THE APALACHES.
Derivation of the name.--Earliest notices of.--Visited and
described by Bristock in 1653.--Authenticity of his
narrative.--Subsequent history and final extinction.
Among the aboriginal tribes of the United States perhaps none is more
enigmatical than the Apalaches. They are mentioned as an important
nation by many of the early French and Spanish travellers and
historians, their name is preserved by a bay and river on the shores of
the Gulf of Mexico, and by the great eastern coast range of mountains,
and has been applied by ethnologists to a family of cognate nations that
found their hunting-grounds from the Mississippi to the Atlantic and
from the Ohio river to the Florida Keys; yet, strange to say, their own
race and place have been but guessed at. Intimately connected both by
situation and tradition with the tribes of the Floridian peninsula, an
examination of the facts pertaining to their history and civilization is
requisite to a correct knowledge of the origin and condition of the
latter.
The orthography of the name is given variously by the older writers,
Apahlahche, Abolachi, Apeolatei, Appallatta, &c., and very frequently
without the first letter, Palaxy, Palatcy. Daniel Coxe, indeed,
fancifully considered this first vowel the Arabic article _a_, _al_,
prefixed by the Spaniards to the native word.[130] Its derivation has
been a _questio vexata_ among Indianologists; Heckewelder[131]
identified it with Lenape or Wapanaki, “which name the French in the
south as easily corrupted into _Apalaches_ as in the north to
_Abenakis_,” and other writers have broached equally loose hypothesis.
Adair[132] mentions a Chikasah town, Palacheho, evidently from the same
root; but it is not from this tongue nor any of its allies, that we must
explain its meaning, but rather consider it an indication of ancient
connections with the southern continent, and in itself a pure Carib
word. _Apáliché_ in the Tamanaca dialect of the Guaranay stem on the
Orinoco signifies _man_,[133] and the earliest application of the name
in the northern continent was as a title of the chief of a country,
_l’homme par excellence_,[134] and hence, like very many other Indian
tribes (Apaches, Lenni Lenape, Illinois,) his subjects assumed by
eminence the proud appellation of The Men. How this foreign word came to
be imported will be considered hereafter. Among the tribes that made up
the confederacy, probably only one partook of the warring and energetic
blood of the Caribs; or it may have been assumed in emulation of a
famous neighbor; or it may have been a title of honor derived from the
esoteric language of a foreign priesthood, instances of which are not
rare among the aborigines.
In the writings of the first discoverers they uniformly hold a superior
position as the most polished, the most valorous, and the most united
tribe in the region where they dwelt. The fame of their intrepidity
reached to distant nations. “Keep on, robbers and traitors,” cried the
Indians near the Withlacooche to the soldiers of De Soto, “in Apalache
you will receive that chastisement your cruelty deserves.” When they
arrived at this redoubted province they found cultivated fields
stretching on either hand, bearing plentiful crops of corn, beans,
pumpkins, cucumbers, and plums,[135] whose possessors, a race large in
stature, of great prowess, and delighting in war, inhabited numerous
villages containing from fifty to three hundred, spacious and commodious
dwellings, well protected against hostile incursions. The French
colonists heard of them as distinguished for power and wealth, having
good store of gold, silver, and pearls, and dwelling near lofty
mountains to the north; and Fontanedo, two years a prisoner in their
power, lauds them as “_les meilleurs Indiens de la Floride_,” and
describes their province as stretching far northward to the snow-covered
mountains of Onagatano abounding in precious metals.[136]
About a century subsequent to these writers, we find a very minute and
extraordinary account of a nation called Apalachites, indebted for its
preservation principally to the work of the Abbé Rochefort. It has been
usually supposed a creation of his own fertile brain, but a careful
study of the subject has given me a different opinion. The original
sources of his information may be entirely lost, but that they actually
existed can be proved beyond reasonable doubt. They were a series of
ephemeral publications by an “English gentleman” about 1656, whose name
is variously spelled Bristol, Bristok, Brigstock, and Bristock, the
latter being probably the correct orthography. He had spent many years
in the West Indies and North America, was conversant with several native
tongues, and had visited Apalacha in 1653. Besides the above-mentioned
fragmentary notes, he promised a complete narrative of his residence and
journeys in the New World, but apparently never fulfilled his intention.
