Adair's History of the American Indians, Samuel Cole Williams (ed.)

174. The celebrated and double-faced Red Shoes, leader of a faction of the Choctaws. He took part with the French in the war of 1736; but proving insolent after the war, Vaudreuil stopped the supply of arms and ammunition to his party. Further incensed by the discovery of a Frenchman from Ft. Tombekbe in adultery with his favorite wife, Adair found him ripe for heading a faction of the Choctaws against the French. Adair’s influence was exerted to that end in 1746, for in October of that year, De Beauchamp was among the friendly Choctaws, warning them against Adair, “that trader who was at the Chikachas [Chickasaws], mentioning him by name,” and offering a reward for the death of Red Shoes. Mereness, Travels in the American Colonies, 290 et seq. A fratricidal war broke out among the Choctaws. Red Shoes’ party with a band of the Creeks, in June, 1748, not 1747 as Adair states from memory, made an attack on the German settlement (Quartier des Alemands) as stated by Adair. Vaudreuil was more fortunate in compassing the death of Red Shoes later in 1748, seemingly through Jean Grondel. The fiat went forth that the arch-intriguer must die. He was set upon and killed while convoying to his towns a train of English goods from Charles Town. English traders saved the goods; and, by making a distribution of them, managed to revive the war, placing a brother of Red Shoes at the head of his partisans. This faction was soon defeated and put to rout by Grandpre, then commandant at Ft. Tombikbe. In the event, the connection of Red Shoes and Adair was unfortunate for both.

175. The reference is to the two unsuccessful campaigns of the French against the Chickasaws under Bienville.

176. The Chickasaws’ horses were favorites throughout the South. Barton in his New View says: “It is a well established fact that the Chickasaws brought with them from the West those beautiful horses called Chickasaw breed.” Major Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, says that the Chickasaws are supposed to have introduced the horse, and had large droves of them in 1762. But others attribute the origin to De Soto’s visit among them. Hugh Williamson (Observations, 80) in 1811 said: “Those Indians were originally furnished by De Soto with a breed of Spanish horses. The Indians, towards the middle of the last century, discovered that their horses were a valuable article of commerce.... The traders in all cases bought their largest horses.” Smyth (1774) in North Carolina “purchased a beautiful Chickasaw horse, named so from a nation of Indians who are very careful of preserving a fine breed of Spanish horses they have long preserved, unmixed with any other.” A Tour, I, 139. In 1785 Henry Laurens, Jr., of Charleston, wrote of being “informed by a Friend of his expectations of a string of five and forty horses from the Chickasaws which are generally esteemed as good horses as any in America.” So. Car. Hist. Mag., XXIV, 11. The horse, it seems, was not introduced among the Cherokees until the beginning of the seventeenth century, and then probably from the Chickasaws. Byrd says that the Indians “were utter strangers to all our beasts of carriage before the slothful Europeans came amongst them.” The Seminoles of Florida also had horses of Andalusian breed, brought over by the Spaniards. Bartram, Travels, 213. The Chickasaw breed was in high repute in East Tennessee in the last decade of the eighteenth century. A celebrated sire “Piomingo,” named for the great chief, was advertised as “a fine Spanish horse raised in the Chickasaw nation.” Knoxville Gazette, Mar. 24, 1792.

177. For accordant statement: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 79; Lawson, History of North Carolina (1903 ed.) 133.

178. This ecomium on the Chickasaws finds full confirmation on the part of historians and travelers, French, Spanish and English:

“The nation of the Chickasaws is very warlike. The men have regular features, well shaped and neatly dressed; they are fierce, and have a high opinion of themselves. The nations who border upon them who speak the Chickasaw language best value themselves upon it.” (Du Pratz.)

“They are accounted and esteemed the bravest Indians upon the main, which makes good the common observation that the bravest soldiers are generally the most civil to prisoners.” (Eveleigh.)

“They are the most indefatigable and most valiant of all the Indians.” (Rev. John Wesley.)

