My attention has been called by a literary friend, to your notice of Mr. Brantz Mayer’s report on the subject of a national name, or distinctive synonyme for our country. Mr. Mayer having chosen to reflect upon the antiquarian value of the historical research involved in the inquiry, I feel called upon, as a member of the committee of the New-York Historical Society, before whom this question was discussed, to say a few words in reply.
“The following quotation from my ‘Glossary of Anglo-Indian Words,' will best set forth my personal connection with the subject as a member of the society, and a humble laborer in the field of aboriginal antiquities, who is ready at all suitable times, to give authority for the use of whatever Indian terms he may employ.
”Alleghan, an obsolete aboriginal noun proper, applied adjectively both in French and English, to an ancient and long extinct people in North America, and likewise to the most prominent chain of mountains within the regions over which they are supposed to have borne sway.”
Our authorities respecting the ancient Alleghans, are not confined to the very late period, i. e. 1819,[92] which is alone quoted, and exclusively relied on by the learned secretary of the Maryland Historical Society. Nor do they leave us in doubt, that this ancient people, who occupy the foreground of our remote aboriginal history, were a valiant, noble and populous race, who were advanced in arts and the policy of government, and raised fortifications for their defence. (N. Y. Hist. Col. vol. 2, p. 89, 91.) While they held a high reputation as hunters, they cultivated maize extensively, which enabled them to live in large towns; (Davies’ Hist. Car. Isds.) and erected those antique fortifications which are extended over the entire Mississippi valley, as high as latitude 43°, and the lake country, reaching from Lake St. Clair (Am. Phil. Trans.) to the south side of the Niagara ridge (the old shore of Lake Ontario) and the country of the Onondagas and Oneidas (Clinton’s Dis. N. Y. Hist. Soc. vol. 2.) Towards the south, they extended as far as the borders of the Cherokees and Muscogees.[93] From the traditions of Father Raymond, they were worshippers of the sun, had an order of priesthood, and exercised a sovereignty over a very wide area of country. (His. Carib. Isds. Paris, 1658. London ed. of 1666, p. 204, et seq.)
[92] Trans. Hist. and Lit. Com. Am. Phil. Soc. Vol. 1, Philadelphia, 1819.
[93] Seneca tradition, N. Y. Hist. Col. vol. 2.
At what era the Alleghan confederacy, thus shadowed forth, existed and fell in North America, we do not know. Our Indian nations have no certain chronology, and we must establish data by contemporaneous tradition of the Mexican nations, or by internal antiquarian evidence.
The “Old Fort” discovered by Dr. Locke in Highland Co. Ohio in 1838, denoted a period of 600 years from its abandonment,[94] that is, 284 years before Christopher Columbus first sailed boldly into the Western ocean. The trees on Grave Creek mound denote the abandonment of the trenches and stone look-outs in that vicinity to have been in 1338. (Trans. Am. Ethnological Society, vol. 1, N. Y. 1845.) The ramparts at Marietta had a tree decayed in the heart, but the concentric outer circles, which could be counted, were 463. (Clinton’s Dis.) The live oaks on the low mounds of Florida, where one of the Algonquin tribes, namely, the Shawnees, aver that they once lived and had been preceded by a people more advanced in arts (Vide Arch. Am. vol. 1.) denote their abandonment about 1145. But even these data do not, probably reach back sufficiently far, to denote the true period.
[94] Cincinnati Gazette.
If we fix upon the twelfth century as the era of the fall of the Alleghan race, we shall not probably over estimate the event. They had probably reached the Mississippi valley, a century or two before, having felt, in their original position, west and south of that stream, the great revolutionary movements which preceded the overthrow of the Toltec and the establishment of the Aztec empire in Mexican America.