Versions of his account are found in various writers of the age. The
earliest is given by Rochefort[137], and was translated with the rest of
the work of that author by Davies[138], who must have consulted the
original tract of Bristock as he adds particulars not found in the
Abbé’s history. Others are met with in the writings of the Geographus
Ordinarius, Nicolas Sanson d’ Abbeville[139], in the huge tomes of
Ogilby[140] and his high and low Dutch paraphrasers Arnoldus
Montanus[141] and Oliver Dapper,[142] in Oldmixon’s history,[143] quite
fully in the later compilation that goes under the name of Baumgarten’s
History of America,[144] and in our own days has been adverted to by the
distinguished Indianologist H. R. Schoolcraft in more than one of his
works. It consists of two parts, the one treating of the traditions, the
other of the manners and customs of the Apalachites. In order to place
the subject in the clearest light I shall insert a brief epitome of
both.
The Apalachites inhabited the region called Apalacha between 33° 25´ and
37° north latitude. By tradition and language they originated from
northern Mexico, where similar dialects still existed.[145] The
Cofachites were a more southern nation, scattered at first over the vast
plains and morasses to the south along the Gulf of Mexico (Theomi), but
subsequently having been reduced by the former nation, they settled a
district called Amana, near the mountains of Apalacha, and from this
circumstance received the name Caraibe or Carib, meaning “bold, warlike
men,” “strangers,” and “annexed nation.” In after days, increasing in
strength and retaining their separate existence, they asserted
independence, refused homage to the king of Apalacha, and slighted the
worship of the sun. Wars consequently arose, extending at intervals over
several centuries, resulting in favor of the Cofachites, whose dominion
ultimately extended from the mountains in the north to the shores of the
Gulf and the river St. Johns on the south. Finding themselves too weak
to cope openly with such a powerful foe, the Apalachites had recourse to
stratagem. Taking advantage of a temporary peace, their priests used the
utmost exertions to spread abroad among their antagonists a religious
veneration of the sun and a belief in the necessity of an annual
pilgrimage to his sacred mountain Olaimi in Apalacha. So well did their
plan succeed, that when at the resumption of hostilities, the
Apalachites forbade the ingress of all pilgrims but those who would do
homage to their king, a schism, bitter and irreconcileable, was brought
about among the Cofachites. Finally peace was restored by a migration of
those to whom liberty was dearer than religion, and a submission of the
rest to the Apalachites, with whom they became amalgamated and lost
their identity. Their more valiant companions, after long wanderings
through unknown lands in search of a home, finally locate themselves on
the southern shore of Florida. Islanders from the Bahamas, driven
thither by storms, tell them of lands, fertile and abounding in game,
yet uninhabited and unclaimed, lying to the southwards; they follow
their advice and direction, traverse the Gulf of Florida, and settle the
island of _Ayay_, now Santa Cruz. From this centre colonies radiated,
till the majority of the islands and no small portion of the southern
mainland was peopled by their race.
Such is the sum of Bristock’s singular account. It is either of no
credibility whatever, or it is a distorted version of floating, dim
traditions, prevalent among the indigenes of the West Indies and the
neighboring parts of North America. I am inclined to the latter opinion,
and think that Bristock, hearing among the Caribs rumors of a continent
to the north, and subsequently finding powerful nations there, who, in
turn, knew of land to the south and spoke of ancient wars and
migrations, wove the fragments together, filled up the blanks, and gave
it to the world as a veritable history. To support this view, let us
inquire whether any knowledge of each other actually existed between the
inhabitants of the islands and the northern mainland, and how far this
knowledge extended.
The reality of the migration, though supported by some facts, must be
denied of the two principal races, the Caribs and Arowauks, who peopled
the islands at the time of their discovery. The assertions of Barcia,
Herrera, and others that they were originally settled by Indians from
Florida have been abundantly disproved by the profound investigations of
Alphonse D’Orbigny in South America.[146] On the other hand, that the
Cubans and Lucayans had a knowledge of the peninsula not only in the
form of myths but as a real geographical fact, even having specific
names in their own tongues for it (Cautio, Jaguaza), is declared by the
unanimous voice of historians.
