern Indians of historic times, it cannot be denied that the mound-builders had idols. This, numerous excavations fully prove.

[17]. For the “black drink” see later note, p. [49M].

[18]. For the Cherokee’s use of eagles’ tails in the reception of Sir Alexander Cuming (1730) see: Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 126; and for Timberlake’s account of the eagle-tail dance: Memoirs, 107; also, Mooney, Myths, 281, 492-3, and Hodge, Handbook, I, 409.

[19]. Mooney, Myths, 475; Swanton, Indian Tribes of the Lower Mississippi Valley, 351.

[20]. The Okmulgees were a branch of the Lower Creeks. The Yamasee War was waged in 1715. Swanton’s Early History of the Creeks, 178. The site was described by Bartram (1775): “Where are yet conspicuous very wonderful remains of the power and grandeur of the ancients of this part of America, in the ruins of a capital town and settlement.” Travels, 379.

[21]. The “Lower Path” from Charles Town west is referred to. The “Upper Path” is described in a later chapter.

[22]. The celebrated “black drink,” general among the Southern Indians, a decoction of the leaves and tender tops and shoots of the cassine shrub of the holly family. The drink repeated caused a sweating which was supposed to purify, physically and morally. The caffeine in the plant produced stimulation and a strong infusion was a narcotic, used as such by the conjurers to evoke ecstasies. “No one is allowed to drink it in council unless he has proved himself a brave warrior.” Bossu, Travels, II, 299; John Bartram’s Observations, 23; Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creeks; Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, 372; and Harris, Memorials of Oglethorpe, 108. The white people of the Carolinas prepared from the shrub a sort of tea—“Carolina tea” or “Appalachian tea.”

[23]. Pickett, in his History of Alabama, 106, says: “Many of the old Indian countrymen with whom we have conferred believe in their Jewish origin, while others are of a different opinion. Abram Mordecai, an intelligent Jew, who dwelt fifty years in the Creek nation, confidently believed that the Indians were originally of his people, and he asserted that in their Green Corn Dances he had heard them often utter in grateful tones the word Yavoyaha! Yavoyaha! He was always informed by the Indians that they meant Jehovah or the Great Spirit.” Cushman, who was reared in the Choctaw Country in Mississippi, gives like testimony. History of Choctaw, etc., Indians, 20.

[24]. Eleazar Wiggan. See Sir Alexander Cuming’s Journal in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 123, 128.

[25]. Swanton, Early History of Creeks, 417-18.

[26]. Saponi, mentioned by Lawson and Byrd; later incorporated into the Catawbas and now extinct. Hodge, Handbook, II, 464. The best account of them is by Mooney, Siouan Tribes of The East, 35 et seq.

[27]. Sometimes Chakchiuma or, in Choctaw, Shakchi-humma (red crawfish). Cushman says they were overbearing and exterminated as a tribe by the Chickasaws and Choctaws about the year 1721. History of the Indians, 242. But the statement is disproved by the report of Perier to Maurepas, 1733, of a battle between the Chickasaw and Natchez Indians, on the one side, and the Chakchiumas on the other. Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Arch., I, 166, 281, 340. See also, Swanton, Lower Tribes, 29; Gatschet Migration Legend, 98; and Hodge, Handbook, 231. They are referred to later by Adair.

[28]. Cyrus Byington, a missionary among the Choctaws, prepared a dictionary and a grammar of their speech, which works are highly regarded by philologists. For his remarks on Adair in these works: Proceedings of Am. Philos. Soc., XII, 317-67; Bulletin 46, Bureau of Am. Ethnology.

[29]. On time-keeping consult Hodge, Handbook, I, 189, where it is said that the Creeks counted 12½ moons to the year, adding a moon at the end of every second year, somewhat as did the Kiowas. See also Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 354 et seq. (Eng. Ed. 336).

[30]. Confirmation: Hodge, Handbook, I, 353.

[31]. The fullest accounts of the temple, high-priests and mode of worship are those of the Natchez Indians, by Father Charlevoix in his Voyage to America, II, 192 (1766); also in French, Hist. Collection Louisiana, 166, 170; Du Pratz, Hist. La., III, 21, and English ed. 337. Lord Kingsborough quotes De Buisson on the sanctum sanctorum as corroboration of Adair.

[32]. Of all the greater leaders of the Cherokees, Old Hop, as to his record, most eludes a researcher. Especially is this true of date of birth, rise to the place of emperor and date of death. Drake in his Aboriginal Races, 367, and Ramsey in his Annals of Tennessee, 85, confuse him with Oconostota. His Indian name is variously spelled by the English in an effort to produce the gutturals in Kanegwati: Cunnicatogue, Canacackte, Concauchto, Connocotte, Connecorte, Conogotocke. At times such spellings are followed by the description Old Hop, or the name of his town, Chota. He was in power during the administrations of Govs. James Glen in South Carolina and Robert Dinwiddie in Virginia. In August, 1754, he seems not to have been emperor, since Gov. Dinwiddie then wrote: “I always (till now) understood the Emperor was their Chief Man. If Old Hop is a greater man, I shall hereafter notice him as such.” Papers, II, 267. To the same effect, 5 Indian Book, p. 6 at Columbia (letter of Sept. 1754 signed by both the “Emperor” and “Old Hop”). He was reported as dead in a dispatch of January 6, 1760, relating to the siege of ill-fated Fort Loudoun on Little Tennessee. Hamer, Fort Loudoun, 31.

[33]. Called by the English “Little Carpenter”; he was the greatest chief in state-craft ever produced by the Cherokees. While a youth he accompanied Sir Alexander Cuming to England, in 1730, and the impression he there received of the power of Great Britain had much to do with his friendly attitude towards the English and against the French. At that time his name was Unwanequa (Onconecaw in South Carolina records) but changed, according to Cherokee custom, to Chuconnunta, and later to Attakullakulla (Little Carpenter). Timberlake (1762) speaking of the two factions, says that he had a large faction of the Cherokees with him since “policy and art are the greatest steps to power.” Williams, Memoirs, 95. In 1757, he was addressed by Dinwiddie as second in power to Old Hop, and he urged that governor to send him again to England. His activities were too numerous to be incorporated in a footnote. He was born in what is now East Tennessee on the Big Island of the French Broad River (Sevier’s Island) which one of the war-trails of the Cherokees passed. He died about 1782, “about the termination, or a little after, of the American War” or the Revolution. He was small of stature, slender and of delicate frame—so described by two writers who came in contact with him: Williams, Wm. Tatham, Wataugan, 21; Bartram, Travels, 362. Felix Walker, once a Wataugan and later a member of Congress from North Carolina, describes his appearance in 1775: “He was said to be about ninety years of age; a very small man, and so lean and light-habited that I scarcely believe he would have exceeded more in weight than a pound for each year of his life. He was marked with two large scares or scarfs on each cheek. He was the most celebrated and influential Indian among all the tribes then known; considered as the Solon of his day.” Walker saw the Little Carpenter at the Henderson-Cherokee treaty, at Sycamore Shoals of the Watauga in March, 1775. The only portrait of him in existence is reproduced in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country.

[34]. For description and illustration: Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, 516; Thruston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 321, 331; Harrington, Cherokee and Earlier Remains on Upper Tennessee River, 246, 286; Moore, Aboriginal Sites on Tennessee River, 381, et seq., and Jones, Explorations of Aboriginal Remains of Tennessee, 136.

[35]. Lord Kingsborough says that Don Jose Cortes is in accord in his Memorias; and seeks to reenforce the argument by citing Deut., 18th Chapter.

[36]. Myths of a jewel from serpents were common among the American Indians. Talismanic stones were carefully kept and reverently regarded. See Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 73, 75, and Mooney, Myths, 459.

[37]. The John Howard Payne MSS. treat of the holy fire amply: “The most active and efficient agent appointed by the Sun to take care of mankind was supposed to be the fire. When, therefore, very special favor was needed, it was made known to Fire, accompanied by an offering. It was considered as an immediate being nearest the Sun and received homage from the Cherokees as the same element did from the Eastern Magi.... The altar in the center of the national heptagon was constructed of a conical shape, of fresh earth. A circle was drawn around the top to receive the fire of sacrifice. Upon this was laid, ready for use, the inner bark of seven kinds of trees. This bark was carefully chosen from the east side of the trees, and was clear and free of blemish.... Early in the morning seven persons who were commissioned to kindle the fire commenced their operations.... A round hole being made in a block of wood, a small quantity of dry golden-rod weed was placed in it. A stick, the end of which just fitted the opening, was whirled rapidly until the weed took fire.” Buttrick, for many years a missionary among the Cherokees, in Tennessee and after their removal, says the “new fire” was made by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together with dry golden-rod between them. Antiquities, 9. Buttrick further says golden-rod was in Cherokee anagestaluga or light-bearer; and, of the fire, that it was required that “no torch be lighted by it, nor a coal taken from it for common use.”

[38]. Kingsborough adds that the Jews believed that divination did not fall exclusively to men, citing the instance of Huldah, II Kings, Chapter 22, also, Nehem. V: 14.

