Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/125

 SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDIANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 89 with the Muskhogee and even the Choctaw. These did not however appear sufficient to make it considered as belonging to the same family. The Catawbas, enfeebled by their disastrous wars and princi- pally by that with the Six Nations, greatly diminished by the smallpox and the use of ardent spirits, and surrounded by the progressive settlements of the white inhabitants, have ultimate- ly ceded all their lands, reserving only a tract of fifteen miles square, on each side of the Santee or Catawba River, on the borders of North Carolina, which, now reduced to ninety-eight souls, they still occupy. Their vocabulary has been obtained, within this year, through the care of Mr. John L. Miller, President of the Ebenezer Academy. De Soto appears to have passed, in 1540, through part of the Cherokee country. But the Europeans since that time had not come in contact with the Cherokees, before the set- tlement of South Carolina ; and they are for the first time men- tioned in 1693, when they complained that the Savannahs, Esaws, and Congarees took prisoners from them, and sold them as slaves in Charleston.* It appears that the Yamassees used to make incursions into Florida for the same purpose. Governor Archdale, who acted towards the Indians with equal good sense and humanity, put an end to that practice in 1695.f The Cherokees sent more than two hundred warriors, in 1712, to assist the English in the war against the Tuscaroras. Al- though their name is mentioned, in 1715, amongst the Northern Indians of the confederacy against Carolina, as the whole number of those who took arms in that quarter were estimated at only six hundred, it is not probable that they took a very active part in that conflict. Governor Nicholson established friendly relations with them, which were confirmed by the solemn treaty of 1730, negotiated by Alexander Cummings, and which secured peace for thirty years.J In the beginning of the seven years' war, they acted as auxiliaries to the British, and assisted at the capture of Fort Duquesne. On their return home, they committed some dep- redations in Virginia, which were not tamely submitted to ; and VOL. II. 12
 * Hewatt. f Ibid. Hewatt and Ramsay.