The most remarkable of these myths was that of the fountain of life,
placed by some in the Lucayos, but generally in a fair and genial land
to the north.[147] From the tropical forests of Central America to the
coral-bound Antilles the natives told the Spaniards marvellous tales of
a fountain whose magic waters would heal the sick, rejuvenate the aged,
and confer an ever-youthful immortality. It may have originated in a
confused tradition of a partial derivation from the mainland and
subsequent additions thence received from time to time, or more probably
from the adoration of some of the very remarkable springs abundant on
the peninsula, perchance that wonderful object the Silver Spring,[148]
round which I found signs of a dense early population, its virtues
magnified by time, distance, and the arts of priests. We know how
intimately connected is the worship of the sun with the veneration of
water; heat typifying the masculine, moisture the feminine principle.
The universality of their association in the Old World cosmogonies and
mythologies is too well-known to need specification, and it is quite as
invariable in those of the New Continent. That such magnificent springs
as occur in Florida should have become objects of special veneration,
and their fame bruited far and wide, and handed down from father to son,
is a most natural consequence in such faiths.[149]
Certain it is that long before these romantic tales had given rise to
the expeditions of De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, many natives of the
Lucayos, of Cuba, even of Yucatan and Honduras,[150] had set out in
search of this mystic fount. Many were lost, while some lived to arrive
on the Floridian coast, where finding it impossible either to proceed or
return, they formed small villages, “whose race,” adds Barcia,[151]
writing in 1722, “is still in existence” (cuia generacion aun dura).
This statement, which the cautious investigator Navarrete confirms,[152]
seems less improbable when we reflect that in after times it was no
uncommon incident for the natives of Cuba to cross the Gulf of Florida
in their open boats to escape the slavery of the Spaniards,[153] that
the Lucayans had frequent communication with the mainland,[154] that the
tribes of South Florida, as early as 1695, carried on a considerable
trade with Havana,[155] that the later Indians on the Suwannee would on
their trading excursions not only descend this river in their large
cypress canoes, but proceed “quite to the point of Florida, and
sometimes cross the Gulph, extending their navigations to the Bahama
islands and even to Cuba,”[156] and finally that nothing was more common
to such a seafaring nation as the Caribs than a voyage of this
length.[157]
Another remarkable myth, which certainly points for its explanation to
an early and familiar intercourse between the islands and the mainland,
is the singular geognostic tradition prevalent among the Lucayans,
preserved by Peter of Anghiera, to the effect that this archipelago was
originally united to the continent by firm land.[158] Doubtless it was
on such grounds that the Spaniards concluded that they owed their
original settlement to migrations from the Floridian peninsula.
Turning our attention now to this latter land, we should have cause to
be surprised did we not find signs that such adventurous navigators as
the Caribs had planned and executed incursions and settlements there.
That these signs are so sparse and unsatisfactory, we owe not so much to
their own rarity as to the slight weight attached to such things by the
early explorers and discoverers. From the accounts we do possess,
however, there can be no doubt but that vestiges of the Caribbean
tongue, if not whole tribes identical with them in language and customs,
have been met with from time to time on the peninsula.[159] The striking
similarity in the customs of flattening the forehead, in poisoning
weapons, in the use of hollow reeds to propel arrows, in the sculpturing
on war clubs, construction of dwellings, exsiccation of corpses,[160]
burning the houses of the dead, and other rites, though far from
conclusive are yet not without a decided weight. It is much to be
regretted that Adair has left us no fuller information of those seven
tribes on the Koosah river, who spoke a different tongue from the
Muskohge and preserved “a fixed oral tradition that they formerly came
from South America, and after sundry struggles in defence of liberty
settled their present abode.”[161]
Thus it clearly appears that the frame, so to speak, of the traditions
preserved by Bristock actually did exist and may be proved from other
writers. But we are still more strongly convinced that his account is at
least founded on fact, when we compare the manners and customs, of the
Apalachites, as he gives them, with those of the Cherokee, Choktah,
Chickasah, and Muskohge, tribes plainly included by him under this name,
and proved by the philological researches of Gallatin to have occupied
the same location since De Soto’s expedition.[162] We need have no
suspicion that he plagiarized from other authors, as the particulars he
mentions are not found in earlier writers; and it was not till 1661 that
the English settled Carolina, not till 1699 that Iberville built his
little fort on the Bay of Biloxi, and many years elapsed between this
latter and the general treaty of Oglethorpe. If then we find a close
similarity in manners, customs, and religions, we must perforce concede
his accounts, such as they have reached us, a certain degree of credit.
