[169]. The reference is to Col. Abraham Wood, of Virginia, and to his sending out Batts and Fallam in 1671—not 1654 or 1664. Adair is here following Cox’s Carolana. See Alvord and Bidgood, First Explorations of the Trans-Allegheny Region, 191, and Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 17. Capt. Bolton made no such discovery in 1670.
[170]. Dr. Cox, of London, father of the author of Carolana and a proprietor of West (New) Jersey but never in America, did send Capt. Bond by sea to, then up the Mississippi about one hundred miles, in 1698; the vessel was turned back by Iberville acting for the French, at a place ever since called “the English turn,” just below New Orleans.
[171]. Adair is yet following the Carolana of Daniel Cox, son of Dr. Cox, taking no notice of the journeys of Marquette and Jolliet in 1673 and of La Salle in 1682.
[172]. The fort was abandoned in January, 1768.
[173]. Gov. James Glen. As corroborative of Adair: “We have advices from some of our traders that the Choctaw Indians (for many years past in the French interest) have invited them into their towns to trade, promising them a guard of 400 men; and as a testimony of their good intentions they brought with them the scalps of three Frenchmen.” S. C. Gazette, Nov. 4, 1746.
[174]. The celebrated and double-faced Red Shoes, leader of a faction of the Choctaws. He took part with the French in the war of 1736; but proving insolent after the war, Vaudreuil stopped the supply of arms and ammunition to his party. Further incensed by the discovery of a Frenchman from Ft. Tombekbe in adultery with his favorite wife, Adair found him ripe for heading a faction of the Choctaws against the French. Adair’s influence was exerted to that end in 1746, for in October of that year, De Beauchamp was among the friendly Choctaws, warning them against Adair, “that trader who was at the Chikachas [Chickasaws], mentioning him by name,” and offering a reward for the death of Red Shoes. Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 290 et seq. A fratricidal war broke out among the Choctaws. Red Shoes’ party with a band of the Creeks, in June, 1748, not 1747 as Adair states from memory, made an attack on the German settlement (Quartier des Alemands) as stated by Adair. Vaudreuil was more fortunate in compassing the death of Red Shoes later in 1748, seemingly through Jean Grondel. The fiat went forth that the arch-intriguer must die. He was set upon and killed while convoying to his towns a train of English goods from Charles Town. English traders saved the goods; and, by making a distribution of them, managed to revive the war, placing a brother of Red Shoes at the head of his partisans. This faction was soon defeated and put to rout by Grandpre, then commandant at Ft. Tombikbe. In the event, the connection of Red Shoes and Adair was unfortunate for both.
[175]. The reference is to the two unsuccessful campaigns of the French against the Chickasaws under Bienville.
[176]. The Chickasaws’ horses were favorites throughout the South. Barton in his New View says: “It is a well established fact that the Chickasaws brought with them from the West those beautiful horses called Chickasaw breed.” Major Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, says that the Chickasaws are supposed to have introduced the horse, and had large droves of them in 1762. But others attribute the origin to De Soto’s visit among them. Hugh Williamson (Observations, 80) in 1811 said: “Those Indians were originally furnished by De Soto with a breed of Spanish horses. The Indians, towards the middle of the last century, discovered that their horses were a valuable article of commerce.... The traders in all cases bought their largest horses.” Smyth (1774) in North Carolina “purchased a beautiful Chickasaw horse, named so from a nation of Indians who are very careful of preserving a fine breed of Spanish horses they have long preserved, unmixed with any other.” A Tour, I, 139. In 1785 Henry Laurens, Jr., of Charleston, wrote of being “informed by a Friend of his expectations of a string of five and forty horses from the Chickasaws which are generally esteemed as good horses as any in America.” So. Car. Hist. Mag., XXIV, 11. The horse, it seems, was not introduced among the Cherokees until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then probably from the Chickasaws. Byrd says that the Indians “were utter strangers to all our beasts of carriage before the slothful Europeans came amongst them.” The Seminoles of Florida also had horses of Andalusian breed, brought over by the Spaniards. Bartram, Travels, 213. The Chickasaw breed was in high repute in East Tennessee in the last decade of the eighteenth century. A celebrated sire “Piomingo,” named for the great chief, was advertised as “a fine Spanish horse raised in the Chickasaw nation.” Knoxville Gazette, Mar. 24, 1792.
[177]. For accordant statement: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 79; Lawson, History of North Carolina (1903 ed.) 133.
[178]. This ecomium on the Chickasaws finds full confirmation on the part of historians and travelers, French, Spanish and English: