A body of the lower French, and about fourteen hundred Choktah, attacked the Long House Town, when only sixty warriors were at home; yet they fought so desperately, as to secure themselves, their women and children, till some of the hunters, who had been immediately sent for, came home to their assistance; when, though exceedingly inferior in number, they drove them off with great loss. Another time, the lower and upper Louisiana-French, and a great body of red auxiliaries, surprised late at night all their present towns, except Amalahta, that had about forty warriors, and which stood at some distance from the others. A considerable number of the enemy were posted at every door, to prevent their escape; and what few ran out were killed on the spot. The French seemed quite sure of their prey, having so well inclosed it. But, at the dawn of day, when they were capering and using those flourishes, that are peculiar {354} to that volatile nation, the other town drew round them stark naked, and painted all over red and black; thus they attacked them, killed numbers on the spot, released their brethren, who joined them like enraged lions, increasing as they swept along, and in their turn incircled their enemies. Their release increased they joy and fury, and they rent the sky with their sounds. Their flashy enemies, now changed their boasting tune, into “Oh morblieu!” and gave up all for lost. Their red allies out-heel’d them, and left them to receive their just fate. They were all cut off but two, an officer, and a negroe who faithfully held his horse till he mounted, and then ran along side of him. A couple of swift runners were sent after them, who soon came up with them, and told them to live and go home and inform their people, that as the Chikkasah hogs had now a plenty of ugly French carcases to feed on till next year, they hoped then to have another visit from them and their red friends; and that, as messengers, they wished them safe home. They accordingly returned with heavy hearts to the Chikkasah landing place, N. W. on the Missisippi, at the distance of 170 miles, where they took boat, and delivered their unexpected message:—grief and trembling spread through the country,—and the inhabitants could not secure themselves from the fury of these war-like, and enraged Chikkasah. Every one of their prisoners was put to the fiery torture, without any possibility of redemption, their hearts were so exceedingly imbittered against them.
Flushed with this success, many parties turned out against the French, and from time to time hunted them far and near:—some went to the Missisippi, made a fleet of cypress-bark canoes, watched their trading boats, and cut off many of them without saving any of the people.[[205]] The French finding it impracticable for a few boats to pass those red men of war, were obliged to go in a fleet, carry swivel-guns in their long pettiaugres, with plenty of men; but always shunning the Chikkasah side of the river, and observing the strictest order in their movements by day, and in their stations at night. The walking of a wild beast, I have been assured, has frequently called them to their arms, and kept them awake for the whole night, they were in so great a dread of this warlike nation. The name of a Chikkasah became as dreadful, as it was hateful to their ears.[[206]] And had it not been more owing to French policy than bravery, in uniting all the Missisippi and Canada-Indians in a confederacy and enmity against them, Louisiana-settlements {355} would have been long since, either entirely destroyed, or confined to garrisons.
When any of the French armies made a tolerable retreat, they thought themselves very happy. Once, when the impression was pretty much worn out of their minds, and wine inspired them with new stratagems, and hopes of better success, a great body of them, mixed with a multitude of savages, came to renew their attack. But as their hostile intentions were early discovered, the Chikkasah had built a range of strong stockade forts on ground which could not safely be approached, as the contiguous land was low, and chanced then to be wet. A number of the French and their allies drew near the western fort, but in the manner of hornets, flying about to prevent their enemies from taking a true aim, while several ranks followed each other in a slow and solemn procession, like white-robed, tall, midnight-ghosts, and as if fearless, and impenetrable. The Indians did not at first know what sort of animals they were, for several shots had been fired among them, without incommoding them, or retarding their direct course to the fort:—as they advanced nearer, the Chikkasah kept a continual fire at them, with a sure aim, according to their custom; this was with as little success as before, contrary to every attempt they had ever made before against their enemies. The warriors concluded them to be wizards, or old French-men carrying the ark of war against them. In their council, they were exceedingly perplexed: but just as they had concluded to oppose some of their own reputed prophets to destroy the power of those cunning men, or powerful spirits of the French, lo! those uncommon appearances spread themselves in battle-array, along the south-side of the fort, and threw hand-granadoes into the fort. Hoop Hoop Ha was now joyfully sounded every where by the Chikkasah, being convinced they had skin and bone to fight with, instead of spirits. The matches of the few shells the French had time to throw, were too long; and as our traders had joined their friends by this time, they pulled out some, and threw out other shells, as near to the enemy as they possibly could. They soon found those dreadful phantoms were only common French-men, covered with wool-packs, which made their breasts invulnerable to all their well-aimed bullets. They now turned out of the fort, fell on, fired at their legs, brought down many of them and scalped them, and drove the others with considerable loss quite away to the southern hills, where the {356} trembling army had posted themselves out of danger. In the midst of the night they decamped, and saved themselves by a well-timed retreat, left the Chikkasah triumphant, and inspired them with the fierceness of so many tygers; which the French often fatally experienced, far and near, till the late cession of West-Florida to Great Britain. I have two of these shells, which I keep with veneration, as speaking trophies over the boasting Monsieurs, and their bloody schemes.