“Not so numerous as the Choctaws, but more terrible on account of their intrepidity. The Chickasaws are tall, well made, and of an unparalleled courage.” (Bossu.)

“A brave, warlike people; tall, well-shaped and handsome featured.” (Rogers.)

“These brave Indians, our ancient allies and steady friends; irreconciliable enemies of the French.” (Sir Jeffrey Amherst.)

“There is no Indian nation on the continent near so handsome as the Chickasaws; they have always been distinguished for their gallant actions and feats of heroism which have rendered them, even individually, to be particularly respected throughout all the nations of North America. For which reason Chickasaw guides are more sought after and are more serviceable than those of any other nation.” (Smyth.)

“The most intrepid warriors of the South.” (Bancroft.)

“The bravest of the brave. Admirably proportioned, athletic, active and graceful in their movements, and possessed of open and manly countenances.” (Pickett.)

“Their courage exceeded that of all other aborigines. Neighboring tribes found them invincible.” (Brewer.)

“Through all the epochs of colonial history the Chickasaw people maintained their old reputation for independence and bravery.” (Gatschet.)

“The ancient Chickasaws have justily been regarded as the bravest and most skillful warriors among all the American Indians.” (Cushman.)

“The smallest of the Southern nations, but they were also the bravest and most warlike.” (Roosevelt.)

“Noted from remote times for their bravery, independence and warlike disposition.” (Hodge.)

179. See on this town, Swanton, Early Creeks, 313, et seq.

180. Should be 1748, when “the Western Choctaws attack the Quartier Alemands.” French Transcripts at Jackson, Miss., Vol. 32, p. 81.

181. Quapaw, a Southwestern Siouan tribe, their villages west of the Mississippi and north of the Arkansas River. Hodge, Handbook, II, 333.

182. A name applied by Adair to a company of traders, composed of Gov. James Glen, his brother and two others, and given official countenance.

183. At their head Charles McNaire.

184. George Galphin.

185. Perhaps Joseph Wood, of Georgia.

186. James Campbell who had traded among the Chickasaws for nearly twenty years. He had conducted a small trade among the Choctaws, and joined Adair in the plan to win over Red Shoes.

187. “Friday last arrived 47 Indians of a very potent nation heretofore in enmity and now come to solicit peace and the encouragement of English traders to settle and supply them with goods, giving assurances of fidelity and good treatment.” South Carolina Gazette, Apr. 13, 1748. A brother of Red Shoes headed the delegation. Ib., Apr. 17.

188. The mythic place, Nani Waya (winding hill), in Winston County, Miss. Nanna Waya Creek through the county yet is known by the name. Gatschet, Migration Legend, 105; Cushman, History, 361.

189. The French archives, with data of the year 1748, afford ample corroboration of “the Choctaw rebellion,” as they termed the civil war.

190. Or Paya Mattaha; he represented the Chickasaw Nation as principal leader in the Indian Congress held by Gov. Johnstone and John Stuart, at Mobile in March, 1765. He there made an extended speech: “Tho’ I am a red man, my heart is white from my connection with and the benefit I have received from the white people. I almost look upon myself as one of them.... The English have always supported me in my distress and never deserted or deceived me.”

191. Gov. Glen in 1748 admitted that Adair and John Campbell had been his chief agents in bringing about the Red Shoe revolt. Adair’s bitterness towards the governor was not without cause.

192. Identified by Swanton as the Cusabo Indians. Early Hist. Creeks, 71 et seq.

193. Adair is here recounting Cherokee raids in the early decades of the eighteenth century.

194. George Haig who in 1748 was taken captive, with Thomas Brown’s half-breed son, and put to death by the Indians (R. L. Meriwether). Thomas Brown is mentioned by Adair as “T. B.” He and Haig were associates in the Indian trade from a post on Congaree River up to Brown’s death in 1747.

