None of all the allophylic tribes referred to in this First Part stood
in closer connection with the Creeks or Maskoki proper than the Yuchi
or Uchee Indians. They constituted a portion of their confederacy from
the middle of the eighteenth century, and this gives us the
opportunity to discuss their peculiarities more in detail than those
of the other "outsiders." They have preserved their own language and
customs; no mention is made of them in the migration legend, and the
Creeks have always considered them as a peculiar people.
General Pleasant Porter has kindly favored me with a few ethnologic
points, gained by himself from Yuchi Indians, who inhabit the largest
town in the Creek Nation, Indian Terr., with a population of about
500. "In bodily size they are smaller than the Creeks, but lithe and
of wiry musculature, the muscles often protruding from the body. Their
descent is in the male line, and they were once polygamous. It is a
disputed fact whether they ever observed the custom of flattening
their children's heads, like some of their neighbors. They call
themselves _children of the Sun_, and sun worship seems to have been
more pronounced here than with other tribes of the Gulf States. The
monthly efflux of the Sun, whom they considered as of the female sex,
fell to the earth, as they say, and from this the Yuchi people took
its origin. They increase in number at the present time, and a part of
them are still pagans. Popularly expressed, their language sounds
'like the warble of the prairie-chickens.' It is stated that their
conjurers' songs give a clue to all their antiquities and symbolic
customs. They exclude the use of salt from all drugs which serve them
as medicine. While engaged in making medicine they sing the above
songs for a time; then comes the oral portion of their ritual, which
is followed by other songs."
Not much is known of their language, but it might be easily obtained
from the natives familiar with English. From what we know of it, it
shows no radical affinity with any known American tongue, and its
phonetics have often been noticed for their strangeness. They are said
to speak with an abundance of arrested sounds or voice-checks, from
which they start again with a jerk of the voice. The accent often
rests on the ultima (Powell's mscr. vocabulary), and Ware ascribes to
them, though wrongly, the Hottentot _cluck_.
The numerals follow the decimal, not the quinary system as they do in
the Maskoki languages. The lack of a dual form in the intransitive
verb also distinguishes Yuchi from the latter.
The earliest habitat of the Yuchi, as far as traceable, was on both
sides of the Savannah river, and Yuchi towns existed there down to the
middle of the eighteenth century.
When Commander H. de Soto reached these parts with his army, the
"queen" (señora, caçica) of the country met him at the town Cofetaçque
_on a barge_, a circumstance which testifies to the existence of a
considerable water-course there. Cofetaçque, written also Cofitachiqui
(Biedma), Cofachiqui (Garcilaso de la Vega), Cutifachiqui (consonants
inverted, Elvas) was seven days' march from Chalaque (Cheroki)
"province," and distant from the sea about thirty leagues, as stated
by the natives of the place. There were many ruined towns in the
vicinity, we are told by the Fidalgo de Elvas. One league from there,
in the direction up stream, was Talomeco town, the "temple" of which
is described as a wonderful and curious structure by Garcilaso. Many
modern historians have located these towns on the middle course of
Savannah river, and Charles C. Jones (Hernando de Soto, 1880; pp. 27.
29) believes, with other investigators, that Cofetaçque stood at
Silver Bluff, on the left bank of the Savannah river, about
twenty-five miles by water below Augusta. The domains of that "queen,"
or, as we would express it, the towns and lands of that confederacy,
extended from there up to the Cheroki mountains.
The name Cofita-chiqui seems to prove by itself that these towns were
inhabited by Yuchi Indians; for it contains kowita, the Yuchi term for
_Indian_, and apparently "Indian of our own tribe." This term appears
in all the vocabularies: kawíta, _man, male_; kohwita, ko-ita, plural
kohino'h, _man_; kota, _man_, contracted from kow'ta, kowita; also in
compounds: kowĕt-ten-chōō, _chief_; kohítta makinnung, _chief of a
people_. The terms for the parts of the human body all begin with ko-.
The second part of the name, -chiqui, is a term foreign to Yuchi, but
found in all the dialects of Maskoki in the function of _house_,
_dwelling_, (tchúku, tchóko, and in the eastern or Apalachian
dialects, tchíki) and has to be rendered here in the collective sense
of _houses, town_. Local names to be compared with Cofitachiqui are:
Cofachi, further south, and Acapachiqui, a tract of land near
Apalache.
The signification of the name Yutchi, plural Yutchihá, by which this
people calls itself, is unknown. All the surrounding Indian tribes
call them Yuchi, with the exception of the Lenápi or Delawares, who
style them Tahogaléwi.
