In 1688 a number of Apalachi chiefs (caciques) addressed a letter of complaint to Charles the Second, king of Spain (†1700), concerning the exactions to which their former governors had subjected them, and other topics relating to their actual condition. The towns mentioned in the letter are San Luis de Apalachi, Ibitachuco, Pattali, Santa Cruz, Talpatqui, Vasisa, San Marcos. The original, with its Spanish translation, was reproduced in a fac-simile edition in 1860 by Buckingham Smith (fol.), and other documents written in Apalachi are preserved in the archives of Havana, the seat of the archbishopric, to which Apalachi and all the other settlements comprised within the diocese of St. Helena belonged.
Christianized Apalachis, who had been frequently raided by Alibamu Indians, fled in 1705 to the French colony at Mobile, where Governor de Bienville gave them lands and grain-seed to settle between the Mobilian and Tohome tribe; cf. Pénicaut in Margry V, 461. 485, where their religious festivals and other customs are described. Like the Apalachis, the tribe of the heathen Taouachas had quitted the Spanish territory for being harassed by the Alibamu, and fled southwest to the French, who settled them on Mobile river, one league above the Apalachis (1710; in Margry V, 485-487). Some Cha'hta refugees had been settled at the "Anse des Chactas," on Mobile bay, the year preceding. In the nineteenth century the last remnants of the Apalachi tribe were living on the Bayou Rapide, in Louisiana, and about A. D. 1815 counted fourteen families.
MIKASUKI.
"Miccosukee" is a town of Florida, near the northern border of the State, in Leon county, built on the western shore of the lake of the same name. The tribe established there speaks the Hitchiti language, and must hence have separated from some town or towns of the Lower Creeks speaking that language.
The tribe was reckoned among the Seminole Indians, but does not figure prominently in Indian history before the outbreak of the Seminole war of 1817. It then raised the "red pole" as a sign of war, and became conspicuous as a sort of political centre for these Southern "soreheads." The vocabularies of that dialect show it to be practically identical with that of Hitchiti town. Cf. the comparative table, p. [56]. More notices on this tribe will be found under: Seminole.
HITCHITI.
The Hitchiti tribe, of whose language we present an extensive specimen in this volume, also belongs to the southeastern group, which I have called Apalachian.
Hitchiti town was, in Hawkins' time, established on the eastern bank of Chatahuchi river, four miles below Chiaha. The natives possessed a narrow strip of good land bordering on the river, and had the reputation of being honest and industrious. They obtained their name from Hitchiti creek, so called at its junction with Chatahuchi river, [and in its upper course Ahíki (Ouhe-gee); cf. List] from Creek: ahítchita "to look up (the stream)." They had spread out into two branch settlements: Hitchitúdshi or Little Hitchiti, on both sides of Flint river, below the junction of Kitchofuni creek, which passes through a county named after it; and Tutalósi on Tutalosi creek, a branch of Kitchofuni creek, twenty miles west of Hitchitúdshi (Hawkins, p. 60. 65). The existence of several Hitchiti towns is mentioned by C. Swan in 1791; and Wm. Bartram states that they "speak the Stincard language." There is a popular saying among the Creeks, that the ancient name of the tribe was Atchík'hade, a Hitchiti word which signifies white heap (of ashes).
Some Hitchiti Indians trace their mythic origin to a fall from the sky, but my informants, Chicote and G. W. Stidham, gave me the following tale: "Their ancestors first appeared in the country by coming out of a canebrake or reed thicket (útski in Hitchiti) near the sea coast. They sunned and dried their children during four days, then set out, arrived at a lake and stopped there. Some thought it was the sea, but it was a lake; they set out again, traveled up a stream and settled there for a permanency." Another tradition says that this people was the first to settle at the site of Okmulgi town, an ancient capital of the confederacy.
The tribe was a member of the Creek confederacy and does not figure prominently in history. The first mention I can find of it, is of the year 1733, when Gov. Oglethorpe met the Lower Creek chiefs at Savannah, Ga., to conciliate their tribes in his favor. The "Echetas" had sent their war-chiefs, Chutabeeche and Robin with four attendants (Ch. C. Jones, Tomochichi, p. 28). The Yutchitálgi of our legend, who were represented at the Savannah council of 1735 by "Tomehuichi, dog king of the Euchitaws," are probably the Hitchiti, not the Yuchi. Wm. Bartram calls them (1773) "Echetas" also.