195. Col. George Chicken, Ibid.

196. Col. Fox, see n. p. 254 ante.

197. Henry Foster (sometimes Francis), son-in-law of James Francis. See Introduction, p. xiii ante.

198. See Introduction on this Memorial.

199. There must be a misprint here, since there was no such disparity between the water and land routes, and Adair was well posted on the point.

200. “The tribal name is Tciaca. The suffix aca denoting people collectively; another form Tcikocokela, okela denoting tribe, is in common use.” Frank G. Speck in Journal of American Folk Lore, XX, 50-58.

201. Adair is corroborated by Cushman (History of the Choctaws, Chickasaws, etc., 19-20, 242-246, 361, 494). The languages were for the most part identical. It appears that in speeches made by Chickasaw chiefs in councils held by the British with them and the Choctaws, jointly, the former spoke as “elders” to the Choctaws.

202. Adair does not go further back than 1720 in his account of the Chickasaws. The expedition of De Soto in 1540-41 crossed their country, called by its historians or narrators “Chicaca provincia,” and suffered a defeat by the tribe. In La Salle’s own account of his expedition of 1682 he mentions the “river inhabited by the Sicachas,” as having “its source near Carolina”—the Tennessee River, manifestly. His men came in contact with “five of the Chikacha nation” at one of the Chickasaw Bluffs on the Mississippi in the present West Tennessee. In 1687, Father Anastasius Douay records respecting a party of La Salle’s force, “we went to the Sicachas, where we had not been,” previously. “This nation is very numerous; they count at least four thousand warriors; have an abundance of peltry.” But Tonty, in 1693, noted the tribe as having “2,000 warriors.” By 1720-21 that the Chickasaws were a thorn in the side of the French is demonstrated by Charlevoix and Diron D’Artaguette. For all their accounts, see Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, passim. In the closing years of the seventeenth century Carolina traders were among the Chickasaws, initiating a commerce that Adair carried forward. For later glimpses: Du Pratz, History of Louisiana, II, 217; for a few customs, Bossu, Travels in Louisiana, passim; Roman’s East and West Florida, and authorities later cited. Having in view the part played by the Chickasaws in aiding the English in holding the Mississippi Valley against the French, all too scant attention has been paid to that gallant and remarkable nation of red men by the historians of America.

203. The best account of the Natchez Indians is Swanton’s Lower Tribes, passim, supplemented by his Early History of the Creeks.

204. For the three humiliatingly unsuccessful campaigns of the French against the Chickasaws, due to their giving asylum to the Natchez, see: Primary, Rowland and Sanders, Mississippi Provincial Archives, I, passim; Ga. Col. Recs., XXI and XXII, and Shea’s reprint of [Bouache] Journal de la Guerre du Micissippi contre les Chicachas en 1739-40, translation in Claiborne’s Mississippi. Secondary, Pickett’s History of Alabama, Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, and Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, chs. IV and V.

205. Confirmation: Williams, op. cit., chs. V and VI. Most of the Chickasaw sallies were from the Bluffs in West Tennessee, at the site of Memphis and above.

206. Not only the French but their Indians: “Both French and Indians stand in awe of them.” Williams, op. cit., 29.

207. In the treaties of 1818 (Shelby-Jackson) and 1832 (Coffee-Colbert). As to the latter, Jackson, then President, wrote: “All things considered, I think it is a good one, and surely the religious enthusiasts or those who have been weeping over the oppression of the Indians will not find fault with it for want of liberality or justice to the Indians.” This expressed hope of Adair was measurably (but barely so) proved to be true. Bassett, Correspondence of Jackson, IV, 483, and Williams, op. cit., App. A and B.

208. See n. 271, p. 484 post.

209. The reference is to Gen. Phineas Lyman’s scheme for a colony, Georgiana. Williams, op. cit., 18.

210. It is this point, well made by Adair, that our historians have failed fully to grasp or appreciate. The fate of the lower Mississippi Valley might have been otherwise but for the Chickasaws; not once but twice—first against the French but later against the Spaniards.

