[205]. Confirmation: Williams, op. cit., chs. V and VI. Most of the Chickasaw sallies were from the Bluffs in West Tennessee, at the site of Memphis and above.
[206]. Not only the French but their Indians: “Both French and Indians stand in awe of them.” Williams, op. cit., 29.
[207]. In the treaties of 1818 (Shelby-Jackson) and 1832 (Coffee-Colbert). As to the latter, Jackson, then President, wrote: “All things considered, I think it is a good one, and surely the religious enthusiasts or those who have been weeping over the oppression of the Indians will not find fault with it for want of liberality or justice to the Indians.” This expressed hope of Adair was measurably (but barely so) proved to be true. Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, IV, 483, and Williams, op. cit., App. A and B.
[208]. See n. 271, p. 484 post.
[209]. The reference is to Gen. Phineas Lyman’s scheme for a colony, Georgiana. Williams, op. cit., 18.
[210]. It is this point, well made by Adair, that our historians have failed fully to grasp or appreciate. The fate of the lower Mississippi Valley might have been otherwise but for the Chickasaws; not once but twice—first against the French but later against the Spaniards.
[211]. Of widespread culture among other tribes. See Bartram, Travels, 38, 421.
[212]. Used by the Indians in concocting the “black drink”; as to which see n. 22, p. 49 ante.
[213]. Ginseng is yet gathered wild and even cultivated for commerce in the mountains. As to the use made of it by the aborigines: Mooney, Myths, 421, 425, 505, and Sacred Formulas, 326.
[214]. If we assume that Adair wrote these words in 1768, then almost at the time the first steps were being taken by such people on their own initiative to found settlements on the Holston and Watauga Rivers, which were to become the seed-plot of the civilization of the Upper Southwest.