[81]. Bartram, practically in accord, describes the burial customs of the Creeks. Travels, 514; and see Roman, A Concise Natural History of East and West Florida, 71, 89; Bossu, Travels, I, 257.
[82]. Mourning customs varied in different tribes. See, generally, Hodge, Handbook, 951, and Swanton, Early Creeks, 372 et seq. Twelve months was the period for the widow’s mourning among the Chickasaws. Cushman, History of the Indians, 497.
[83]. Confirmed by Juan Morfi in his History of Province of Texas. (Kingsborough.)
[84]. In accord: Lawson’s History of Carolina, 187.
[85]. Swanton, Early Creeks, 13.
[86]. This fact is confusing to a researcher. For example, three names, each at various stages of their careers, were borne by the Cherokee chiefs Attakullakulla and Ostenaco.
[87]. Schoolcraft, Information Indian Tribes, I, 309 et seq., gives the story as told by old men of the Chickasaws: That tribe came from the West; a part of the tribe remaining in the West. The migrants carried a pole which they planted in the ground at night, and the next morning they would go in the direction it was found to be leaning. They continued eastward across the Mississippi until they arrived at Chickasaw Old Fields, where, the pole standing erect, they settled. Cushman (History of the Choctaw, etc., Indians, 62) gives the same tradition as being handed down by old men to missionaries in 1820, and that the Indians at the time named the “great water” Misha Sipokni (the Mississippi). Buttrick gives a migration legend of the Chickasaws coming from the West across a great river; and the tradition fixes the crossing place at the bluffs, later known as the Chickasaw Bluffs, on one of which stands the city of Memphis.
[88]. Consult Swanton, Lower Tribes, 252.
[89]. Lord Kingsborough’s comment: This criticism from a person wholly ignorant of the Spanish language, as was Adair, cannot carry weight. Adair did not know that many of the Spanish monks and friars advocated his theory of the Indians being descendants from the Jews. Had he been, it is probable that he would have spoken more respectfully of them.
[90]. The reference here, doubtless, is to Colden’s use of yo-ha-han in his book on the Northern Indians. Boudinot, in the Star of the West, 234, says: “The Indians to the northward are said by Mr. Colden, a laborious sensible writer, to repeat yo-ha-han, which, if true, evinces that their corruption advances in proportion as they are distant from South America. It was a material, or rather an essential, mistake to write yo-ha-han, as it is confounding two religious words together. Mr. Adair was assured by Sir William Johnson, as well as by Rev. Mr. Ogilvie, a missionary with the Mohawks, that the Northern Indians always pronounced the words of their songs, y-ho-he, a or ah; and so Mr. Colden altered them in the second edition of his history.”