In the year 1748, the French sent a party of their Indians to storm some of the Chikkasah traders’ houses. They accordingly came to my trading house first, as I lived in the frontier: finding it too dangerous to attempt to force it, they patted with their hands a considerable time on one of the doors, as a decoy, imitating the earnest rap of the young women who go a visiting that time of night. Finding their labour in vain, one of them lifted a billet of wood, and struck the side of the house, where the women and children lay; so as to frighten them and awake me—my mastiffs had been silenced with their venison. At last, the leader went a-head with the beloved ark, and pretending to be directed by the divine oracle, to watch another principal trader’s house, they accordingly made for it, when a young woman, having occasion to go out of the house, was shot with a bullet that entered behind one of her breasts and through the other, ranging the bone; she suddenly wheeled round, and tumbled down, within the threshold of the house—the brave trader instantly bounded up, sounding the war whoop, and in a moment grasped his gun, (for the traders beds are always hung round with various arms of defence) and rescued her—the Indian physician also, by his skill in simples, soon cured her.
As so much hath been already said of the Chikkasah, in the accounts of the Cheerake, Muskohge, and Choktah, with whose history, theirs was necessarily interwoven, my brevity here, I hope will be excused.—The Chikkasah live in as happy a region, as any under the sun. It is temperate; as cool in summer, as can be wished, and but moderately cold in winter. There is frost enough to purify the air, but not to chill the blood; and the snow does not lie four-and-twenty hours together. This extraordinary benefit, is not from its situation to the equator, for the Cheerake country, among the Apalahche mountains is colder, in a surprising degree; but from the nature and levelness of the extensive circumjacent lands, which in general are very fertile. They have no running stream in {357} their present settlement. In their old fields, they have banks of oyster-shells, at the distance of four hundred miles from the sea-shore; which is a visible token of a general deluge, when it swept away the loose earth from the mountains, by the force of a tempestuous north-east wind, and thus produced the fertile lands of the Missisippi, which probably was sea, before that dreadful event.
As the Chikkasah fought the French and their red allies, with the utmost firmness, in defense of their liberties and lands, to the very last, without regarding their decay, only as an incentive to revenge their losses; equity and gratitude ought to induce us to be kind to our steady old friends, and only purchase so much of their land, as they would dispose of, for value.[[207]] With proper management, they would prove extremely serviceable to a British colony, on the Missisippi.[[208]] I hope no future misconduct will alienate their affections, after the manner of the super-intendant’s late deputy, which hath been already mentioned. The skilful French could never confide in the Choktah, and we may depend on being forced to hold hot disputes with them, in the infant state of the Missisippi settlements: it is wisdom to provide against the worst events that can be reasonably expected to happen. The remote inhabitants of our northern colonies are well acquainted with the great value of those lands, from their observations on the spot.[[209]] The soil and climate are fit for hemp, silk, indigo, wine, and many other valuable productions, which our merchants purchase from foreigners, sometimes at a considerable disadvantage—The range is so good for horses, cattle, and hogs, that they would grow large, and multiply fast, without the least occasion of feeding them in winter, or at least for a long space of time, by reason of the numberless branches of reeds and canes that are interspersed, with nuts of various kinds. Rice, wheat, oats, barley, Indian corn, fruit-trees, and kitchen plants, would grow to admiration. As the ancients tell us, “Bacchus amat montes,” so grape-vines must thrive extremely well on the hills of the Missisippi, for they are so rich as to produce winter-canes, contrary to what is known at any distance to the northward. If British subjects could settle West-Florida in security, it would in a few years become very valuable to Great Britain: and they would soon have as much profit, as they could desire, to reward their labour. Here, five hundred families would in all probability, be more beneficial to our mother-country, then the whole colony of North Carolina: besides innumerable branches toward Ohio and Monongahela. {358}
