[101]. This is the theory at this day held by leading ethnologists. Two curious statements appear in Boudinot’s Star of the West, p. 235: “Charlevoix, in his history of Canada, says that Father Grillon often told him that, after having labored sometimes in the missions in Canada, he returned to France, and went to China. One day, as he was traveling through Tartary, he met a Huron woman whom he had formerly known in Canada. She told him that, having been taken in war, she had been conducted from nation to nation till she arrived at the place where she then was. There was another missionary, passing by Nantz on his return from China, who related the like story of a woman he had seen from Florida in America. She informed him that she had been taken by certain Indians and given to those of a distant country; and by these again to another nation till she had been thus successively passed from country to country; had traveled regions exceedingly cold, and at last found herself in Tartary, and had there married a Tartar who had passed with the conquerors into China and there settled.”
[102]. Lord Kingsborough ends his reprint and comments here, and concludes by saying that, while Adair had proved his ignorance of the genuine writings of the Spanish historians, yet their frequent agreement with his own relation of facts confirms his veracity.
[103]. The best accounts of the Catawbas are those of two masters in the field of the history of Southern Indians, Mooney (Siouan Tribes of the East, 67-88) and Gatschet (Migration Legend of the Creeks, 15). John Lederer was among them in 1669-70, and describes them as “a cruel generation and prey upon people”; their women “delight much in feather ornaments, of which they have great variety; but hold Peacocks in most esteem because rare in those parts; the men are more effeminate and lazy.” Discoveries (1672), Harpel reprint (1879), p. 24. Lawson was among them in 1701, and gives them the name of Kadaqua. History of North Carolina, 71 et seq.; and Wm. Byrd in his History of the Dividing Line has several references to them. Their country was on the border of the two Carolinas, on the Catawba River. A remnant still resides in York County, S. C.
[104]. The great trading path from Virginia to Georgia passed through the country of the Catawbas, and was known as the “Catawba Path.” This brought the tribe into close contact with the whites, which was unfortunate for the redmen, as it tended to their enfeeblement and decline.
[105]. See accordant comments of Lederer, as early as 1670, in note above.
[106]. One of several attempts of the governments of South Carolina and Georgia to persuade the Chickasaws, hard pressed by the French and their Choctaw allies, to leave their own country and settle on the Savannah River. In 1742 Gov. Bull, of South Carolina, warned Lord Wilmington that French policy looked to the extirpation of the Chickasaws. The effort to use Adair’s influence on his friends, the Chickasaws, must have been about 1748, when Vaudreuil was concerting plans to attack them, as he did in 1752. The Chickasaws were, indeed, sorely pressed, and their plea went to the “King of Carolina” for the return to the nation of the Eastern Chickasaws then living on the Savannah, in order “to enable us to keep our land. ... We hope you will think of us in our poverty, as we have not had the liberty of hunting for three years. We have had enough to do to defend our lands and prevent our women and children being made slaves of the French.” S. C. Archives (1756) 5 Indian Book, 123. Two years before (1754) the Cherokees, induced by the English of South Carolina, actually sent a delegation to the Chickasaws “in order to escort the remains of that brave people into the Cherokee nation.” All persuasion was resisted, and the Chickasaws held their beloved land.
[107]. The boundary of the Eastern Chickasaws, mentioned in a preceding note, was described by their chiefs in 1797, while in treaty at Chickasaw Bluff, site of Memphis: “ten miles square of lands in the State of South Carolina, opposite Augusta on the Savannah River and Horse Creek,” a plat of which was, they said, in the possession of the Secretary of War. This band located there about the end of the Oglethorpe campaign against St. Augustine.
[108]. The South Carolina government urged that of New York to check these attacks; and, in 1750, Governor James Glen threatened to offer a reward for the killing of any Northern Indian in the limits of South Carolina. The next year peace between the two nations was effected at the Albany Conference.
[109]. Lawson in 1701: They were “a very large nation, containing many thousand people.” History of North Carolina (1903 ed.) p. 20.
[110]. The name as given by Gallatin (Archaeologia Americana, II, 90) is, properly, Tsalakies. Mooney goes more into detail: “In the Lower dialect, with which the English settlers first became familiar, the form is Tsa-ragi. In the other dialects the form is Tsa-lagi.” Myths, 182; with Gatschet in accord, Migration Legend, 24. De Soto chroniclers wrote it: Chalaque. The present standard form, Cherokee, dates back at least to 1708. Mooney says (Myths, 15) that the name by which the Cherokees call themselves is Yunwiya, signifying “real or principal people”; and that on ceremonial occasions they frequently speak of themselves as the Kituhwagi (or Cuttawa). The Tennessee River was in very early times called the Cussate (Moll Map, 1715).