[39]. Adair here describes the thanksgiving ceremonial, the Green Corn Dance, called the busk by the Creeks (puskita or boosketau). Yet fuller accounts by John Howard Payne, the poet, who was among the Cherokees, (1835) may be found. He made observations and wrote voluminously of their festivals. Payne MSS. Ayers Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago. Payne contributed an article to Continental Monthly (New York, 1862) on the Green Corn Dance, in which it is set forth that it is the second of the six great festivals of the year, held when the young corn first becomes fit to eat; and that “at every green corn festival the sacred square is strewn with soil yet untrodden.” Squier, in his Serpent Symbol, 67, drawing on the Payne MSS., quotes the poet as entertaining the view that the festival was a survival of the ancient solar worship of the Cherokees. The other account referred to is by Benjamin Hawkins in his Sketch of the Creek Country, 75, reproduced in Bartram’s Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians, 67, and in Hodge’s Handbook, I, 176. See Bartram’s own lively account in Travels, 448, 507, and Timberlake’s in Memoirs, 64 (Williams edition) 88. A good description based on Hawkins and Swan (Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, V, 267) appears in Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creeks, 177 et seq. Gatschet concludes with the observation: “Many analogies can be traced with well-known customs among the Aztecs and Maya Indians.” For the Green Corn Dance of the Iroquois, kinsmen of the Cherokees, see Morgan, League of the Iroquois, I, 176, 190. Generally, Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 99 et seq.

[40]. West Florida, or the present South Mississippi.

[41]. Sec. p. 442 post. The taboo touching raw meat and of its purification is based upon the common belief among primitive peoples that the soul or spirit of the animal is in its blood. Frazer in Golden Bough says that it was held even by the Romans, Arabs and Chinese medical writers. Payne says that the belief in the efficiency of fire “extended to smoke which was esteemed Fire’s messenger, always ready to convey the petition above. A child immediately after birth was waived over the fire”—a custom, says Logan, that survived “even to this day in the practice of the Scotch Highlanders to pass a child over the fire,” by way of purification. Upper South Carolina, I, 213.

[42]. See Mooney, Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, 335, 379.

[43]. See p. 7 ante. The instrument, kanuga, used in skin scratching, is described by Mooney in his Cherokee Ball Play, 121, his Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees, 334-5, and his Siouan Tribes of the East, 71.

[44]. On anointing a woman’s head and hair with bear-oil mixed with scarlet-root, see Lawson, History of North Carolina, 101. On bear-oil as a cosmetic, p 446 post.

[45]. Mooney says that the institution of the menstrual lodge obtained among all Indian tribes. Myths, 469. Beatty in his Two Months Tour Among the Indian Tribes, fixes the period in the lodge at seven days, and says “the person who brings her victuals is very careful not to touch her, and so cautious is she of touching her food with her own hands that she makes use of a sharpened stick.... A woman who is delivered of a child is separated likewise for a time.” For Boudinot’s treatment of the subject: Star of the West, 277.

[46]. Travail. Mooney, Ib., and Hodge, Handbook, II, 973.

[47]. Pickett’s History of Alabama, 142; and Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 90. Lord Kingsborough quotes Las Casas, Historia Apologetica, as confirming fear of pollution by touching a dead body: “All who had touched dead bodies went to bathe themselves that no infirmity might befall them.”

[48]. Mourning, confirmation; Boudinot, Star of the West, 183.

[49]. Adair presses the argument of Jewish descent too far as respects the hog as food. Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 72; Bartram’s Observations, 47. However, Cotton Mather in his Life of John Eliot says of the Northern tribes: “They have a great unkindness for our swine.”

[50]. What is known as sympathetic or homeopathic magic. The conception had wide acceptance among primitives. Frazer, Golden Bough, VIII, 139; Mooney, Myths, 472.

[51]. Lord Kingsborough at this point takes issue with Adair so far as concerns the Indians of South America, referring to Las Casas, op. cit. Chapter 178; but saying, also, that Adair was led to the belief he expresses by the customs prevailing in North America, as to which Las Casas confirms Adair’s denial of the practice there, in his Chapter 224; this, on the authority of Cabeza de Vaca who states that the Indians of Florida and the Southern Mississippi Valley held cannibalism in extreme abhorence. But that a few tribes of North America, in Texas, were cannibals, see Swanton, Lower Tribes, 360.

[52]. Lord Kingsborough quotes Mackenzie as saying that the Dog-ribbed Indians appeared to him to be all circumcised. See also, Boudinot, Star of the West, 113.

[53]. “The Indians never used to eat a certain sinew in the thigh. The name of this sinew in Cherokee is u-wa-sta-to. Some say that if they eat the sinew they will cramp in it [the same sinew] on attempting to run.” Buttrick, Antiquities of the Cherokees, 12. Further corroborated by Hodgson, Letters from North America, I, 224, and as to the Canadian Indians by Frazer, Golden Bough, VIII, 265. Also, see Mooney, Sacred Formulas, 323, Myths, 447.

[54]. On marriage consult: Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 65; Swanton, Lower Tribes, 94; Bartram’s Observations, 65.

[55]. Punishment for adultery seems to have varied with almost every tribe. Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 197. Bossu says of the Choctaws: “If a woman commits an infidelity, she must pass through the meadow, i.e., all the young men, and sometimes, the old ones, satisfy their brutality on her by turns.” Travels, I, 308. Among the Alabama Indians he describes a different punishment. Ib., 233. Bartram’s Travels, 512. Adair’s is by far the best and fullest account.

[56]. Lord Kingsborough refers here to Isaac and Rebecca, Genesis, 24: 14.

[57]. “In case of murder, the next of blood is obliged to kill the murderer or else he is looked upon as infamous in the nation where he lives.” Gen. Oglethorpe in Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1733, p. 413. See also Cushman, History of the Indians, 495.

[58]. See as to these Shawnees, note on p. 2 ante.; and Swanton, Early History of Creeks, 318-19.

[59]. Kingsborough refers for corroboration to the statement of Las Casas, Historia Apologetica, Chapter 141, respecting cities of refuge among the ancients in Mexico. As to North America: Mooney, Myths, 207.

[60]. Variously spelled: Chota, Chote, Echota, Chotah, Choto, Chotee, Chateauke, Chotte, and as above. Probably the earliest English account is that of James Needham in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 27, see also pp. 152, 263, 472, and, for the reverence for “the old beloved town,” 497. Timberlake, (1762) refers to it as the metropolis of the country, Memoirs, 58, 99, 117; Ramsey’s Annals of Tennessee, passim. The beloved town was spared in the destruction of the Cherokee towns by Col. Wm. Christian, in 1776.

[61]. See later note.

[62]. In early chronicles “Cusa” and other variations; largest town of the Upper Creeks; entered by De Soto July 16, 1540; in the present Talladega County, Ala., east of and near to Coosa River.

[63]. Kingsborough here cites Morfi in corroboration.

[64]. Morfi’s History of the Province of Texas, and Tanner’s Narrative of Thirty Year’s Residence among the Indians, are cited by Lord Kingsborough.

[65]. Boudinot, Star of the West, 176; and Mooney, Myths, 503, quoting Washburn, Reminiscences, 191, 121, on the capture of the ark of the Cherokees by the Delaware Indians, to the loss of which the old priests of the Cherokees ascribed the later degeneracy of their people. Buttrick, Antiquities, 12, refers to the ark covered with deer-skin “to be set up when they rested and carried when they journeyed.”

[66]. Corroboration: Bartram, Travels, 495.

[67]. This is true, also, of the Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo Indians of the West. Morse’s Rep. Ind. Affairs, Appendix, p. 130; Wilkes, Narrative of the U. S. Expedition, III, 78, and Schoolcraft, Information Indian Tribes, IV, 63. Frazer, in his Golden Bough, says that the custom is observed by tribes in Australia, Malaya and Africa.

[68]. On treatment of captives: Hodge, Handbook, I, 203, and, in addition, Smith, Account of Remarkable Occurrences, passim.

[69]. In this year the Chickasaws destroyed the French Ft. Massac on the Ohio, near the mouth of Tennessee River, in the Illinois Country. Alvord and Carter, New Regime, 132.

[70]. On the Chickasaws (led by Piomingo, the “Mountain Leader” referred to as “leader” by Adair) in this campaign, and their great aid to the British: Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 216, and his Beginnings of West Tennessee, 29.

[71]. See the Cherokees’ reception of Sir Alexander Cuming, described by Cuming: Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 135 et seq.

[72]. See Jones, Antiquities of the Southern Indians, 370, 500, 505, 514, 521; Harrington, Cherokee Remains on Upper Tennessee, 77, 82, 136, 286; and for gems found in the Cherokee Country, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 73.

[73]. The literature on the American Indians is fully corroborative.

[74]. A gourd or calabash set with gems was a mark of sacerdotal dignity among the ancients of Mexico. (Kingsborough.)

[75]. The ancients of Mexico also had a superstitious regard for the eagle, whose effigy they emblazoned on their shields. (Lord Kingsborough.)

[76]. Natchez Indians, as refugees among the Chickasaws after the wars with the French.