211. Of widespread culture among other tribes. See Bartram, Travels, 38, 421.

212. Used by the Indians in concocting the “black drink”; as to which see n. 22, p. 49 ante.

213. Ginseng is yet gathered wild and even cultivated for commerce in the mountains. As to the use made of it by the aborigines: Mooney, Myths, 421, 425, 505, and Sacred Formulas, 326.

214. If we assume that Adair wrote these words in 1768, then almost at the time the first steps were being taken by such people on their own initiative to found settlements on the Holston and Watauga Rivers, which were to become the seed-plot of the civilization of the Upper Southwest.

215. To the Natchez Country left open to settlement by the king’s proclamation of 1763.

216. Charles Town was the first center of the Indian trade. From that place prior to 1700 traders had reached the Indian tribes on the Mississippi; in that year they were found there by the French. McCrady says that many of the early fortunes of Charleston families were built up by the Indian trade. This is more than can be said of the traders, who adventured themselves into the wilderness encompassed by manifold dangers to make possible the merchants’ fortunes. Augusta followed as chief mart. “It was laid out in the beginning of the year 1736, and thrives prodigiously. It is the chief place of trade with the Indians. There are several warehouses in it well furnished with goods for the Indian trade.... There are five large boats which belong to different inhabitants of the town, and carry about nine thousand weight of deer skins, each; and last year about one hundred thousand weight of skins was brought from there. All the Indian traders from both provinces of South Carolina and Georgia, resort thither in the spring. In June, 1739, the traders, pack-horsemen, servants, townsmen and others dependent upon that business, made about six hundred whites who live by the trade in the Indian nations. Each hunter is reckoned to get three hundred weight of deer skins in a year, which is a very advantageous trade to England, for the deer skins, beaver and other furs are chiefly paid for in woolen goods and iron.” An Impartial Inquiry, London, 1741, also in Ga. Hist. Coll. I, 153 et seq. Among the traders of Adair’s early period as a trader may be mentioned a few not elsewhere named who traded to the Chickasaws: Thos. Welch, James Alford, John Chester, James Welch, John Buckles, John Brown, Thomas Andrews, Wm. McMullian, Augustine Smith, Jerome Courtonne, John Tanner, Benj. Sealey, John Smith, Richard McCully and Francis Underwood. For traders to the Cherokees: Rothrock, Carolina Traders Among the Overhill Cherokees, 1690-1760, E. T. Hist. Soc. Pub., I, 3 et seq.

217. Set out, article by article, with prices in the proceedings of the Congress.

218. Lt. Col. Wedderburn, chief military officer of West Florida.

219. Charles Stuart, a younger brother of John Stuart, was deputy for many years prior to the War of the Revolution.

220. James Colbert, who was to become a great leader of the Chickasaws.

221. George Craghan or Croghan, whose career is set forth in Volwiler, George Croghan, and the Westward Movement. There is evidence that Craghan or one of his agents was on the Tennessee River in the Tennessee Country prior to 1756.

222. Kaskaskia, in the Illinois Country.

223. Was this a Joseph Greer of the Valley of Virginia? Andrew Greer, of the Watauga Settlement, was somewhat later a trader to the Cherokees.

224. Supplementing Adair’s statements as to the strength of the Chickasaws, only a few authorities are here quoted: Sir Nathaniel Johnson, Sept. 17, 1708, stated in a report that “the Chikysaws have at least 600 men. These Indians are stout and warlike.... Slaves is what we have in exchange for our goods, which these people take from several nations of Indians that live beyond them.” Rivers, Historical Sketch of South Carolina, 238. In 1715, the census taken by South Carolina authorities gave 700 warriors. Gov. Bull, of South Carolina (1742): “They do not exceed 400 men.” Royal Com. Hist. MSS., Appendix IV, 269. After the attrition of three wars with the French, John Buckles, a trader among them, reported this estimate in 1754: “Able gunmen, 340; old men between 50 and 70 years, 25; young boys, 155. As to the number of women in the nation ... every fellow has at least 2 or 3 wives; and young girls there may be about the same number as the boys, or they may exceed.” Maj. Robert Rogers in his Concise Account of North America, stated that in 1762 “they can raise 500 fighting men.” Two years later (1764) Capt. Thomas Hutchins estimated 750 warriors. For other figures: Swanton, Early Creeks, 449.

