Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/102

 GO* A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. on the heads of rivers emptying into the Chesapeake. Mr. Miller, President of the Ebenezer Academy in South Carolina, has given me the following information. '• My father was one oi the first settlers in the Wanhaw settlement. I have heard him frequently speak of cruel and bloody scenes between the Catawbas and Shawnees. From what I have heard him say, the Cherokees, probably at an early period of the settle- ment of the Carolinas, occupied a section of country now partly in York County, South Carolina, and partly in Meck- lenberg, North Carolina, known in the colonial histories as Craven County. The Cherokees were driven by the Shaw- nees, and the Shawnees were driven in their turn by the Catawbas." It is clear that this Shawnoe settlement is the same which was mentioned by Lawson, and that it was situated on the head waters of the Catawba or Santee, and probably of the Yadkin or Pedee. Lawson expressly distinguishes those Savanoes or Shawnoes settled on the head of one of the rivers of South Carolina, from the Savannahs, "a famous warlike friendly nation, living to the south end of Ashley River." These Savannahs are men- tioned by the earliest Carolina writers and by Hew T att under the name of Serannas. That tribe was probably called at first Savannahs by the European settlers on account of their vicinity to the river of that name ; and they appear to me to be the same which was afterwards designated by its true Indian name of Yamassees. M'Call, in his " History of Georgia," mentions that, in the year 1750, a Quaker settlement had been formed west of Au- gusta, on a body of land, which had formerly been owned by a tribe, called the Savannahs, who had been compelled to abandon it, in consequence of a war with the Uchees, who claimed the land adjoining them to the southward. Whether they were a residue of the Savannahs formerly living south of Ashley River, or of our Shawnoes, cannot be ascertained. It has been stated to me, on verbal but respectable authority, that some Shawnoes were for a while settled on the Savannah above Augusta; and it is certain, that they were at war with the Cherokees and received on friendly terms by the Creeks. Adair, who alludes to those wars between the Shawnoes and the Cherokees, met, about the year 1740, in the wilderness a large encampment of Shawnoes, who, after having wandered