[77]. There was a similar superstition as to the power of witches—that they could assume animal forms. Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, VI, 121. Supplementing incantations, the Indians resorted to the regimen of abstinence, but also to herbs. Among these: lobelia, sassafras, white nettle, swamp-lily, may-apple, ginseng, white-root, wild senna, etc. The best list and account is by Mooney, Sacred Formulas, 322 et seq. See others mentioned by Adair, on p. 388 post.

[78]. The Jews waited seven months. (Kingsborough.)

[79]. For illustrations of scaffolds, Hodge, Handbook, I, 946.

[80]. To same effect: Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 202, citing Brickell’s Natural History of North Carolina, 380; and see Swanton, Lower Tribes, 365. Starr, a Cherokee historian, says that these aboriginal burial customs were abandoned for those of the white race, by 1800. Early History of the Cherokees, 20.

[81]. Bartram, practically in accord, describes the burial customs of the Creeks. Travels, 514; and see Roman, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, 71, 89; Bossu, Travels, I, 257.

[82]. Mourning customs varied in different tribes. See, generally, Hodge, Handbook, 951, and Swanton, Early Creeks, 372 et seq. Twelve months was the period for the widow’s mourning among the Chickasaws. Cushman, History of the Indians, 497.

[83]. Confirmed by Juan Morfi in his History of Province of Texas. (Kingsborough.)

[84]. In accord: Lawson’s History of Carolina, 187.

[85]. Swanton, Early Creeks, 13.

[86]. This fact is confusing to a researcher. For example, three names, each at various stages of their careers, were borne by the Cherokee chiefs Attakullakulla and Ostenaco.

[87]. Schoolcraft, Information Indian Tribes, I, 309 et seq., gives the story as told by old men of the Chickasaws: That tribe came from the West; a part of the tribe remaining in the West. The migrants carried a pole which they planted in the ground at night, and the next morning they would go in the direction it was found to be leaning. They continued eastward across the Mississippi until they arrived at Chickasaw Old Fields, where, the pole standing erect, they settled. Cushman (History of the Choctaw, etc., Indians, 62) gives the same tradition as being handed down by old men to missionaries in 1820, and that the Indians at the time named the “great water” Misha Sipokni (the Mississippi). Buttrick gives a migration legend of the Chickasaws coming from the West across a great river; and the tradition fixes the crossing place at the bluffs, later known as the Chickasaw Bluffs, on one of which stands the city of Memphis.

[88]. Consult Swanton, Lower Tribes, 252.

[89]. Lord Kingsborough’s comment: This criticism from a person wholly ignorant of the Spanish language, as was Adair, cannot carry weight. Adair did not know that many of the Spanish monks and friars advocated his theory of the Indians being descendants from the Jews. Had he been, it is probable that he would have spoken more respectfully of them.

[90]. The reference here, doubtless, is to Colden’s use of yo-ha-han in his book on the Northern Indians. Boudinot, in the Star of the West, 234, says: “The Indians to the northward are said by Mr. Colden, a laborious sensible writer, to repeat yo-ha-han, which, if true, evinces that their corruption advances in proportion as they are distant from South America. It was a material, or rather an essential, mistake to write yo-ha-han, as it is confounding two religious words together. Mr. Adair was assured by Sir William Johnson, as well as by Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a missionary with the Mohawks, that the Northern Indians always pronounced the words of their songs, y-ho-he, a or ah; and so Mr. Colden altered them in the second edition of his history.”

[91]. The reference is to Girolamo Benzoni, and his book, La Historia del Mondo Nuovo, published in Venice, 1572.

[92]. Kingsborough says that the Mexicans had a name for God—Tezcatlipca.

[93]. Kingsborough says that Adair’s dislike of Romanists leads to unfair comments on their historians; and wonders what translation of Roman Adair could have consulted in which it was possible to find so great an absurdity as is here stated on Roman’s authority.

[94]. Kingsborough points out a mistake in the insertion of “not,” p. 370, n. 44.

[95]. Adair was ignorant of the nature of the llama, to which species of animals the Spaniards gave the name “sheep.” (Kingsborough, n. 47.)

[96]. Published his Noticias Americanas in 1772, but seems not to be rated high on the history of the very early Indians. Adair’s reference to this work, published only three years before his own, shows that his MSS. must have been added to, and perhaps after he reached London, for the purpose of bringing it out.

[97]. The reference is to Thomas Thorowgood’s book entitled “Jews in America, or Probabilities, that those Indians are Judaical, made more probable by some Additionals to the former Conjectures. An Accurate Discourse is promised by Mr. John Elliot, (who first preached the gospel to the Natives in their own Language) touching their Origination, and his Vindication of the Planters. Sm. 4th, London: Printed for Henry Brome at the Gun in Ivie-Lane. 1660.” The book is rare, selling for $200.00 a copy in 1930.

[98]. Lord Kingsborough, note 51, calls attention to the well-known fact that William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, entertained the same belief. The children of the Indians reminded Penn of the children of Jews in their quarter of London, known as Old Jewry.

[99]. See note p. 210 ante.

[100]. Kingsborough adds: “Pedro Simon observes that it was customary amongst some of the Indian Tribes for men, after the confinement of their wives, to feign sickness and to receive visitors reclining in bed.” Note 57, p. 374. The same thing is noticed by a later writer.

[101]. This is the theory at this day held by leading ethnologists. Two curious statements appear in Boudinot’s Star of the West, p. 235: “Charlevoix, in his history of Canada, says that Father Grillon often told him that, after having labored sometimes in the missions in Canada, he returned to France, and went to China. One day, as he was traveling through Tartary, he met a Huron woman whom he had formerly known in Canada. She told him that, having been taken in war, she had been conducted from nation to nation till she arrived at the place where she then was. There was another missionary, passing by Nantz on his return from China, who related the like story of a woman he had seen from Florida in America. She informed him that she had been taken by certain Indians and given to those of a distant country; and by these again to another nation till she had been thus successively passed from country to country; had traveled regions exceedingly cold, and at last found herself in Tartary, and had there married a Tartar who had passed with the conquerors into China and there settled.”

[102]. Lord Kingsborough ends his reprint and comments here, and concludes by saying that, while Adair had proved his ignorance of the genuine writings of the Spanish historians, yet their frequent agreement with his own relation of facts confirms his veracity.

[103]. The best accounts of the Catawbas are those of two masters in the field of the history of Southern Indians, Mooney (Siouan Tribes of the East, 67-88) and Gatschet (Migration Legend of the Creeks, 15). John Lederer was among them in 1669-70, and describes them as “a cruel generation and prey upon people”; their women “delight much in feather ornaments, of which they have great variety; but hold Peacocks in most esteem because rare in those parts; the men are more effeminate and lazy.” Discoveries (1672), Harpel reprint (1879), p. 24. Lawson was among them in 1701, and gives them the name of Kadaqua. History of North Carolina, 71 et seq.; and Wm. Byrd in his History of the Dividing Line has several references to them. Their country was on the border of the two Carolinas, on the Catawba River. A remnant still resides in York County, S. C.

[104]. The great trading path from Virginia to Georgia passed through the country of the Catawbas, and was known as the “Catawba Path.” This brought the tribe into close contact with the whites, which was unfortunate for the redmen, as it tended to their enfeeblement and decline.

[105]. See accordant comments of Lederer, as early as 1670, in note above.

[106]. One of several attempts of the governments of South Carolina and Georgia to persuade the Chickasaws, hard pressed by the French and their Choctaw allies, to leave their own country and settle on the Savannah River. In 1742 Gov. Bull, of South Carolina, warned Lord Wilmington that French policy looked to the extirpation of the Chickasaws. The effort to use Adair’s influence on his friends, the Chickasaws, must have been about 1748, when Vaudreuil was concerting plans to attack them, as he did in 1752. The Chickasaws were, indeed, sorely pressed, and their plea went to the “King of Carolina” for the return to the nation of the Eastern Chickasaws then living on the Savannah, in order “to enable us to keep our land. ... We hope you will think of us in our poverty, as we have not had the liberty of hunting for three years. We have had enough to do to defend our lands and prevent our women and children being made slaves of the French.” S. C. Archives (1756) 5 Indian Book, 123. Two years before (1754) the Cherokees, induced by the English of South Carolina, actually sent a delegation to the Chickasaws “in order to escort the remains of that brave people into the Cherokee nation.” All persuasion was resisted, and the Chickasaws held their beloved land.

[107]. The boundary of the Eastern Chickasaws, mentioned in a preceding note, was described by their chiefs in 1797, while in treaty at Chickasaw Bluff, site of Memphis: “ten miles square of lands in the State of South Carolina, opposite Augusta on the Savannah River and Horse Creek,” a plat of which was, they said, in the possession of the Secretary of War. This band located there about the end of the Oglethorpe campaign against St. Augustine.

[108]. The South Carolina government urged that of New York to check these attacks; and, in 1750, Governor James Glen threatened to offer a reward for the killing of any Northern Indian in the limits of South Carolina. The next year peace between the two nations was effected at the Albany Conference.

[109]. Lawson in 1701: They were “a very large nation, containing many thousand people.” History of North Carolina (1903 ed.) p. 20.

