The Hitchiti tribe, of whose language we present an extensive specimen
in this volume, also belongs to the southeastern group, which I have
called Apalachian.
Hitchiti town was, in Hawkins' time, established on the eastern bank
of Chatahuchi river, four miles below Chiaha. The natives possessed a
narrow strip of good land bordering on the river, and had the
reputation of being honest and industrious. They obtained their name
from Hitchiti creek, so called at its junction with Chatahuchi river,
[and in its upper course Ahíki (Ouhe-gee); cf. List] from Creek:
ahítchita "_to look up_ (the stream)." They had spread out into two
branch settlements: Hitchitúdshi or Little Hitchiti, on both sides of
Flint river, below the junction of Kitchofuni creek, which passes
through a county named after it; and Tutalósi on Tutalosi creek, a
branch of Kitchofuni creek, twenty miles west of Hitchitúdshi
(Hawkins, p. 60. 65). The existence of several Hitchiti towns is
mentioned by C. Swan in 1791; and Wm. Bartram states that they "speak
the Stincard language." There is a popular saying among the Creeks,
that the ancient name of the tribe was Atchík'hade, a Hitchiti word
which signifies _white heap_ (of ashes).
Some Hitchiti Indians trace their mythic origin to a fall from the
sky, but my informants, Chicote and G. W. Stidham, gave me the
following tale: "Their ancestors first appeared in the country by
coming out of a canebrake or reed thicket (útski in Hitchiti) near the
sea coast. They sunned and dried their children during four days, then
set out, arrived at a lake and stopped there. Some thought it was the
sea, but it was a lake; they set out again, traveled up a stream and
settled there for a permanency." Another tradition says that this
people was the first to settle at the site of Okmulgi town, an ancient
capital of the confederacy.
The tribe was a member of the Creek confederacy and does not figure
prominently in history. The first mention I can find of it, is of the
year 1733, when Gov. Oglethorpe met the Lower Creek chiefs at
Savannah, Ga., to conciliate their tribes in his favor. The "Echetas"
had sent their war-chiefs, Chutabeeche and Robin with four attendants
(Ch. C. Jones, Tomochichi, p. 28). The Yutchitálgi of our legend, who
were represented at the Savannah council of 1735 by "Tomehuichi, dog
king of the Euchitaws," are probably the Hitchiti, not the Yuchi. Wm.
Bartram calls them (1773) "Echetas" also.
The dialect spoken by the Hitchiti and Mikasuki once spread over an
extensive area, for local names are worded in it from the Chatahuchi
river in an eastern direction up to the Atlantic coast. To these
belong those mentioned under "the name Maskoki," p. 58.
According to Wm. Bartram, Travels, pp. 462-464, the following towns on
Chatahuchi river spoke the "Stincard" language, that is a language
differing from Creek or Muscogulge: Chíaha (Chehaw), Hitchiti
(Echeta), Okóni (Occone), the two Sáwokli (Swaglaw, Great and Little).
From this it becomes probable, though not certain, that the dialect
known to us as Hitchiti was common to them all. The Sáwokli tribe,
settled in the Indian Territory, have united there with the Hitchiti,
a circumstance which seems to point to ancient relationship.
Like the Creeks, the Hitchiti have an ancient _female_ dialect, still
remembered and perhaps spoken by the older people, which was formerly
the language of the males also. The woman language existing among the
Creek Indians is called by them also the _ancient_ language. A
thorough study of these archaic remnants would certainly throw light
on the early local distribution of the tribes and dialects of the
Maskoki in the Gulf States.