He begins by stating that Apalacha was divided into six provinces;
Dumont,[163] writing from independent observation about three-fourths of
a century afterwards, makes the same statement. Their towns were
inclosed with stakes or live hedges, the houses built of stakes driven
into the ground in an oval shape, were plastered with mud and sand,
whitewashed without, and some of a reddish glistening color within from
a peculiar kind of sand, thatched with grass, and only five or six feet
high, the council-house being usually on an elevation.[164] If the
reader will turn to the authorities quoted in the subjoined note, he
will find this an exact description of the towns and single dwellings of
the later Indians.[165] The women manufactured mats of down and feathers
with the same skill that a century later astonished Adair,[166] and
spun like these the wild hemp and the mulberry bark into various simple
articles of clothing. The fantastic custom of shaving the hair on
one-half the head, and permitting the other half to remain, on certain
emergencies, is also mentioned by later travellers.[167] Their food was
not so much game as peas, beans, maize, and other vegetables, produced
by cultivation; and the use of salt obtained from vegetable ashes, so
infrequent among the Indians, attracted the notice of Bristock as well
as Adair.[168] Their agricultural character reminds us of the Choktahs,
among whom the men helped their wives to labor in the field, and whom
Bernard Romans[169] called “a nation of farmers.” In Apalache, says
Dumont,[170] “we find a less rude, more refined nation, peopling its
meads and fertile vales, cultivating the earth, and living on the
abundance of excellent fruit it produces.”
Strange as a fairy tale is Bristock’s description of their chief temple
and the rites of their religion--of the holy mountain Olaimi lifting its
barren, round summit far above the capital city Melilot at its base--of
the two sacred caverns within this mount, the innermost two hundred feet
square and one hundred in height, wherein were the emblematic vase ever
filled with crystal water that trickled from the rock, and the “grand
altar” of one round stone, on which incense, spices, and aromatic shrubs
were the only offerings--of the platform, sculptured from the solid
rock, where the priests offered their morning orisons to the glorious
orb of their divinity at his daily birth--of their four great annual
feasts--all reminding us rather of the pompous rites of Persian or
Peruvian heliolatry than the simple sun worship of the Vesperic tribes.
Yet in essentials, in stated yearly feasts, in sun and fire worship, in
daily prayers at rising and setting sun, in frequent ablution, we
recognize through all this exaggeration and coloring, the religious
habits that actually prevailed in those regions. Indeed, the speculative
antiquarian may ask concerning Mount Olaimi itself, whether it may not
be identical with the enormous mass of granite known as “The Stone
Mountain” in De Kalb county, Georgia, whose summit presents an oval,
flat, and naked surface two or three hundred yards in width, by about
twice that in length, encircled by the remains of a mural construction
of unknown antiquity, and whose sides are pierced by the mouths of vast
caverns;[171] or with Lookout mountain between the Coosa and Tennessee
rivers, where Mr. Ferguson found a stone wall “thirty-seven roods and
eight feet in length,” skirting the brink of a precipice at whose base
were five rooms artificially constructed in the solid rock.[172]
One of the most decisive proofs of the veracity of Bristock’s narrative
is his assertion that they mummified the corpses of their chiefs
previous to interment. Recent discoveries of such mummies leave us no
room to doubt the prevalence of this custom among various Indian tribes
east of the Mississippi. It is of so much interest to the antiquarian,
that I shall add in an Appendix the details given on this point by later
writers, as well as an examination of the origin of those mummies that
have been occasionally disinterred in the caves of Tennessee and
Kentucky.[173]
One other topic for examination in Bristock’s memoir yet remains--the
scattered words of the language he mentions. The principal are the
following;[174]
Mayrdock--the Viracocha of their traditions.
Naarim--the month of March.
Theomi--proper name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Jauas--priests.
Tlatuici--the mountain tribes.
Paracussi--chief; a generic term.
Bersaykau--vale of cedars.
Akueyas--deer.
Hitanachi--pleasant, beautiful.
Tonatzuli--heavenly singer; the name of a bird sacred to the sun.