[110]. The name as given by Gallatin (Archaeologia Americana, II, 90) is, properly, Tsalakies. Mooney goes more into detail: “In the Lower dialect, with which the English settlers first became familiar, the form is Tsa-ragi. In the other dialects the form is Tsa-lagi.” Myths, 182; with Gatschet in accord, Migration Legend, 24. De Soto chroniclers wrote it: Chalaque. The present standard form, Cherokee, dates back at least to 1708. Mooney says (Myths, 15) that the name by which the Cherokees call themselves is Yunwiya, signifying “real or principal people”; and that on ceremonial occasions they frequently speak of themselves as the Kituhwagi (or Cuttawa). The Tennessee River was in very early times called the Cussate (Moll Map, 1715).

[111]. Mooney says seemingly refers to the fact that the tribe occupied a cave country; followed by Hodge, Handbook, I, 245, “cave people.” But Starr, the Cherokee historian, agrees with Adair: A-che (fire) ahgi (he takes). Early History, 7.

[112]. Gatschet: Otari (above) Erati (low). Mooney, Otari or Atari (mountain).

[113]. Among the traders in 1730-35 were: Anthony Deane, said to have been a learned man, Cornelius Dougherty, Eleazar Wiggan, Alexander Long, Ludovick Grant, a man of intelligence and influence, David Dowie, Joseph Cooper and Gregory Haines.

[114]. In 1715 Col. Chicken was assured that the Valley Towns alone had by count 2,370 fighting men, one-half the number equipped with guns.

[115]. Of 1760-61.

[116]. Compare the accordant account of DeBrahm in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 193; also 477.

[117]. Flowing towards territory claimed by the French. Thus, it seems, came also the name of French Broad River, in Western North Carolina and East Tennessee.

[118]. Also the Catawbas in the same and in the following year. On small-pox: Du Prazt, History, 305; Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, 209 et seq. In September, 1739, chiefs of the Cherokees complained that their people had been poisoned by bad rum brought in by traders, but on inquiry it was ascertained that unlicensed traders had during the preceding summer carried small-pox to their nation. Harris, Memorials of Oglethorpe, 214.

[119]. Guinea negroes.

[120]. The Indians made much use of the root of the white nettle, which because of its caustic and detergent properties, was used for cleansing ulcers and proud-flesh. Bartram’s Observations, 45. But the “mountain alum” appears to be cranesbill (geranium maculatum) an astringent, recognized as such by medical authorities today.

[121]. Hospital for sailors.

[122]. For map showing the upper part of this path, Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 114.

[123]. Mooney, Myths, 459; Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 73.

[124]. The Ustitlu legend. Ibid.

[125]. The upper or Flanders Path is described by Crane, The Southern Frontier, 135.

[126]. By way of supplement to and corroboration of Adair, in respect of this very remarkable man, Christian Gottlieb Piber, who declared in a petition that he had a wife and four children in Saxony, the following brief account by Ludovick Grant is given, because not so well known as others. Priber landed at Charles Town, but, it seems, made his way to a district in the country. Grant says that Priber went from Amelia Township on Santee River into the Cherokee nation; that he called himself a German but was certainly an agent of the French; that he lived in the town of Telliquo (Great Tellico); that he trimmed his hair in the Indian manner and painted as they did, going, generally, naked, except for a shirt and flap; that he told the Cherokees that they had been tricked out of a great part of their lands, and in the future they should make no concessions, and should trade with the English and French alike, and they would then be courted by both. He proposed a new system of government, under which all things should be held in common; even their wives should be so, and the children looked upon as those of the public and taken care of as such. Priber urged that the “seat of government be moved nearer to the French at Coosawattee, where in ancient times a town stood belonging to the Cherokees; and that they should admit into their society Creeks and Catawbas, French and English, all colours and complexions; in short, all who were of their principles.” Priber wrote a letter to the South Carolina government, signed by him as “prime minister,” which opened the eyes of South Carolinians to the danger of his continuing longer among the Indians. Grant confirms Adair as to the journey to the Alabama Fort of the French on his way to Mobile and as to his arrest. “His negro who jumped into the river to make his escape, they shot dead.” Grant fixed the length of Priber’s stay as “about three years [Adair says five and the true period was six or seven years] among the Cherokees”—a “most notorious rogue and iniquitous fellow who if he had been permitted to live much longer in that country would undoubtedly have drawn that nation over to the French interest.” Relation, in S. C. Hist. Mag., X, 54. See also letter from Fredrica in S. C. Gazette of Aug. 15, 1743: “The Creek Indians have at last brought Mr. Priber prisoner here; he is a little ugly man, but speaks all languages fluently ... he talks very prophanely against all religions, but chiefly the Protestant; he was for setting up a town at the foot of the mountains among the Cherokees, which was to be a city of refuge for all criminals, debtors and slaves. ... There was a book found upon him in his own writing ready for the press, which he owns and glories in and believes it is by this time printed, but will not tell where, in which ... he lays down the rules of government which the town is to be governed by, to which he gives the title of Paradise. He enumerates many whimsical privileges and natural rights ... particularly dissolving marriages and allowing community of women and all kinds of licenciousness; the book is drawn up very methodically, and full of learned quotations; it is extremely wicked, yet has several flights full of invention, and it is a pity so much wit is applied to so bad a purpose.” A comparison of the “Red Empire” with the Russian Soviet of the present day is more than suggested. See further on Priber: Crane, A Lost Utopia, Sewanee Review, Jan’y, 1919; Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 248; Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 154 et seq., and Mooney, Myths, 36.

[127]. Col. Fox. Before he was sent in Ludovick Grant had been commissioned to make the arrest. His Relation gives the account: “I sometime after went up into the Townhouse to try what could be done; but I found that he [Priber] was well apprized of my design and laughed at me, desiring me to try it, in so insolent a manner that I could hardly bear it.... After which Coll. Fox was sent up on the same service with several persons to attend and assist him; and, having endeavoured by several messages and letters to decoy and draw him out of Town, but all in vain, he at length laid hold of him in the Townhouse, for which he liked to have suffered. The Indians took it very much amiss and told him that as the Country was their own they might do what they thought proper ... wishing him [Fox] to get out of their Country directly.” S. C. Mag. of History, X, 54 et seq.

[128]. The subsequent history of the Cherokees corroborates Adair’s statement as to the attitude of the town of Great Tellico. It was there that Lantagnac plotted for the downfall of Ft. Loudoun. Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 177.

[129]. Gov. James Glen, Adair’s dislike of whom is here and elsewhere fully apparent.

[130]. Gov. Wm. Henry Lyttleton.

[131]. Gov. Dinwiddie: “We have had 148 Cherokees, 124 Catawbas etc. at Fort Loudown [Winchester, Va.].... The Cherokees have been guilty of many disorders in marching through this Country and killed a Chickasaw Warrior.” Papers, II, 633, 641, 663, 673. Cherokees were used with good results as scouts; a party of six reported a sally of the French from Fort DuQuesne (Pittsburgh) and Col. George Washington (June, 1757) feared that Fort Cumberland would fall. Fernow, Ohio Valley in Colonial Days, 150 et seq. The Chickasaws also sent warriors to aid the British and Americans. They at Ft. Loudoun (in Virginia) were under Washington, who wrote of them: “Those Indians who are coming should be showed all possible respect, and the greatest care should be taken of them, as upon them much depends. It is a critical time, they are very humorsome, and their assistance very necessary. One false step might lose us all that, but even turn them against us.” Morton, Story of Winchester, 76.

[132]. On this occurrence consult Virginia House of Burgesses Journals, 1758-61, p. 6 et seq.; Koontz, The Virginia Frontier, 1754-1763, 92, and Carroll’s South Carolina Collection, II, 97.

[133]. For Lantagnac’s intrigues in behalf of the French: Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 177 et seq.

[134]. They raided on the Yadkin River and threatened to attack the Moravian towns: Moravian Records, I, 232.

[135]. Probably the Eastern band on the Savannah River.

[136]. Incidents at Ft. Prince George in Upper South Carolina.

[137]. See for Georgiana, p. 484 M post.

[138]. Col. Archibald Montgomery succeeded to the title and peerage in October, 1769; thus is shown Adair’s revision of his work to that date, at least.

[139]. The retreat of Col. Montgomery led to the downfall of Fort Loudoun.

[140]. Under Col. Wm. Byrd III. The biting comment of Adair was justified. Williams, Memoirs of Lt. Timberlake, 14. Timberlake was with Byrd.

[141]. Adair was in active service as captain of the Eastern Chickasaws—but he modestly and barely refers to the fact. See the editor’s Introduction to this volume.

[142]. Edmund Atkins, formerly a Charles Town merchant, in partnership with John Atkins. S. C. Gazette, Oct. 4, 1746. He was, also, member of the Council of State in 1748.

