Paracussi—chief; a generic term.
Bersaykau—vale of cedars.
Akueyas—deer.
Hitanachi—pleasant, beautiful.
Tonatzuli—heavenly singer; the name of a bird sacred to the sun.
Several of these words may be explained from tongues with which we are better acquainted.
Jauas and Pâracussi are words used in the sense they here bear in many early writers; the derivation of the former will be considered hereafter; that of the latter is uncertain. Tlatuici is doubtless identical with Tsalakie, the proper appellation of the Cherokee tribe. Akueyas has a resemblance, though remote, to the Seminole ekko of the same signification. In hitanachi we recognize the Choktah intensitive prefix hhito; and in tonatzuli a compound of the Choktah verb taloa, he sings, in one of its forms, with shutik, Muskohge sootah, heaven or sky. A closer examination would doubtless reveal other analogies, but the above are sufficient to show that these were no mere unmeaning words, coined by a writer’s fancy.
The general result of these inquiries, therefore, is strongly in favor of the authenticity of Bristock’s narrative. Exaggerated and distorted though it be, nevertheless it is the product of actual observation, and deserves to be classed among our authorities, though as one to be used with the greatest caution. We have also found that though no general migration took place from the continent southward, nor from the islands northward, yet there was considerable intercourse in both directions; that not only the natives of the greater and lesser Antilles and Yucatan, but also numbers of the Guaranay stem of the southern continent, the Caribs proper, crossed the Straits of Florida and founded colonies on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; that their customs and language became to a certain extent grafted upon those of the earlier possessors of the soil; and to this foreign language the name Apalache belongs. As previously stated, it was used as a generic title, applied to a confederation of many nations at one time under the domination of one chief, whose power probably extended from the Alleghany mountains on the north to the shore of the Gulf; that it included tribes speaking a tongue closely akin to the Choktah is evident from the fragments we have remaining. This is further illustrated by a few words of “Appalachian,” preserved by John Chamberlayne.[175] These, with their congeners in cognate dialects, are as follows:
| Apalachian. | Choktah. | Muskohge. | |
| Father | kelke | aunkky, unky | ilkhy |
| Heaven | hetucoba | ubbah, intensitive, hhito | |
| Earth | ahan | yahkna | ikahnah |
| Bread | pasca | puska |
The location of the tribe in after years is very uncertain. Dumont placed them in the northern part of what is now Alabama and Georgia, near the mountains that bear their name. That a portion of them did live in this vicinity is corroborated by the historians of South Carolina, who say that Colonel Moore, in 1703, found them “between the head-waters of the Savannah and Altamaha.”[176] De l’Isle, also, locates them between the R. des Caouitas ou R. de Mai and the R. des Chaouanos ou d’Edisco, both represented as flowing nearly parallel from the mountains.