But there are two sides to this question. We find the local name
Kawíta, evidently the above term, twice on middle Chatahuchi river,
and also in Cofetalaya, settlements of the Cha'hta Indians in Tala and
Green counties, Mississippi. Did any Yuchi ever live in these
localities in earlier epochs? Garcilaso de Vega, Florida III, c. 10,
states that Juan Ortiz, who had been in the Floridian peninsula
before, acted as interpreter at Cofitachiqui. This raises the query,
did the natives of this "capital" speak Creek or Yuchi? Who will
attempt to give an irrefutable answer to this query?
The existence of a "queen" or caçica, that is, of a chief's widow
invested with the authority of a chief, seems to show that Cofetaçque
town or confederacy did not belong to the Maskoki connection, for we
find no similar instance in Creek towns. Among the Yuchi, succession
is in the male line, but the Hitchiti possess a legendary tradition,
according to which the first chief that ever stood at the head of
their community was a woman.
To determine the extent of the lands inhabited or claimed by the Yuchi
in de Soto's time, is next to impossible. At a later period they lived
on the eastern side of the Savannah river, and on its western side as
far as Ogeechee river, and upon tracts above and below Augusta,
Georgia. These tracts were claimed by them as late as 1736. John
Filson, in his "Discovery etc. of Kentucky" vol. II, 84-87 (1793),
gives a list of thirty Indian tribes, and a statement on Yuchi towns,
which he must have obtained from a much older source: "Uchees occupy
four different places of residence, at the head of St. John's, the
fork of St. Mary's, the head of Cannouchee and the head of St.
Tillis.[5] These rivers rise on the borders of Georgia and run
separately into the ocean." To Cannouchee answers a place _Canosi_,
mentioned in Juan de la Vandera's narrative (1569); the name, however,
is Creek and not Yuchi. Hawkins states that formerly Yuchi were
settled in small villages at Ponpon, Saltketchers and Silver Bluff, S.
C., and on the Ogeechee river, Ga. In 1739 a Yuchi town existed on the
Savannah river, twenty-five miles above Ebenezer, which is in
Effingham county, Georgia, near Savannah City (Jones, Tomochichi, p.
117; see next page).
[Footnote 5: The present Satilla river; falsely written St.
Illa, Santilla, St. Tillie.]
From notices contained in the first volume of Urlsperger's
"Ausführliche Nachricht," pp. 845. 850-851, we gather the facts that
this Yuchi town was five miles above the Apalachicola Fort, which
stood in the "Pallachucla savanna," and that its inhabitants
celebrated an annual busk, which was at times visited by the
colonists. Governor Oglethorpe concluded an alliance with this town,
and when he exchanged presents to confirm the agreement made, he
obtained skins from these Indians. Rev. Boltzius, the minister of the
Salzburger emigrants, settled in the vicinity, depicts their character
in dark colors; he states "they are much inclined to Robbing and
Stealing," but was evidently influenced by the Yámassi and Yamacraw in
their vicinity, who hated them as a race foreign to themselves. Of
these he says, "these Creeks are Honest, Serviceable and
Disinterested."[6]
[Footnote 6: Extract from Rev. B's Journal; London, 1734, 12mo,
p. 37.]
The reason why the Yuchi people gradually left their old seats and
passed over to Chatahuchi and Flint rivers is stated as follows by
Benj. Hawkins, United States Agent among the Creeks in his instructive
"Sketch of the Creek Country" (1799).[7]
[Footnote 7: Collections of the Georgia Historical Society, vol.
III, part first, pp. 61-63 (Savannah, 1848).]
In 1729, "Captain Ellick," an old chief of Kasí'hta, married three
Yuchi women and brought them to Kasí'hta. This was greatly disliked by
his townspeople, and he was prevailed upon to move across Chatahuchi
river, opposite to where Yuchi town was in Hawkins' time; he settled
there with his three brothers, two of whom had intermarried with
Yuchis. After this, the chief collected all the Yuchi people, gave
them lands on the site of Yuchi town, and there they settled.
Hawkins eulogizes the people by stating that they are more civil,
orderly and industrious than their neighbors (the Lower Creeks), the
men more attached to their wives, and these more chaste. He estimates
the number of their warriors ("gun-men"), including those of the three
branch villages, at about two hundred and fifty. These branch towns
were Intatchkálgi, "beaver-dam people";[8] Padshiläíka, "pigeon
roost"; and Tokogálgi, "tad-pole people", on Flint river and its side
creeks; while a few Yuchi had gone to the Upper Creeks and settled
there at Sawanógi. Yuchi, the main town, lay on the western bank of
Chatahuchi river, on a tributary called Yuchi creek, ten and one-half
miles below Kawíta Talahássi, and two miles above Osutchi. Another
water course, called "Uchee river," runs from the west into Oklokoni
river, or "Yellow Water," in the southwestern corner of the State of
Georgia. Morse, in his list of Seminole settlements (1822), mentions a
Yuchi town near Mikasuki, Florida.
