The orthography of the name is given variously by the older writers, Apahlahche, Abolachi, Apeolatei, Appallatta, &c., and very frequently without the first letter, Palaxy, Palatcy. Daniel Coxe, indeed, fancifully considered this first vowel the Arabic article a, al, prefixed by the Spaniards to the native word.[130] Its derivation has been a questio vexata among Indianologists; Heckewelder[131] identified it with Lenape or Wapanaki, “which name the French in the south as easily corrupted into Apalaches as in the north to Abenakis,” and other writers have broached equally loose hypothesis. Adair[132] mentions a Chikasah town, Palacheho, evidently from the same root; but it is not from this tongue nor any of its allies, that we must explain its meaning, but rather consider it an indication of ancient connections with the southern continent, and in itself a pure Carib word. Apáliché in the Tamanaca dialect of the Guaranay stem on the Orinoco signifies man,[133] and the earliest application of the name in the northern continent was as a title of the chief of a country, l’homme par excellence,[134] and hence, like very many other Indian tribes (Apaches, Lenni Lenape, Illinois,) his subjects assumed by eminence the proud appellation of The Men. How this foreign word came to be imported will be considered hereafter. Among the tribes that made up the confederacy, probably only one partook of the warring and energetic blood of the Caribs; or it may have been assumed in emulation of a famous neighbor; or it may have been a title of honor derived from the esoteric language of a foreign priesthood, instances of which are not rare among the aborigines.
In the writings of the first discoverers they uniformly hold a superior position as the most polished, the most valorous, and the most united tribe in the region where they dwelt. The fame of their intrepidity reached to distant nations. “Keep on, robbers and traitors,” cried the Indians near the Withlacooche to the soldiers of De Soto, “in Apalache you will receive that chastisement your cruelty deserves.” When they arrived at this redoubted province they found cultivated fields stretching on either hand, bearing plentiful crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, and plums,[135] whose possessors, a race large in stature, of great prowess, and delighting in war, inhabited numerous villages containing from fifty to three hundred, spacious and commodious dwellings, well protected against hostile incursions. The French colonists heard of them as distinguished for power and wealth, having good store of gold, silver, and pearls, and dwelling near lofty mountains to the north; and Fontanedo, two years a prisoner in their power, lauds them as “les meilleurs Indiens de la Floride,” and describes their province as stretching far northward to the snow-covered mountains of Onagatano abounding in precious metals.[136]
About a century subsequent to these writers, we find a very minute and extraordinary account of a nation called Apalachites, indebted for its preservation principally to the work of the Abbé Rochefort. It has been usually supposed a creation of his own fertile brain, but a careful study of the subject has given me a different opinion. The original sources of his information may be entirely lost, but that they actually existed can be proved beyond reasonable doubt. They were a series of ephemeral publications by an “English gentleman” about 1656, whose name is variously spelled Bristol, Bristok, Brigstock, and Bristock, the latter being probably the correct orthography. He had spent many years in the West Indies and North America, was conversant with several native tongues, and had visited Apalacha in 1653. Besides the above-mentioned fragmentary notes, he promised a complete narrative of his residence and journeys in the New World, but apparently never fulfilled his intention. Versions of his account are found in various writers of the age. The earliest is given by Rochefort[137], and was translated with the rest of the work of that author by Davies[138], who must have consulted the original tract of Bristock as he adds particulars not found in the Abbé’s history. Others are met with in the writings of the Geographus Ordinarius, Nicolas Sanson d’ Abbeville[139], in the huge tomes of Ogilby[140] and his high and low Dutch paraphrasers Arnoldus Montanus[141] and Oliver Dapper,[142] in Oldmixon’s history,[143] quite fully in the later compilation that goes under the name of Baumgarten’s History of America,[144] and in our own days has been adverted to by the distinguished Indianologist H. R. Schoolcraft in more than one of his works. It consists of two parts, the one treating of the traditions, the other of the manners and customs of the Apalachites. In order to place the subject in the clearest light I shall insert a brief epitome of both.
The Apalachites inhabited the region called Apalacha between 33° 25´ and 37° north latitude. By tradition and language they originated from northern Mexico, where similar dialects still existed.[145] The Cofachites were a more southern nation, scattered at first over the vast plains and morasses to the south along the Gulf of Mexico (Theomi), but subsequently having been reduced by the former nation, they settled a district called Amana, near the mountains of Apalacha, and from this circumstance received the name Caraibe or Carib, meaning “bold, warlike men,” “strangers,” and “annexed nation.” In after days, increasing in strength and retaining their separate existence, they asserted independence, refused homage to the king of Apalacha, and slighted the worship of the sun. Wars consequently arose, extending at intervals over several centuries, resulting in favor of the Cofachites, whose dominion ultimately extended from the mountains in the north to the shores of the Gulf and the river St. Johns on the south. Finding themselves too weak to cope openly with such a powerful foe, the Apalachites had recourse to stratagem. Taking advantage of a temporary peace, their priests used the utmost exertions to spread abroad among their antagonists a religious veneration of the sun and a belief in the necessity of an annual pilgrimage to his sacred mountain Olaimi in Apalacha. So well did their plan succeed, that when at the resumption of hostilities, the Apalachites forbade the ingress of all pilgrims but those who would do homage to their king, a schism, bitter and irreconcileable, was brought about among the Cofachites. Finally peace was restored by a migration of those to whom liberty was dearer than religion, and a submission of the rest to the Apalachites, with whom they became amalgamated and lost their identity. Their more valiant companions, after long wanderings through unknown lands in search of a home, finally locate themselves on the southern shore of Florida. Islanders from the Bahamas, driven thither by storms, tell them of lands, fertile and abounding in game, yet uninhabited and unclaimed, lying to the southwards; they follow their advice and direction, traverse the Gulf of Florida, and settle the island of Ayay, now Santa Cruz. From this centre colonies radiated, till the majority of the islands and no small portion of the southern mainland was peopled by their race.