Enemies to the public good, may enter caveats against our settling where the navigation is precarious; and the extraordinary kindness of the late ministry to the French and Spaniards prevented our having an exclusive navigation on the Missisippi. Aberville might still become a valuable mart to us; and from New Orleans it is only three miles to Saint John’s Creek, where people pass through the lake of Saint Louis, and embark for Mobille and Pensacola. The Spaniards have wisely taken the advantage of our misconduct, by fortifying Louisiana, and employing the French to conciliate the affections of the savages; while our legislators, fermented with the corrupt lees of false power, are striving to whip us with scorpions. As all the Florida Indians are grown jealous of us, since we settled E. and W. Florida, and are unacquainted with the great power of the Spaniards in South America, and have the French to polish their rough Indian politics, Louisiana is likely to prove more beneficial to them, than it did to the French. They are fortifying their Missisippi settlements like a New Flanders, and their French artists, on account of our ministerial lethargy, will have a good opportunity, if an European war should commence, to continue our valuable western barriers as wild and waste, as the French left them. The warlike Chikkasah proved so formidable to them, that, except a small settlement above New Orleans, which was covered by the Choktah bounds, they did not attempt to make any other on the eastern side of the Missisippi, below the Illinois; though it contains such a vast tract of fine land, as would be sufficient for four colonies of two hundred and fifty miles square. Had they been able by their united efforts, to have destroyed the Chikkasah, they would not have been idle;[[210]] for, in that case, the Choktah would have been soon swallowed up, by the assistance of their other allies, as they never supplied them with arms and ammunition, except those who went to war against the Chikkasah.
From North-Carolina to the Missisippi, the land near the sea, is, in general, low and sandy; and it is very much so in the two colonies of Florida, to a considerable extent from the sea-shore, when the lands appear fertile, level, and diversified with hills. Trees indicate the goodness or badness of land. Pine-trees grow on sandy, barren ground, which produces long coarse grass; the adjacent low lands abound with canes, reeds, {359} or bay and laurel of various sorts, which are shaded with large expanding trees—they compose an evergreen thicket, mostly impenetrable to the beams of the sun, where the horses, deer, and cattle, chiefly feed during the winter: and the panthers, bears, wolves, wild cats, and foxes, resort there, both for the sake of prey, and a cover from the hunters. Lands of a loose black soil, such as those of the Missisippi, are covered with fine grass and herbage, and well shaded with large and high trees of hiccory, ash, white, red, and black oaks, great towering poplars, black walnut-trees, sassafras, and vines. The low wet lands adjoining the rivers, chiefly yield cypress-trees, which are very large, and of a prodigious height. On the dry grounds is plenty of beach, maple, holly, the cotton-tree, with a prodigious variety of other sorts. But we must not omit the black mulberry-tree, which, likewise, is plenty. It is high, and, if it had proper air and sun-shine, the boughs would be very spreading. On the fruit, the bears and wild fowl feed during their season; and also swarms of paroquets, enough to deafen one with their chattering, in the time of those joyful repasts. I believe the white mulberry-tree does not grow spontaneously in North-America. On the hills, there is plenty of chesnut-trees, and chesnut-oaks. These yield the largest sort of acorns, but wet weather soon spoils them. In winter, the deer and bears fatten themselves on various kinds of nuts, which lie thick over the rich land, if the blossoms have not been blasted by the north-east winds. The wild turkeys live on the small red acorns, and grow so fat in March, that they cannot fly farther than three or four hundred yards; and not being able soon to take the wing again, we speedily run them down with our horses and hunting mastiffs. At many unfrequented places of the Missisippi, they are so tame as to be shot with a pistol, of which our troops profited, in their way to take possession of the Illinois-garrison. There is a plenty of wild parsley, on the banks of that river, the roots of which are as large as those of parsnips, and it is as good as the other sort. The Indians say, they have not seen it grow in any woods remote from their country. They have a large sort of plums, which their ancestors brought with them from South-America, and which are now become plenty among our colonies, called Chikkasah plums.[[211]]