[143]. Hamilton says that the true Indian name was Yaha Tasky Stonake, called by the English The Mortar and by the French Le Loup. Colonial Mobile, 229. He was under French influence, and gave the British and colonials much trouble because of his power among his people, the Creeks, and his influence with one element of the Overhill Cherokees in the fateful year 1760. See N. C. Col. Rec., VI, 259 et seq.; 313, as to his aiding in the downfall of Ft. Loudoun. After the surrender of the garrison, The Mortar was taken over the fort by the Cherokees and shown the “great guns”—the cannon. Before setting off to his own country The Mortar and his gang of Creeks broke into the Little Carpenter’s house and plundered it, evidently to punish the Cherokee chief for the part he had taken in behalf of the English. The Mortar was accompanied home by a group of the Cherokees. That he was influential, at the incitement of Lantagnac, in the downfall of Ft. Loudoun, is manifest.

[144]. This savage attack on Atkins occurred among the Creeks in the Alabama Country (Cussatah Town) Sept. 28, 1759. He was struck by a Cherokee on the head with a tomahawk but escaped without fatal injury. The intrigues of the French soon brought the Overhill Cherokees to flagrant outbreak against the English.

[145]. It has been suggested that The Mortar began the settlement to which resorted the disaffected of the Creeks and Cherokees—later known as Chickamaugas, always a lawless band, rather than a tribe.

[146]. The best authorities on the Creeks are Hawkins and Swanton, in the books cited ante and post.

[147]. A doctrine preached later by Thomas Jefferson when President.

[148]. Perhaps Galphin. The account is corroborated by Swanton, Early History of Creeks, 421, 437.

[149]. Ft. Toulouse, near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers.

[150]. Probably “John Ross, Indian Trader,” mentioned as grantee of land at Augusta, in Ga. Col. Recs., VI, 229.

[151]. It would be interesting to know in what year Adair penned these lines.

[152]. Or Tombekbe, now Jones Bluff of Tombigbee River, where the Alabama Great Southern crosses the stream in West Alabama; established by Bienville, 1735.

[153]. The Koasati Indians, once located on Tennessee River below the present Chattanooga, are treated of in Swanton’s Early History of the Creeks, 201-207, 211.

[154]. The Boiling Pot or Suck in Tennessee River, near Hale’s Bar, near Chattanooga.

[155]. George Galphin and Lachlan McGillivray (McGilwray in the Dedication of Adair’s book).

Galphin, a Scotchman, located at an early day (c. 1739) at Silver Bluff, later Gaphinton, on Savannah River, South Carolina side, a few miles below the site of Augusta, Ga., where he built a trading post and engaged in the Indian trade, chiefly to the Creeks. He is said to have been the earliest trader in that section. Ft. Augusta dated from 1736; and it is likely that Galphin and Adair were in close touch shortly afterwards. Galphin at the outbreak of the Revolution sympathized with the colonists, and on Oct. 2, 1775, he was appointed commissioner of Indian affairs for the Southern District, thus realizing the ambition of Adair for his friend. For a number of years he had an important part in affairs affecting the Indians, the value of which is best summarized in a letter to him from Henry Laurens from the Continental Congress, Sept. 16, 1777: “I congratulate upon your success in treating with the Creek Indians. I hold the States of So. Carolina and Georgia, as well as the United States, much indebted to your unwearied labours for the present good disposition of those Savages, and as their continuance in this temper depends much upon your exertions, so we are all bound to pray your life and health.” Burnett, Letters of Members of Const. Cong., II, 494. Galphin appears to have been a considerable trader in the town of Coweta, the principal town of the Lower Creeks. He took a leading part in the affairs of his own colony, and in those of Georgia just across the river. In 1754 he was influential in keeping up the English connection with the Chickasaws—doubtless through his partner in the trade, Adair. Through his intervention, munitions of war were then sent to the Chickasaws by Georgia, to enable them to hold their land, “save themselves, wives and children from being made slaves of their enemies the French.” Galphin was largely instrumental in the success of the great Indian Congress held at Augusta in 1773, referred to by Adair. Therefor in 1848 a claim, prosecuted by his family, was allowed by the Congress of the United States. Galphin was a man of intelligence and great force of character. He died in 1780.

Lachlan McGillivray also lived near Augusta, where his name, alongside that of Galphin, may be found attached to early documents relating to the defense of the neighborhood against danger. He was also a trader, mainly to the Creeks, and many reports of his on Indian affairs are to be found in the South Carolina Archives. He was the father of the noted half-breed chief of the Creek Indians, Alexander McGillivray, who played such an important part in the South in the closing decades of the previous century. As his name indicates, he also was a Scotchman; and a descendant of his was a minor leader among the Chickasaws about 1815-20. Lachlan McGillivray was a man of fine native parts, but had not the talents and did not reach the rank of Galphin.

[156]. By Matthew Roche, of the “Sphynx Company,” for which see later. A letter of Adair was incorporated in the pamphlet, and it may not be doubted that Adair figured not a little in the preparation and composition of its contents.

[157]. Capt. John Stuart, who was rescued by Attakullakulla at the downfall of Ft. Loudoun, was principal superintendent of Indian affairs at the South, from 1762 to the end of the colonial era.

[158]. Evidently “on”—a misprint.

[159]. The records abound in proofs of the awe in which the Chickasaws were held by the other tribes of the Southern and Northern Indians.

[160]. Described by Lord Adam Gordon in 1764, Wolf King was a sensible old man, who said he might be one hundred years old. Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 385.

[161]. The Shawnees were hereditary enemies of the Cherokees, but usually allies of the Creeks. By capture or intermarriage there was quite an admixture of Shawnee blood among the Cherokees. The small party referred to in the text may have been one of this character.

[162]. The reference seems to be to Gov. James Glen, who made such an effort.

[163]. Lachlan McGillivray. The archives at Columbia bear out Adair’s statements on this point.

[164]. Bienville gave their number of warriors in 1725-26 as 8,000 and the Colonial Records of Georgia state a higher number. There had been a frightful loss of life in the numerous wars fought with the Chickasaws under French incitement. In wars with the Creeks, 1765-1771, they lost about three hundred warriors, Gallatin, Synopsis, etc., 100. Cushman draws a brighter picture of the Choctaws, but Milfort makes a distinction between the Northern and Southern Choctaws, giving to the former superior qualities. The earliest mention of them is found in the De Soto narratives, 1540.

[165]. The reference is to the firms of Baynton, Wharton & Morgan, and Franks & Co.

[166]. George Johnstone.

[167]. Adair was not well up on North Carolina geography. The Yadkin does not flow into the Cape Fear River.

[168]. Charles Stuart, seemingly a brother of John Stuart, was deputy superintendent.

[169]. The reference is to Col. Abraham Wood, of Virginia, and to his sending out Batts and Fallam in 1671—not 1654 or 1664. Adair is here following Cox’s Carolana. See Alvord and Bidgood, First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region, 191, and Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 17. Capt. Bolton made no such discovery in 1670.

[170]. Dr. Cox, of London, father of the author of Carolana and a proprietor of West (New) Jersey but never in America, did send Capt. Bond by sea to, then up the Mississippi about one hundred miles, in 1698; the vessel was turned back by Iberville acting for the French, at a place ever since called “the English turn,” just below New Orleans.

[171]. Adair is yet following the Carolana of Daniel Cox, son of Dr. Cox, taking no notice of the journeys of Marquette and Jolliet in 1673 and of La Salle in 1682.

[172]. The fort was abandoned in January, 1768.

[173]. Gov. James Glen. As corroborative of Adair: “We have advices from some of our traders that the Choctaw Indians (for many years past in the French interest) have invited them into their towns to trade, promising them a guard of 400 men; and as a testimony of their good intentions they brought with them the scalps of three Frenchmen.” S. C. Gazette, Nov. 4, 1746.

[174]. The celebrated and double-faced Red Shoes, leader of a faction of the Choctaws. He took part with the French in the war of 1736; but proving insolent after the war, Vaudreuil stopped the supply of arms and ammunition to his party. Further incensed by the discovery of a Frenchman from Ft. Tombekbe in adultery with his favorite wife, Adair found him ripe for heading a faction of the Choctaws against the French. Adair’s influence was exerted to that end in 1746, for in October of that year, De Beauchamp was among the friendly Choctaws, warning them against Adair, “that trader who was at the Chikachas [Chickasaws], mentioning him by name,” and offering a reward for the death of Red Shoes. Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 290 et seq. A fratricidal war broke out among the Choctaws. Red Shoes’ party with a band of the Creeks, in June, 1748, not 1747 as Adair states from memory, made an attack on the German settlement (Quartier des Alemands) as stated by Adair. Vaudreuil was more fortunate in compassing the death of Red Shoes later in 1748, seemingly through Jean Grondel. The fiat went forth that the arch-intriguer must die. He was set upon and killed while convoying to his towns a train of English goods from Charles Town. English traders saved the goods; and, by making a distribution of them, managed to revive the war, placing a brother of Red Shoes at the head of his partisans. This faction was soon defeated and put to rout by Grandpre, then commandant at Ft. Tombikbe. In the event, the connection of Red Shoes and Adair was unfortunate for both.

[175]. The reference is to the two unsuccessful campaigns of the French against the Chickasaws under Bienville.