[Footnote 8: See below: List of Creek Settlements.]
The main Yuchi town on Chatahuchi river was built in a vast plain
rising from the river. W. Bartram, who saw it in 1775, depicts it as
the largest, most compact, and best situated Indian town he ever saw;
the habitations were large and neatly built, the walls of the houses
consisted of a wooden frame, lathed and plastered inside and outside
with a reddish clay, and roofed with cypress bark or shingles. He
estimated the number of the inhabitants at one thousand or fifteen
hundred. They were usually at variance with the Maskoki confederacy,
and "did not mix" with its people, but were wise enough to unite with
them against a common enemy (Travels, pp. 386. 387).
The early reports may often have unconsciously included the Yuchi
among the Apalachi[9] and Apalatchúkla. Among the chiefs who
accompanied Tomochichi, miko of the Yamacraw Indians, to England in
1733, was Umphichi or Umpeachy, "a Uchee chief from Palachocolas."[10]
[Footnote 9: Cf. Gallatin, Synopsis, p. 95.]
[Footnote 10: Chas. C. Jones, Tomochichi, pp. 58. 83.]
William Bartram, who traveled through these parts from 1773 to 1778,
and published his "Travels" many years later,[11] calls them "Uche or
Savannuca," which is the Creek Sawanógi, or "dwellers upon Savannah
river." This name Savannuca, and many equally sounding names, have
caused much confusion concerning a supposed immigration of the
Sháwano or Shawnee Indians (of the Algonkin race) into Georgia, among
historians not posted in Indian languages. Sawanógi is derived from
Savannah river, which is named after the prairies extending on both
sides, these being called in Spanish sabana. Sabana, and savane in the
Canadian French, designate a grassy plain, level country, prairie,
also in Span. pasture extending over a plain; from Latin sabana
_napkin_. It still occurs in some local names of Canada and of Spanish
America. But this term has nothing at all in common with the Algonkin
word sháwano _south_, from which are derived the tribal names: Sháwano
or Shawnee, once on Ohio and Cumberland rivers and their tributaries;
Chowan in Southern Virginia; Siwoneys in Connecticut; Sawannoe in New
Jersey (about 1616); Chaouanons, the southern division of the Illinois
or Maskoutens.
[Footnote 11: Published Philadelphia, 1791.]
These tribes, and many others characterized as _southerners_ by the
same or similar Algonkin names, had no connection among themselves,
besides the affinity in their dialects, which for the Chowans is not
even certain. The tradition that Sháwanos existed in Upper Georgia,
around Tugĕlo, and on the head waters of the large Georgia rivers,
requires therefore further examination. Milfort, in his Mémoire (pp.
9. 10) states that lands were obtained from "les Savanogués, sauvages
qui habitent cette partie (de Tougoulou)," for the plantation of
vineyards, about 1775. The name of the Suwanee river, Florida, and
that of Suwanee Creek and town, northeast of Atlanta, Georgia, seem to
contain the Creek term sawáni _echo_. By all means, these names cannot
serve to prove the presence of the Sháwano tribe in these eastern
parts, but a settlement of Sháwanos, also called Sawanógi, existed on
Tallapoosa river, where they seem to have been mixed with Yuchi.[12]
[Footnote 12: Cf. List of Creek Towns, and Pénicaut, in B.
French, Hist. Coll. La., new series, p. 126; Force, Some Notices
on Indians of Ohio, p. 22.]
A. Gallatin, "Synopsis of the Indian Tribes," p. 95, mentions a
tradition, according to which "the ancient seats of the Yuchi were
east of the Coosa, and probably of the Chatahuchi river, and that they
consider themselves as the most ancient inhabitants of the country."
Of which country? If the whole country is meant, which was at the dawn
of history held by Maskoki tribes, the name of the Yazoo river may be
adduced as an argument for the truth of this tradition, for yasu,
yashu is the Yuchi term for _leaf_ and any _leaf-bearing tree_, even
_pines_ (from yá, _wood, tree_), and Kawíta has been mentioned
above. From a thorough comparative study of the Yuchi language, the
Maskoki dialects and the local nomenclature of the country, we can
alone expect any reliable information upon the extent and the area of
territory anciently held by the Yuchi; but at present it is safest to
locate their "priscan home" upon both sides of Lower Savannah river.