Lieutenant de St. Laurent, accompanied by a young slave, therefore, went in order to ascertain the truth of their professions; as he passed through the village, the women were heard to demand him as a sacrifice to their hatred, but were prevented by the men from offering him any injury. Peace was now instantly concluded, and a few days after, they accompanied the commander of the detachment in a considerable body, to carry the pipe of peace to the French governor, and to deliver up the two Englishmen. They behaved before M. Biainville with {293} the utmost submission, and offered, if necessary, to attest their friendship by making war upon the English. Thus concluded the war of the French with the Chicasaws, about the beginning of April, 1740.

In the revolutionary war with Great Britain, they appear to have sided with the republicans; and displayed 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 they made war against the Chicasaws, in aid of the French, and that, though they professed to aid the cause of the Natchez, yet that afterwards, through mere jealousy, they had joined with the French against them.

The Choctaws, till very late years, had a practice, not indeed peculiar, of exposing their dead upon scaffolds till such time as the flesh decayed, which was then separated from the bones by a set of old men, who devoted themselves to this custom, and were called “bone-pickers,” after which, the bones were interred in some place set apart for the purpose.

This custom unquestionably arose out of a veneration for the deceased, and an attachment to their remains, which, among a wandering and unsettled people, were thus conveniently removed. A circumstance of this kind is related by Charlevoix,⁠[279] where the Indians on removing their village, carried with them also the bones of their dead.