[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.