[176]. The Chickasaws’ horses were favorites throughout the South. Barton in his New View says: “It is a well established fact that the Chickasaws brought with them from the West those beautiful horses called Chickasaw breed.” Major Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, says that the Chickasaws are supposed to have introduced the horse, and had large droves of them in 1762. But others attribute the origin to De Soto’s visit among them. Hugh Williamson (Observations, 80) in 1811 said: “Those Indians were originally furnished by De Soto with a breed of Spanish horses. The Indians, towards the middle of the last century, discovered that their horses were a valuable article of commerce.... The traders in all cases bought their largest horses.” Smyth (1774) in North Carolina “purchased a beautiful Chickasaw horse, named so from a nation of Indians who are very careful of preserving a fine breed of Spanish horses they have long preserved, unmixed with any other.” A Tour, I, 139. In 1785 Henry Laurens, Jr., of Charleston, wrote of being “informed by a Friend of his expectations of a string of five and forty horses from the Chickasaws which are generally esteemed as good horses as any in America.” So. Car. Hist. Mag., XXIV, 11. The horse, it seems, was not introduced among the Cherokees until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then probably from the Chickasaws. Byrd says that the Indians “were utter strangers to all our beasts of carriage before the slothful Europeans came amongst them.” The Seminoles of Florida also had horses of Andalusian breed, brought over by the Spaniards. Bartram, Travels, 213. The Chickasaw breed was in high repute in East Tennessee in the last decade of the eighteenth century. A celebrated sire “Piomingo,” named for the great chief, was advertised as “a fine Spanish horse raised in the Chickasaw nation.” Knoxville Gazette, Mar. 24, 1792.

[177]. For accordant statement: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 79; Lawson, History of North Carolina (1903 ed.) 133.

[178]. This ecomium on the Chickasaws finds full confirmation on the part of historians and travelers, French, Spanish and English:

“The nation of the Chickasaws is very warlike. The men have regular features, well shaped and neatly dressed; they are fierce, and have a high opinion of themselves. The nations who border upon them who speak the Chickasaw language best value themselves upon it.” (Du Pratz.)

“They are accounted and esteemed the bravest Indians upon the main, which makes good the common observation that the bravest soldiers are generally the most civil to prisoners.” (Eveleigh.)

“They are the most indefatigable and most valiant of all the Indians.” (Rev. John Wesley.)

“Not so numerous as the Choctaws, but more terrible on account of their intrepidity. The Chickasaws are tall, well made, and of an unparalleled courage.” (Bossu.)

“A brave, warlike people; tall, well-shaped and handsome featured.” (Rogers.)

“These brave Indians, our ancient allies and steady friends; irreconciliable enemies of the French.” (Sir Jeffrey Amherst.)

“There is no Indian nation on the continent near so handsome as the Chickasaws; they have always been distinguished for their gallant actions and feats of heroism which have rendered them, even individually, to be particularly respected throughout all the nations of North America. For which reason Chickasaw guides are more sought after and are more serviceable than those of any other nation.” (Smyth.)

“The most intrepid warriors of the South.” (Bancroft.)

“The bravest of the brave. Admirably proportioned, athletic, active and graceful in their movements, and possessed of open and manly countenances.” (Pickett.)

“Their courage exceeded that of all other aborigines. Neighboring tribes found them invincible.” (Brewer.)

“Through all the epochs of colonial history the Chickasaw people maintained their old reputation for independence and bravery.” (Gatschet.)

“The ancient Chickasaws have justily been regarded as the bravest and most skillful warriors among all the American Indians.” (Cushman.)

“The smallest of the Southern nations, but they were also the bravest and most warlike.” (Roosevelt.)

“Noted from remote times for their bravery, independence and warlike disposition.” (Hodge.)

[179]. See on this town, Swanton, Early Creeks, 313, et seq.

[180]. Should be 1748, when “the Western Choctaws attack the Quartier Alemands.” French Transcripts at Jackson, Miss., Vol. 32, p. 81.

[181]. Quapaw, a Southwestern Siouan tribe, their villages west of the Mississippi and north of the Arkansas River. Hodge, Handbook, II, 333.

[182]. A name applied by Adair to a company of traders, composed of Gov. James Glen, his brother and two others, and given official countenance.

[183]. At their head Charles McNaire.

[184]. George Galphin.

[185]. Perhaps Joseph Wood, of Georgia.

[186]. James Campbell who had traded among the Chickasaws for nearly twenty years. He had conducted a small trade among the Choctaws, and joined Adair in the plan to win over Red Shoes.

[187]. “Friday last arrived 47 Indians of a very potent nation heretofore in enmity and now come to solicit peace and the encouragement of English traders to settle and supply them with goods, giving assurances of fidelity and good treatment.” South Carolina Gazette, Apr. 13, 1748. A brother of Red Shoes headed the delegation. Ib., Apr. 17.

[188]. The mythic place, Nani Waya (winding hill), in Winston County, Miss. Nanna Waya Creek through the county yet is known by the name. Gatschet, Migration Legend, 105; Cushman, History, 361.

[189]. The French archives, with data of the year 1748, afford ample corroboration of “the Choctaw rebellion,” as they termed the civil war.

[190]. Or Paya Mattaha; he represented the Chickasaw Nation as principal leader in the Indian Congress held by Gov. Johnstone and John Stuart, at Mobile in March, 1765. He there made an extended speech: “Tho’ I am a red man, my heart is white from my connection with and the benefit I have received from the white people. I almost look upon myself as one of them.... The English have always supported me in my distress and never deserted or deceived me.”

[191]. Gov. Glen in 1748 admitted that Adair and John Campbell had been his chief agents in bringing about the Red Shoe revolt. Adair’s bitterness towards the governor was not without cause.

[192]. Identified by Swanton as the Cusabo Indians. Early Hist. Creeks, 71 et seq.

[193]. Adair is here recounting Cherokee raids in the early decades of the eighteenth century.

[194]. George Haig who in 1748 was taken captive, with Thomas Brown’s half-breed son, and put to death by the Indians (R. L. Meriwether). Thomas Brown is mentioned by Adair as “T. B.” He and Haig were associates in the Indian trade from a post on Congaree River up to Brown’s death in 1747.

[195]. Col. George Chicken, Ibid.

[196]. Col. Fox, see [n. p. 254] ante.

[197]. Henry Foster (sometimes Francis), son-in-law of James Francis. See Introduction, p. xiii ante.

[198]. See Introduction on this Memorial.

[199]. There must be a misprint here, since there was no such disparity between the water and land routes, and Adair was well posted on the point.

[200]. “The tribal name is Tciaca. The suffix aca denoting people collectively; another form Tcikocokela, okela denoting tribe, is in common use.” Frank G. Speck in Journal of American Folk Lore, XX, 50-58.

[201]. Adair is corroborated by Cushman (History of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, etc., 19-20, 242-246, 361, 494). The languages were for the most part identical. It appears that in speeches made by Chickasaw chiefs in councils held by the British with them and the Choctaws, jointly, the former spoke as “elders” to the Choctaws.

[202]. Adair does not go further back than 1720 in his account of the Chickasaws. The expedition of De Soto in 1540-41 crossed their country, called by its historians or narrators “Chicaca provincia,” and suffered a defeat by the tribe. In La Salle’s own account of his expedition of 1682 he mentions the “river inhabited by the Sicachas,” as having “its source near Carolina”—the Tennessee River, manifestly. His men came in contact with “five of the Chikacha nation” at one of the Chickasaw Bluffs on the Mississippi in the present West Tennessee. In 1687, Father Anastasius Douay records respecting a party of La Salle’s force, “we went to the Sicachas, where we had not been,” previously. “This nation is very numerous; they count at least four thousand warriors; have an abundance of peltry.” But Tonty, in 1693, noted the tribe as having “2,000 warriors.” By 1720-21 that the Chickasaws were a thorn in the side of the French is demonstrated by Charlevoix and Diron D’Artaguette. For all their accounts, see Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, passim. In the closing years of the seventeenth century Carolina traders were among the Chickasaws, initiating a commerce that Adair carried forward. For later glimpses: Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 217; for a few customs, Bossu, Travels in Louisiana, passim; Roman’s East and West Florida, and authorities later cited. Having in view the part played by the Chickasaws in aiding the English in holding the Mississippi Valley against the French, all too scant attention has been paid to that gallant and remarkable nation of red men by the historians of America.

[203]. The best account of the Natchez Indians is Swanton’s Lower Tribes, passim, supplemented by his Early History of the Creeks.

[204]. For the three humiliatingly unsuccessful campaigns of the French against the Chickasaws, due to their giving asylum to the Natchez, see: Primary, Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Archives, I, passim; Ga. Col. Recs., XXI and XXII, and Shea’s reprint of [Bouache] Journal de la Guerre du Micissippi contre les Chicachas en 1739-40, translation in Claiborne’s Mississippi. Secondary, Pickett’s History of Alabama, Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, and Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, chs. IV and V.

[205]. Confirmation: Williams, op. cit., chs. V and VI. Most of the Chickasaw sallies were from the Bluffs in West Tennessee, at the site of Memphis and above.