To the North West, the Missisippi lands are covered with filberts, which are as sweet, and thin-shelled, as the scaly bark hiccory-nuts. {360} Hazel-nuts are very plenty, but the Indians seldom eat them. Black haws grow here in clusters, free from prickles: and pissimmons, of which they make very pleasant bread, barbicuing it in the woods. There is a sort of fine plums in a few places, large, and well-tasted; and, if transplanted, they would become better. The honey-locusts are pods about a span-long, and almost two inches broad, containing a row of large seed on one side, and a tough sweet substance the other. The tree is large, and full of long thorns; which forces the wild beasts to wait till they fall off, before they can gather that part of their harvest.—The trees grow in wet sour land, and are plenty, and the timber is very durable. Where there is no pitch-pine, the Indians use this, or the sassafras, for posts to their houses; as they last for generations, and the worms never take them. Chinquapins are very plenty, of the taste of chesnuts, but much less in size. There are several sorts of very wholesome and pleasant-tasted ground nuts, which few of our colonists know any thing of. In wet land, there is an aromatic red spice, and a sort of cinnamon, which the natives seldom use. The Yopon, or Cusseena, is very plenty, as far as the salt air reaches over the low lands. It is well tasted, and very agreeable to those who accustom themselves to use it: instead of having any noxious quality, according to what many have experienced of the East-India insipid and costly tea, it is friendly to the human system, enters into a contest with the peccant humours, and expels them through the various channels of nature: it perfectly cures a tremor in the nerves.[[212]] The North-American tea has a pleasant aromatic taste, and the very same salubrious property, as the Cusseena. It is an evergreen, and grows on hills. The bushes are about a foot high, each of them containing in winter a small aromatic red berry, in the middle of the stalk: such I saw it about Christmas, when hunting among the mountains, opposite to the lower Mohawk Castle, in the time of a deep snow. There is no visible decay of the leaf, and October seems to be the proper time to gather it. The early buds of sassafras, and the leaves of ginseng, make a most excellent tea, equally pleasant to the taste, and conducive to health. The Chinese have sense enough to sell their enervating and slow-poisoning teas, under various fine titles, while they themselves prefer Ginseng-leaves. Each of our colonies abounds with ginseng, among the hills that lie far from the sea.[[213]] Ninety-six settlement, is the lowest place where I have seen it grow in South Carolina. It is very plenty on the fertile parts of the Cheerake {361} mountains; it resembles Angelica, which in most places is also plenty. Its leaves are of a darker green, and about a foot and half from the root; the stalk sends out three equal branches, in the center of which a small berry grows, of a red colour, in August.—The seeds are a very strong and agreeable aromatic: it is plenty in West-Florida. The Indians use it on religious occasions. It is a great loss to a valuable branch of trade, that our people neither gather it in a proper season, nor can cure it, so as to give it a clear shining colour, like the Chinese tea. I presume it does not turn out well to our American traders; for, up the Mohawk river, a gentleman who had purchased a large quantity of it, told me that a skippel, or three bushels, cost him only nine shillings of New York currency: and in Charles-Town, an inhabitant of the upper Yadkin settlements in North Carolina, who came down with me from viewing the Nahchee old fields on the Missisippi, assured me he could not get from any of the South Carolina merchants, one shilling sterling a pound for it, though his people brought it from the Alehgany, and Apalahche mountains, two hundred miles to Charles-Town.
It would be a service, worthy of a public-spirited gentleman, to inform us how to preserve the Ginseng, so as to give it a proper colour; for could we once effect that, it must become a valuable branch of trade. It is an exceeding good stomachic, and greatly supports nature against hunger and thirst. It is likewise beneficial against asthmatic complaints, and it may be said to promote fertility in women, as much as the East-India tea causes sterility in proportion to the baneful use that is made of it. A learned physician and botanist assured me, that the eastern teas are slow, but sure poison, in our American climates; and that he generally used the Ginseng very successfully in clysters, to those who had destroyed their health, by that dangerous habit. I advised my friend to write a treatise on its medical virtues, in the posterior application, as it must redound much to the public good. He told me, it would be needless; for quacks could gain nothing from the best directions; and that already several of his acquaintance of the faculty mostly pursued his practice in curing their patients. The eastern tea is as much inferior to our American teas, in its nourishing quality, as their album græcum is to our pure venison, from which we here sometimes collect it; let us, therefore, like frugal and wise people, use our own valuable aromatic tea, and thus induce our British {362} brethren to imitate our pleasant and healthy regimen; shewing the utmost indifference to any duties the statesmen of Great-Britain, in their assumed prerogative, may think proper to lay on their East-India poisoning, and dear-bought teas.