Several of these words may be explained from tongues with which we are
better acquainted.
_Jauas_ and _Pâracussi_ are words used in the sense they here bear in
many early writers; the derivation of the former will be considered
hereafter; that of the latter is uncertain. _Tlatuici_ is doubtless
identical with _Tsalakie_, the proper appellation of the Cherokee tribe.
_Akueyas_ has a resemblance, though remote, to the Seminole _ekko_ of
the same signification. In _hitanachi_ we recognize the Choktah
intensitive prefix _hhito_; and in _tonatzuli_ a compound of the Choktah
verb _taloa_, he sings, in one of its forms, with _shutik_, Muskohge
_sootah_, heaven or sky. A closer examination would doubtless reveal
other analogies, but the above are sufficient to show that these were no
mere unmeaning words, coined by a writer’s fancy.
The general result of these inquiries, therefore, is strongly in favor
of the authenticity of Bristock’s narrative. Exaggerated and distorted
though it be, nevertheless it is the product of actual observation, and
deserves to be classed among our authorities, though as one to be used
with the greatest caution. We have also found that though no general
migration took place from the continent southward, nor from the islands
northward, yet there was considerable intercourse in both directions;
that not only the natives of the greater and lesser Antilles and
Yucatan, but also numbers of the Guaranay stem of the southern
continent, the Caribs proper, crossed the Straits of Florida and founded
colonies on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; that their customs and
language became to a certain extent grafted upon those of the earlier
possessors of the soil; and to this foreign language the name Apalache
belongs. As previously stated, it was used as a generic title, applied
to a confederation of many nations at one time under the domination of
one chief, whose power probably extended from the Alleghany mountains on
the north to the shore of the Gulf; that it included tribes speaking a
tongue closely akin to the Choktah is evident from the fragments we have
remaining. This is further illustrated by a few words of “Appalachian,”
preserved by John Chamberlayne.[175] These, with their congeners in
cognate dialects, are as follows:
_Apalachian._ _Choktah._ _Muskohge._
Father kelke aunkky, unky ilkhy
Heaven hetucoba ubbah,
_intensitive_,
hhito
Earth ahan yahkna ikahnah
Bread pasca puska
The location of the tribe in after years is very uncertain. Dumont
placed them in the northern part of what is now Alabama and Georgia,
near the mountains that bear their name. That a portion of them did live
in this vicinity is corroborated by the historians of South Carolina,
who say that Colonel Moore, in 1703, found them “between the head-waters
of the Savannah and Altamaha.”[176] De l’Isle, also, locates them
between the _R. des Caouitas ou R. de Mai_ and the _R. des Chaouanos ou
d’Edisco_, both represented as flowing nearly parallel from the
mountains.
According to all the Spanish authorities on the other hand, they dwelt
in the region of country between the Suwannee and Apalachicola
rivers--yet must not be confounded with the Apalachicolos. Thus St.
Marks was first named San Marco de Apalache, and it was near here that
Narvaez and De Soto found them. They certainly had a large and
prosperous town in this vicinity, said to contain a thousand warriors,
whose chief was possessed of much influence.[177] De l’Isle makes this
their original locality, inscribing it “_Icy estoient cy devant les
Apalaches_,” and their position in his day as one acquired subsequently.
That they were driven from the Apalachicola by the Alibamons and other
western tribes in 1705, does not admit of a doubt, yet it is equally
certain that at the time of the cession of the country to the English,
(1763,) they retained a small village near St. Marks, called San
Juan.[178] I am inclined to believe that these were different branches
of the same confederacy, and the more so as we find a similar
discrepancy in the earliest narratives of the French and Spanish
explorers.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century they suffered much from the
devastations of the English, French, and Creeks; indeed, it has been
said, though erroneously, that the last remnant of their tribe “was
totally destroyed by the Creeks in 1719.”[179] About the time Spain
regained possession of the soil, they migrated to the West and settled
on the Bayou Rapide of Red River. Here they had a village numbering
about fifty souls, and preserved for a time at least their native
tongue, though using the French and Mobilian (Chikasah) for common
purposes.[180] Breckenridge,[181] who saw them here, describes them as
“wretched creatures, who are diminishing daily.” Probably by this time
the last representative of this once powerful tribe has perished.