[206]. Not only the French but their Indians: “Both French and Indians stand in awe of them.” Williams, op. cit., 29.

[207]. In the treaties of 1818 (Shelby-Jackson) and 1832 (Coffee-Colbert). As to the latter, Jackson, then President, wrote: “All things considered, I think it is a good one, and surely the religious enthusiasts or those who have been weeping over the oppression of the Indians will not find fault with it for want of liberality or justice to the Indians.” This expressed hope of Adair was measurably (but barely so) proved to be true. Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, IV, 483, and Williams, op. cit., App. A and B.

[208]. See n. 271, p. 484 post.

[209]. The reference is to Gen. Phineas Lyman’s scheme for a colony, Georgiana. Williams, op. cit., 18.

[210]. It is this point, well made by Adair, that our historians have failed fully to grasp or appreciate. The fate of the lower Mississippi Valley might have been otherwise but for the Chickasaws; not once but twice—first against the French but later against the Spaniards.

[211]. Of widespread culture among other tribes. See Bartram, Travels, 38, 421.

[212]. Used by the Indians in concocting the “black drink”; as to which see n. 22, p. 49 ante.

[213]. Ginseng is yet gathered wild and even cultivated for commerce in the mountains. As to the use made of it by the aborigines: Mooney, Myths, 421, 425, 505, and Sacred Formulas, 326.

[214]. If we assume that Adair wrote these words in 1768, then almost at the time the first steps were being taken by such people on their own initiative to found settlements on the Holston and Watauga Rivers, which were to become the seed-plot of the civilization of the Upper Southwest.

[215]. To the Natchez Country left open to settlement by the king’s proclamation of 1763.

[216]. Charles Town was the first center of the Indian trade. From that place prior to 1700 traders had reached the Indian tribes on the Mississippi; in that year they were found there by the French. McCrady says that many of the early fortunes of Charleston families were built up by the Indian trade. This is more than can be said of the traders, who adventured themselves into the wilderness encompassed by manifold dangers to make possible the merchants’ fortunes. Augusta followed as chief mart. “It was laid out in the beginning of the year 1736, and thrives prodigiously. It is the chief place of trade with the Indians. There are several warehouses in it well furnished with goods for the Indian trade.... There are five large boats which belong to different inhabitants of the town, and carry about nine thousand weight of deer skins, each; and last year about one hundred thousand weight of skins was brought from there. All the Indian traders from both provinces of South Carolina and Georgia, resort thither in the spring. In June, 1739, the traders, pack-horsemen, servants, townsmen and others dependent upon that business, made about six hundred whites who live by the trade in the Indian nations. Each hunter is reckoned to get three hundred weight of deer skins in a year, which is a very advantageous trade to England, for the deer skins, beaver and other furs are chiefly paid for in woolen goods and iron.” An Impartial Inquiry, London, 1741, also in Ga. Hist. Coll. I, 153 et seq. Among the traders of Adair’s early period as a trader may be mentioned a few not elsewhere named who traded to the Chickasaws: Thos. Welch, James Alford, John Chester, James Welch, John Buckles, John Brown, Thomas Andrews, Wm. McMullian, Augustine Smith, Jerome Courtonne, John Tanner, Benj. Sealey, John Smith, Richard McCully and Francis Underwood. For traders to the Cherokees: Rothrock, Carolina Traders Among the Overhill Cherokees, 1690-1760, E. T. Hist. Soc. Pub., I, 3 et seq.

[217]. Set out, article by article, with prices in the proceedings of the Congress.

[218]. Lt. Col. Wedderburn, chief military officer of West Florida.

[219]. Charles Stuart, a younger brother of John Stuart, was deputy for many years prior to the War of the Revolution.

[220]. James Colbert, who was to become a great leader of the Chickasaws.

[221]. George Craghan or Croghan, whose career is set forth in Volwiler, George Croghan, and the Westward Movement. There is evidence that Craghan or one of his agents was on the Tennessee River in the Tennessee Country prior to 1756.

[222]. Kaskaskia, in the Illinois Country.

[223]. Was this a Joseph Greer of the Valley of Virginia? Andrew Greer, of the Watauga Settlement, was somewhat later a trader to the Cherokees.

[224]. Supplementing Adair’s statements as to the strength of the Chickasaws, only a few authorities are here quoted: Sir Nathaniel Johnson, Sept. 17, 1708, stated in a report that “the Chikysaws have at least 600 men. These Indians are stout and warlike.... Slaves is what we have in exchange for our goods, which these people take from several nations of Indians that live beyond them.” Rivers, Historical Sketch of South Carolina, 238. In 1715, the census taken by South Carolina authorities gave 700 warriors. Gov. Bull, of South Carolina (1742): “They do not exceed 400 men.” Royal Com. Hist. MSS., Appendix IV, 269. After the attrition of three wars with the French, John Buckles, a trader among them, reported this estimate in 1754: “Able gunmen, 340; old men between 50 and 70 years, 25; young boys, 155. As to the number of women in the nation ... every fellow has at least 2 or 3 wives; and young girls there may be about the same number as the boys, or they may exceed.” Maj. Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, stated that in 1762 “they can raise 500 fighting men.” Two years later (1764) Capt. Thomas Hutchins estimated 750 warriors. For other figures: Swanton, Early Creeks, 449.

[225]. On methods of warfare: Bartram, Travels, 211; Gatschet, Migration Legend, 167; Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 57 et seq., 93, 102; Smith’s Captivity, 153, 163; Hodge, Handbook, II, 915, and Morgan, League of the Iroquois, I, 68, 72, 300 et seq.

[226]. On scalping: Hodge, Handbook, II, 482.

[227]. An instance is given by DeBrahm. Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 193.

[228]. Tattooing was practiced by Indians generally; the ink differed; by some charred box-elder was used, by others the dripping of rich pine-roots; the pricking was done by sharp flint points, sharp bone or gar’s tooth, and, in the West, cactus spines. Most tribes had one or more persons expert in the art. See, also, Bartram, Travels, 482 et seq.

[229]. Instances are numerous in the history of the American Indians.

[230]. In which he recites his war-like deeds, as by way of a swan-song.

[231]. This, it is believed, is the best description extant of torture at the stake.

[232]. A Seneca warrior from the North. Mooney, Myths, 491.

[233]. Gen. Oglethorpe: “In case of murder, the next in blood is obliged to kill the murderer, or else he is looked upon as infamous in the nation where he lives. There is no coersive power in that government.” Gentlemen’s Magazine (London) for 1733, p. 413.

[234]. Gatschet, Migration Legend, 136.

[235]. On these titles among the Cherokees: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 194n.

[236]. For aid rendered by the Southern Indians to Oglethorpe: Harris, Memorials, 224; and the Chickasaws, Ga. Hist. Coll., I, 270, 277.

[237]. All authorities are in agreement: Bartram, Travels, 212; Lawson, History of Carolina, 287; Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 79; Mooney, Myths, lxviii, 434, 465; see p. 120 ante.

[238]. The fullest and best account is by Mooney, The Cherokee Ball Play, reprint from Am. Anthropologist, April, 1890; also in Myths, passim; also, Bartram, Travels, 506. For a game played for the amusement of the Duke of Orleans (King Louis Philippe) in 1797, Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 437.

[239]. The best account of the game and yard where played is Bartram’s in Observations, 34, and Myer, Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tennessee, 515. See also, Mooney, Myths, 434, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 99; and Jones, Antiquities, 341-2.

[240]. The discoidal stone used somewhat resembled the discus of the Greek athletes; wrought of quartz. Travelers among the Creeks remark their grace in the game. “Nearly all the fine specimens that enrich the public and private collections of other States have been found in the valleys of Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.” Thurston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 263, where illustrations may be found; also in Harrington, Remains on Upper Tennessee River, 236.

[241]. Consult on modes of fishing: Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 327 et seq.; Bartram’s Observations, 44.

[242]. In the American Pioneer, of Cincinnati, I, 143, Barker gives an interesting account of the Chickasaws fishing in Duck River in Middle Tennessee (1805). He observed the Indians in their canoes pursuing large fishes which swarmed in that beautiful stream in the domain claimed by them; and taking great numbers by the use of long cane spears. Cane grew there in profusion. The spears “were sixteen or eighteen feet in length, sharpened with a knife into a lancet shape at one end, and were thrown with great dexterity twenty or thirty feet; seldom failing to pierce a fish through at every throw. This was doubtless an invention of great antiquity, and practiced by their fathers ages before the use of iron was known amongst them.”

[243]. For a similar account: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 69.

[244]. Consult Jones, op. cit., 269-286, and illustrations.

[245]. On Indian agriculture: Bartram, Travels, 509; Jones, op. cit., 296-320; Timberlake, 68.

[246]. Consult on construction of dwelling houses: Jones, op. cit., 35, 39; Bartram, Travels, 365; Timberlake, 84.

[247]. Maize or com was also the dependence of the pioneer whites. Its importance in the history of the West cannot be overly emphasized. See Jones, op. cit., 297-301; Mooney, Myths, 421, 423, 471, 481.

[248]. Jones describes this stone, op. cit., 315-20.

