Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/131

 SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDIANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 95 vocabulary is wanted in order to prove conclusively the entire identity of their language with the Muskhogee. There is some diversity in the accounts given by the Musk- hogees of their origin. The chiefs of the delegation, who attended at Washington in the year 1826, agreed that the prevailing tradition amongst them was, that the nation had issued out of a cave near Alabama River. The Hitchittees said that their ancestors had fallen from the sky. These modes of speaking, common to several of the tribes, only show that they have lost the recollection of any ancient migration, and that they consider themselves as aborigines. Independent of the ancient division into families or clans, which will be here- after adverted to, Mr. Mitchell, a former Indian agent, said that there was, at no distant time, a political division of the nation into four principal towns or tribes, viz. the Cussetah, the Cowetah, the Tukawbatchie, and the Oscoochee, to which the Creeks, though now dispersed throughout the whole of their country, still respectively belong. This division, however, whether geographical or political, has no connexion with the distinction of languages. The Uchees and the Natches, who are both incorporated in the confederacy, speak two distinct languages altogether dif- ferent from the Muskhogee. The Natches, a residue of the well-known nation of that name, came from the banks of the Mississippi, and joined the Creeks less than one hundred years ago. The original seats of the Uchees were east of the Coosa and probably of the Chatahoochee ; and they consider them- selves as the most ancient inhabitants of the country. They may have been the same nation which is called Apalaches in the accounts of De Soto's expedition, and their towns were till lately principally on Flint River. It appears, however, certain that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they were, at least in part, seated on the western banks of the Savannah. It has already been seen that, in 1736, they claimed the coun- try below and above Augusta. In Jeffrey's Map they are laid down in the same manner, but with a note that those settlements had been deserted in 1715. This was the year of the signal defeat of the Yamassees, who were assisted by the Creeks. The Yamassees were driven across the river ; and it is probable that the Uchees were amongst their auxiliaries, and that, weakened by this defeat, they found it safer to re- move to a greater distance from the English settlements, to- wards Flint River.