225. On methods of warfare: Bartram, Travels, 211; Gatschet, Migration Legend, 167; Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 57 et seq., 93, 102; Smith’s Captivity, 153, 163; Hodge, Handbook, II, 915, and Morgan, League of the Iroquois, I, 68, 72, 300 et seq.

226. On scalping: Hodge, Handbook, II, 482.

227. An instance is given by DeBrahm. Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 193.

228. Tattooing was practiced by Indians generally; the ink differed; by some charred box-elder was used, by others the dripping of rich pine-roots; the pricking was done by sharp flint points, sharp bone or gar’s tooth, and, in the West, cactus spines. Most tribes had one or more persons expert in the art. See, also, Bartram, Travels, 482 et seq.

229. Instances are numerous in the history of the American Indians.

230. In which he recites his war-like deeds, as by way of a swan-song.

231. This, it is believed, is the best description extant of torture at the stake.

232. A Seneca warrior from the North. Mooney, Myths, 491.

233. Gen. Oglethorpe: “In case of murder, the next in blood is obliged to kill the murderer, or else he is looked upon as infamous in the nation where he lives. There is no coersive power in that government.” Gentlemen’s Magazine (London) for 1733, p. 413.

234. Gatschet, Migration Legend, 136.

235. On these titles among the Cherokees: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 194n.

236. For aid rendered by the Southern Indians to Oglethorpe: Harris, Memorials, 224; and the Chickasaws, Ga. Hist. Coll., I, 270, 277.

237. All authorities are in agreement: Bartram, Travels, 212; Lawson, History of Carolina, 287; Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 79; Mooney, Myths, lxviii, 434, 465; see p. 120 ante.

238. The fullest and best account is by Mooney, The Cherokee Ball Play, reprint from Am. Anthropologist, April, 1890; also in Myths, passim; also, Bartram, Travels, 506. For a game played for the amusement of the Duke of Orleans (King Louis Philippe) in 1797, Williams, Early Travels in the Tennessee Country, 437.

239. The best account of the game and yard where played is Bartram’s in Observations, 34, and Myer, Prehistoric Villages in Middle Tennessee, 515. See also, Mooney, Myths, 434, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 99; and Jones, Antiquities, 341-2.

240. The discoidal stone used somewhat resembled the discus of the Greek athletes; wrought of quartz. Travelers among the Creeks remark their grace in the game. “Nearly all the fine specimens that enrich the public and private collections of other States have been found in the valleys of Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers.” Thurston, Antiquities of Tennessee, 263, where illustrations may be found; also in Harrington, Remains on Upper Tennessee River, 236.

241. Consult on modes of fishing: Jones, Antiquities of Southern Indians, 327 et seq.; Bartram’s Observations, 44.

242. In the American Pioneer, of Cincinnati, I, 143, Barker gives an interesting account of the Chickasaws fishing in Duck River in Middle Tennessee (1805). He observed the Indians in their canoes pursuing large fishes which swarmed in that beautiful stream in the domain claimed by them; and taking great numbers by the use of long cane spears. Cane grew there in profusion. The spears “were sixteen or eighteen feet in length, sharpened with a knife into a lancet shape at one end, and were thrown with great dexterity twenty or thirty feet; seldom failing to pierce a fish through at every throw. This was doubtless an invention of great antiquity, and practiced by their fathers ages before the use of iron was known amongst them.”

243. For a similar account: Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 69.

244. Consult Jones, op. cit., 269-286, and illustrations.

245. On Indian agriculture: Bartram, Travels, 509; Jones, op. cit., 296-320; Timberlake, 68.

246. Consult on construction of dwelling houses: Jones, op. cit., 35, 39; Bartram, Travels, 365; Timberlake, 84.

247. Maize or com was also the dependence of the pioneer whites. Its importance in the history of the West cannot be overly emphasized. See Jones, op. cit., 297-301; Mooney, Myths, 421, 423, 471, 481.