[249]. Accord, Bartram, Travels, 38.

[250]. Wild strawberry vines matted the earth where there were barrens; the ripe “berries covered the ground as with a red cloth.” (F. A. Michaux, 1803.)

[251]. There was the wild or pig potato, indigenous and ancestors of the cultivated potato, and the artichoke.

[252]. Ante. p. 4.

[253]. For hot-house, see Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 35: “A little hut joined to the house, in which a fire is continually kept, and the heat so great that cloaths are not to be borne the coldest day in the winter.” Also, Jones, op. cit., 16.

[254]. There is no difficulty in finding ample corroboration of Adair’s description of the lower class of Indian traders. One of the best summaries is that of Rivers in his Topics in the History of South Carolina: “Many were dissolute and worthless, and were despised even by the savages. Many conciliated favor and insured safety by adopting Indian habits and marrying among them.”

[255]. Rivers, also, takes Adair’s distinction: “But, on the other hand, some were gentlemen who doubtless would have achieved renown in the most arduous duties of a public career.”

[256]. Not only the Indians but the whites, particularly the French hunters out of New Orleans, were responsible for the extirpation of the buffalo from the region east of the Mississippi. The tale is told in Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, 10 et seq., 245. In early times the American bison ranged in great herds through the Southeast and Old Southwest. Some writers have questioned whether it ever existed in the Southeast below North Carolina; but in the first settlement of Georgia they were as abundant as they were in Tennessee and Kentucky. “Col. Wm. McIntosh, the brother of Gen. Lachland McIntosh, my grandfather, has often told me that he had seen ten thousand buffaloes in a herd.... My father, whose Indian establishements (as Bartram’s book shows) extended to St. Mark’s, was constantly supplied with buffalo tongues, until as late as 1774, as my mother has often stated to me.” Thos. Spalding in Ga. Hist. Coll., I, 268. For the buffalo in North Carolina, see Byrd’s Dividing Line. In East Tennessee, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 47, 71, 120. In Middle Tennessee, Haywood’s History of Tennessee, 90. They are said to have been of late arrival, comparatively, in the region east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio. None of the De Soto narrators mentions the animal. The flesh and butter were food; the wool was used in making rough cloth; the skins for bedding. The hide was a symbol of protection to the early Cherokees; hence it was often given as a pledge. Worn by ardent lovers of the tribe, it was the mute offering of protection to the maid, chosen to preside over the warrior’s household.

[257]. Byrd, in Dividing Line, mentions a queer belief of the North Carolina Indians that the eating of bear’s flesh by women promotes vitality and makes child-bearing easy.

[258]. The flesh from the hump and rump was considered the choicest, next to the tongue.

[259]. Jones, op. cit., 311, citing Du Pratz, II, 225, and Loskiel’s History, etc., 67. Even the whites, in their first year on the frontier, of necessity used the mortar, and as late as 1820 in the Old Southwest. Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee.

[260]. Some of the Chickasaw women are described as being of surpassing beauty. In 1762 Maj. Robert Rogers described them as “far exceeding in beauty any other nation to the Southward.” Cushman: “Seldom have I looked upon specimens of female grace and loveliness as I have seen among the Chickasaws three quarters of a century ago in their former homes east of the Mississippi River.... Their eyes were dark and full and their countenances like their native clime.... They were truly beautiful and, best of all, unconsciously so. Oft was I at a loss which most to admire—the graceful and seemingly perfect forms, finely chiseled features, lustrous eyes and flowing hair, or that soft, winning artlessness which was preëminently theirs.” History, etc., 488; also, Du Pratz, History, 366, 376. The men are described as handsome, beyond other tribes in the South. For mode of courtship, Cushman, op. cit., 498; and chastity, 232, 267.

[261]. The town or council house is best described in Bartram’s Observations (Creeks and Cherokees) pp. 52-57 and in Gatschet, Migration Legend, II, 186. See also, Thomas, Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times, 63, 64, and Myer, Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tennessee, 510 et seq.

[262]. Perhaps John Wright of the Georgia Colony.

[263]. Compare Bartram, Travels, 499-502.

[264]. Best account, with illustrations, Jones, op. cit., 383-412; also, Timberlake Memoirs, 64, 78; Catlin, Illustrations of Manners, etc., of American Indians, I, 235.

[265]. For a fairly elaborate account, see Speck’s Decorative Art and Basketry of the Cherokee. (1920.)

[266]. Jones, op. cit., 440-446; Timberlake, 86; Bartram, Travels, 6. The pottery of the Cherokees was moulded from clay and glazed by holding in the smoke and heat of burning corn meal bran. Payne MSS., VI, 65. See, also, Myer, Prehistoric Villages in Tennessee, 522.

[267]. Plain and bold words at the time of publication.

[268]. On titles, see n. 235, p. 426 ante. The English were insistent upon dubbing chieftains “Emperor,” “King,” and even “General.”

[269]. On Cherokee charity, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 92; Chickasaws, Cushman, History, etc., 493. Also, Gatschet, op. cit., 97.

[270]. Court houses.

[271]. Adair is here the advocate of the proposed Colony of Georgiana, which he mentions at least three times at various places in his book, pp. 251, 294, and here. He censures the policy of the English Government in restricting, by the king’s proclamation of 1763, settlements west of the Alleghany Mountains, and refusing to found or encourage colonies in the West, particularly on the Mississippi. A pamphlet appeared in London in 1772, entitled Political Essays Concerning the Present State of the British Empire, in which the establishment of a new colony east of the Mississippi between the thirty-third degree of latitude stretching to the Ohio River. This was the country of the Chickasaws. The following year another pamphlet appeared in advocacy of the undertaking as one already formulated. The scheme was, it seems, that of Gen. Phineas Lyman, revived. The location earlier or first sought was the territory between the Wolf River (Memphis) and the Illinois River, with an eastward extent of three hundred miles. It was then proposed to buy the Indian titles, which “could be easily obtained for a small price, as bringing them nearer home many conveniences that results from the neighborhood of Europeans.” The scheme was revived in 1772-3; and this time the promoters thought it wise to give the colony the name of the king, “Georgiana”; and to ask for less territory—that included in what is now North Mississippi, West Tennessee, and Western Kentucky—the exact domain of the Chickasaws. Was Adair, on visiting New York, or London, to bring out his book, approached to become one of the promoting syndicate to get the benefit of his influence with that tribe among whom he had resided so long? An inference in the affirmative is not a strained one. The Revolutionary War forced the scheme into a back eddy.

[272]. The Tennessee was called the Cherokee River for generations.

[273]. The Chickasaw Bluffs in the present West Tennessee, on the lower of which stands the city of Memphis. For these bluffs and the region in history, see Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, 1541-1841, passim. The remarks of Adair on cotton and tobacco in this region were proved to be true after its settlement by the white people following the Chickasaw treaty of 1818, negotiated by Gov. Isaac Shelby and Gen. Andrew Jackson.

Transcriber’s Note

The punctuation in the Index is not entirely consistent, and has been corrected. Here are some other issues with the Index:

Incorrect references are given as printed, but the navigational links will bring the reader to the correct place.

The editor of this volume indicated that he took care to reproduce Adair’s “punctuation, spelling and capitalization”, an injunction honored here. We assume that his edition was performed accurately, though several apparent lapses have been corrected after consultation with Adair’s original 1775 text. The long ‘ſ’ of the original was printed as a standard ‘s’, but one instance was missed (‘enfeſtment’ on p. viii.).

The editor’s own notes (c. 1930) have been, on rare occasions, subject to correction where those errors have been deemed most likely to be the printer’s. All substantive corrections are noted below. The references are to the page and line in the original, or if in a footnote, the page, note and line.

[viii.8]to order his enfe[f/s]tmentReplaced
[xxx.22]Sud-und Nord-Karolina [a/u]nd VirginienReplaced.
[4.III.5]a large body of the [C/S]hawanoReplaced.
[5.37]from their christian neighoursInserted.
[25.13]When I pas[s/t] that wayReplaced.
[43.5]“Tahre lakkana[”]Added.
[47.30]“The fat of the corn.[”]Added.
[48.5]in forming [איש] and אישאRotated.
[71.6]In like man[n]erInserted.
[76.41]“If I ate, I should be fully satisfied.[”]Added.
[77.23]“strait, even, or right;[”]Added.
[78.30]Here I can[n]ot forbear remarkingAdded.
[114.28]and other bitter deco[c]tions>Added.
[137.2]Ahiskola Awa, Ooka Ho[m/o]meh IshtoReplaced.
[159.13]they observe that Mos[ia/ai]c preceptTransposed.
[159.16]the Jewish pri[e]stsInserted.
[159.31]The Muskoh[o]geRemoved.
[201.19]“the hair of one’s head,[”]Added.
[229.3]The fo[il/li]age of which is always greenTransposed.
[251.4]as the Egypti[o/a]ns didReplaced.
[298.24]were great lose[r]s in the warInserted.
[324.40]conven[ei/ie]nt convenientTransposed.
[363.16]they were orginally enduedInserted.
[396.37]di[ff/ss]identsLong ſ misread.