Such is the sum of Bristock’s singular account. It is either of no credibility whatever, or it is a distorted version of floating, dim traditions, prevalent among the indigenes of the West Indies and the neighboring parts of North America. I am inclined to the latter opinion, and think that Bristock, hearing among the Caribs rumors of a continent to the north, and subsequently finding powerful nations there, who, in turn, knew of land to the south and spoke of ancient wars and migrations, wove the fragments together, filled up the blanks, and gave it to the world as a veritable history. To support this view, let us inquire whether any knowledge of each other actually existed between the inhabitants of the islands and the northern mainland, and how far this knowledge extended.
The reality of the migration, though supported by some facts, must be denied of the two principal races, the Caribs and Arowauks, who peopled the islands at the time of their discovery. The assertions of Barcia, Herrera, and others that they were originally settled by Indians from Florida have been abundantly disproved by the profound investigations of Alphonse D’Orbigny in South America.[146] On the other hand, that the Cubans and Lucayans had a knowledge of the peninsula not only in the form of myths but as a real geographical fact, even having specific names in their own tongues for it (Cautio, Jaguaza), is declared by the unanimous voice of historians.
The most remarkable of these myths was that of the fountain of life, placed by some in the Lucayos, but generally in a fair and genial land to the north.[147] From the tropical forests of Central America to the coral-bound Antilles the natives told the Spaniards marvellous tales of a fountain whose magic waters would heal the sick, rejuvenate the aged, and confer an ever-youthful immortality. It may have originated in a confused tradition of a partial derivation from the mainland and subsequent additions thence received from time to time, or more probably from the adoration of some of the very remarkable springs abundant on the peninsula, perchance that wonderful object the Silver Spring,[148] round which I found signs of a dense early population, its virtues magnified by time, distance, and the arts of priests. We know how intimately connected is the worship of the sun with the veneration of water; heat typifying the masculine, moisture the feminine principle. The universality of their association in the Old World cosmogonies and mythologies is too well-known to need specification, and it is quite as invariable in those of the New Continent. That such magnificent springs as occur in Florida should have become objects of special veneration, and their fame bruited far and wide, and handed down from father to son, is a most natural consequence in such faiths.[149]
Certain it is that long before these romantic tales had given rise to the expeditions of De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, many natives of the Lucayos, of Cuba, even of Yucatan and Honduras,[150] had set out in search of this mystic fount. Many were lost, while some lived to arrive on the Floridian coast, where finding it impossible either to proceed or return, they formed small villages, “whose race,” adds Barcia,[151] writing in 1722, “is still in existence” (cuia generacion aun dura). This statement, which the cautious investigator Navarrete confirms,[152] seems less improbable when we reflect that in after times it was no uncommon incident for the natives of Cuba to cross the Gulf of Florida in their open boats to escape the slavery of the Spaniards,[153] that the Lucayans had frequent communication with the mainland,[154] that the tribes of South Florida, as early as 1695, carried on a considerable trade with Havana,[155] that the later Indians on the Suwannee would on their trading excursions not only descend this river in their large cypress canoes, but proceed “quite to the point of Florida, and sometimes cross the Gulph, extending their navigations to the Bahama islands and even to Cuba,”[156] and finally that nothing was more common to such a seafaring nation as the Caribs than a voyage of this length.[157]
Another remarkable myth, which certainly points for its explanation to an early and familiar intercourse between the islands and the mainland, is the singular geognostic tradition prevalent among the Lucayans, preserved by Peter of Anghiera, to the effect that this archipelago was originally united to the continent by firm land.[158] Doubtless it was on such grounds that the Spaniards concluded that they owed their original settlement to migrations from the Floridian peninsula.
Turning our attention now to this latter land, we should have cause to be surprised did we not find signs that such adventurous navigators as the Caribs had planned and executed incursions and settlements there. That these signs are so sparse and unsatisfactory, we owe not so much to their own rarity as to the slight weight attached to such things by the early explorers and discoverers. From the accounts we do possess, however, there can be no doubt but that vestiges of the Caribbean tongue, if not whole tribes identical with them in language and customs, have been met with from time to time on the peninsula.[159] The striking similarity in the customs of flattening the forehead, in poisoning weapons, in the use of hollow reeds to propel arrows, in the sculpturing on war clubs, construction of dwellings, exsiccation of corpses,[160] burning the houses of the dead, and other rites, though far from conclusive are yet not without a decided weight. It is much to be regretted that Adair has left us no fuller information of those seven tribes on the Koosah river, who spoke a different tongue from the Muskohge and preserved “a fixed oral tradition that they formerly came from South America, and after sundry struggles in defence of liberty settled their present abode.”[161]