248. Jones describes this stone, op. cit., 315-20.

249. Accord, Bartram, Travels, 38.

250. Wild strawberry vines matted the earth where there were barrens; the ripe “berries covered the ground as with a red cloth.” (F. A. Michaux, 1803.)

251. There was the wild or pig potato, indigenous and ancestors of the cultivated potato, and the artichoke.

253. For hot-house, see Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 35: “A little hut joined to the house, in which a fire is continually kept, and the heat so great that cloaths are not to be borne the coldest day in the winter.” Also, Jones, op. cit., 16.

254. There is no difficulty in finding ample corroboration of Adair’s description of the lower class of Indian traders. One of the best summaries is that of Rivers in his Topics in the History of South Carolina: “Many were dissolute and worthless, and were despised even by the savages. Many conciliated favor and insured safety by adopting Indian habits and marrying among them.”

255. Rivers, also, takes Adair’s distinction: “But, on the other hand, some were gentlemen who doubtless would have achieved renown in the most arduous duties of a public career.”

256. Not only the Indians but the whites, particularly the French hunters out of New Orleans, were responsible for the extirpation of the buffalo from the region east of the Mississippi. The tale is told in Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee, 10 et seq., 245. In early times the American bison ranged in great herds through the Southeast and Old Southwest. Some writers have questioned whether it ever existed in the Southeast below North Carolina; but in the first settlement of Georgia they were as abundant as they were in Tennessee and Kentucky. “Col. Wm. McIntosh, the brother of Gen. Lachland McIntosh, my grandfather, has often told me that he had seen ten thousand buffaloes in a herd.... My father, whose Indian establishements (as Bartram’s book shows) extended to St. Mark’s, was constantly supplied with buffalo tongues, until as late as 1774, as my mother has often stated to me.” Thos. Spalding in Ga. Hist. Coll., I, 268. For the buffalo in North Carolina, see Byrd’s Dividing Line. In East Tennessee, Williams, Memoirs of Timberlake, 47, 71, 120. In Middle Tennessee, Haywood’s History of Tennessee, 90. They are said to have been of late arrival, comparatively, in the region east of the Mississippi and south of the Ohio. None of the De Soto narrators mentions the animal. The flesh and butter were food; the wool was used in making rough cloth; the skins for bedding. The hide was a symbol of protection to the early Cherokees; hence it was often given as a pledge. Worn by ardent lovers of the tribe, it was the mute offering of protection to the maid, chosen to preside over the warrior’s household.

257. Byrd, in Dividing Line, mentions a queer belief of the North Carolina Indians that the eating of bear’s flesh by women promotes vitality and makes child-bearing easy.

258. The flesh from the hump and rump was considered the choicest, next to the tongue.

259. Jones, op. cit., 311, citing Du Pratz, II, 225, and Loskiel’s History, etc., 67. Even the whites, in their first year on the frontier, of necessity used the mortar, and as late as 1820 in the Old Southwest. Williams, Beginnings of West Tennessee.

260. Some of the Chickasaw women are described as being of surpassing beauty. In 1762 Maj. Robert Rogers described them as “far exceeding in beauty any other nation to the Southward.” Cushman: “Seldom have I looked upon specimens of female grace and loveliness as I have seen among the Chickasaws three quarters of a century ago in their former homes east of the Mississippi River.... Their eyes were dark and full and their countenances like their native clime.... They were truly beautiful and, best of all, unconsciously so. Oft was I at a loss which most to admire—the graceful and seemingly perfect forms, finely chiseled features, lustrous eyes and flowing hair, or that soft, winning artlessness which was preëminently theirs.” History, etc., 488; also, Du Pratz, History, 366, 376. The men are described as handsome, beyond other tribes in the South. For mode of courtship, Cushman, op. cit., 498; and chastity, 232, 267.