[21]. The “Lower Path” from Charles Town west is referred to. The “Upper Path” is described in a later chapter.
[22]. The celebrated “black drink,” general among the Southern Indians, a decoction of the leaves and tender tops and shoots of the cassine shrub of the holly family. The drink repeated caused a sweating which was supposed to purify, physically and morally. The caffeine in the plant produced stimulation and a strong infusion was a narcotic, used as such by the conjurers to evoke ecstasies. “No one is allowed to drink it in council unless he has proved himself a brave warrior.” Bossu, Travels, II, 299; John Bartram’s Observations, 23; Gatschet, Migration Legend of the Creeks; Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, 372; and Harris, Memorials of Oglethorpe, 108. The white people of the Carolinas prepared from the shrub a sort of tea—“Carolina tea” or “Appalachian tea.”
[23]. Pickett, in his History of Alabama, 106, says: “Many of the old Indian countrymen with whom we have conferred believe in their Jewish origin, while others are of a different opinion. Abram Mordecai, an intelligent Jew, who dwelt fifty years in the Creek nation, confidently believed that the Indians were originally of his people, and he asserted that in their Green Corn Dances he had heard them often utter in grateful tones the word Yavoyaha! Yavoyaha! He was always informed by the Indians that they meant Jehovah or the Great Spirit.” Cushman, who was reared in the Choctaw Country in Mississippi, gives like testimony. History of Choctaw, etc., Indians, 20.
[24]. Eleazar Wiggan. See Sir Alexander Cuming’s Journal in Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 123, 128.
[25]. Swanton, Early History of Creeks, 417-18.
[26]. Saponi, mentioned by Lawson and Byrd; later incorporated into the Catawbas and now extinct. Hodge, Handbook, II, 464. The best account of them is by Mooney, Siouan Tribes of The East, 35 et seq.
[27]. Sometimes Chakchiuma or, in Choctaw, Shakchi-humma (red crawfish). Cushman says they were overbearing and exterminated as a tribe by the Chickasaws and Choctaws about the year 1721. History of the Indians, 242. But the statement is disproved by the report of Perier to Maurepas, 1733, of a battle between the Chickasaw and Natchez Indians, on the one side, and the Chakchiumas on the other. Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Arch., I, 166, 281, 340. See also, Swanton, Lower Tribes, 29; Gatschet Migration Legend, 98; and Hodge, Handbook, 231. They are referred to later by Adair.
[28]. Cyrus Byington, a missionary among the Choctaws, prepared a dictionary and a grammar of their speech, which works are highly regarded by philologists. For his remarks on Adair in these works: Proceedings of Am. Philos. Soc., XII, 317-67; Bulletin 46, Bureau of Am. Ethnology.
[29]. On time-keeping consult Hodge, Handbook, I, 189, where it is said that the Creeks counted 12½ moons to the year, adding a moon at the end of every second year, somewhat as did the Kiowas. See also Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 354 et seq. (Eng. Ed. 336).
[30]. Confirmation: Hodge, Handbook, I, 353.