Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 V13.djvu/369

 considerable fidelity and courage in the late war against the Creeks, under the command of general Jackson.

After the Iroquois, we are not acquainted with any nation of the aborigines of North America, who have been so restless and enterprising as the Chicasaws, and who have better maintained their ground against every species of hostility. They have not only, says Du Pratz, cut off a great many nations who were adjoining them, but have even carried their love of war and vengeance as far as New Mexico, near 600 miles from the place of their residence, to exterminate a nation that had removed to that distance from them. In this enterprise they were, however, deceived and cut off.

The Choctaws, still equally numerous, reckoned, in the time of Du Pratz, 25,000 warriors. We know but little of them more than a few detached customs, and the tradition, that they had made a sudden arrival in the country which they now occupy. There is a small village of them in the vicinity of the town of Arkansas, but made up principally of those, who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the rest of the nation, who, probably, as well as the Cherokees and Creeks, have found the necessity of introducing corporeal and general punishments, for the benefit and security of society.

As we cannot discover any mention of them by the historian of De Soto, they were perhaps, at that period, included amongst the Chicasaws. And, from the extinction {294} of the Mobilians and other nations, met with by that adventurer, we are inclined to believe them the modern usurpers of the country which they now possess. Many of them live on the borders of the Yazoo, and other parts of the Mississippi and Louisiana territories. It is certain, as we have had already occasion to notice, that