LATER TRIBES.
§ 1. Yemassees.--Uchees.--Apalachicolos.--Migrations northward.
§ 2. Seminoles.
§ 1.--YEMASSEES AND OTHER TRIBES.
About the close of the seventeenth century, when the tribes who
originally possessed the peninsula had become dismembered and reduced by
prolonged conflicts with the whites and between themselves, various
bands from the more northern regions, driven from their ancestral homes
partly by the English and partly by a spirit of restlessness, sought to
fix their habitations in various parts of Florida.
The earliest of these were the Savannahs or Yemassees (Yammassees,
Jamasees, Eamuses,) a branch of the Muskogeh or Creek nation, who
originally inhabited the shores of the Savannah river and the low
country of Carolina. Here they generally maintained friendly relations
with the Spanish, who at one period established missions among them,
until the arrival of the English. These purchased their land, won their
friendship, and embittered them against their former friends. As the
colony extended, they gradually migrated southward, obtaining a home by
wresting from their red and white possessors the islands and mainland
along the coast of Georgia and Florida. The most disastrous of these
inroads was in 1686, when they drove the Spanish colonists from all the
islands north of the St. Johns, and laid waste the missions and
plantations that had been commenced upon them. Subsequently, spreading
over the savannas of Alachua and the fertile plains of Middle Florida,
they conjoined with the fragments of older nations to form separate
tribes, as the Chias, Canaake, Tomocos or Atimucas, and others. Of these
the last-mentioned were the most important. They dwelt between the St.
Johns and the Suwannee, and possessed the towns of Jurlo Noca, Alachua,
Nuvoalla, and others. At the devastation of their settlements by the
English and Creeks in 1704, 1705 and 1706, they removed to the shores of
Musquito Lagoon, sixty-five miles south of St. Augustine, where they had
a village, long known as the Pueblo de Atimucas.
A portion of the tribe remained in Carolina, dwelling on Port Royal
Island, whence they made frequent attacks on the Christian Indians of
Florida, carrying them into captivity, and selling them to the English.
In April, 1715, however, instigated as was supposed by the Spanish, they
made a sudden attack on the neighboring settlements, but were repulsed
and driven from the country. They hastened to St. Augustine, “where they
were received with bells ringing and guns firing,”[244] and given a spot
of ground within a mile of the city. Here they resided till the attack
of Colonel Palmer in 1727, who burnt their village and destroyed most of
its inhabitants. Some, however, escaped, and to the number of twenty
men, lived in St. Augustine about the middle of the century. Finally,
this last miserable remnant was enslaved by the Seminoles, and sunk in
the Ocklawaha branch of that tribe.[245]
Originating from near the same spot as the Yemassees were the Uchees.
When first encountered by the whites, they possessed the country on the
Carolina side of the Savannah river for more than one hundred and fifty
miles, commencing sixty miles from its mouth, and, consequently, just
west of the Yemassees. Closely associated with them here, were the
Palachoclas or Apalachicolos. About the year 1716, nearly all the
latter, together with a portion of the Uchees, removed to the south
under the guidance of Cherokee Leechee, their chief, and located on the
banks of the stream called by the English the Flint river, but which
subsequently received the name of Apalachicola.
The rest of the Uchees clung tenaciously to their ancestral seats in
spite of the threats and persuasion of the English, till after the
middle of the century, when a second and complete migration took place.
Instead of joining their kinsmen, however, they kept more to the east,
occupying sites first on the head-waters of the Altamaha, then on the
Santilla, (St. Tillis,) St. Marys, and St. Johns, where we hear of them
as early as 1786. At the cession to the United States, (1821,) they had
a village ten miles south of Volusia, near Spring Gardens. At this
period, though intermarrying with their neighbors, they still maintained
their identity, and when, at the close of the Seminole war in 1845, two
hundred and fifty Indians embarked at Tampa for New Orleans and the
West, it is said a number of them belonged to this tribe, and probably
constituted the last of the race.[246]
Both on the Apalachicola and Savannah rivers this tribe was remarkable
for its unusually agricultural and civilized habits, though of a tricky
and dishonest character. Bartram[247] gives the following description of
their town of Chata on the Chatauchee:--“It is the most compact and best
situated Indian town I ever saw; the habitations are large and neatly
built; the walls of the houses are constructed of a wooden frame, then
lathed and plastered inside and out, with a reddish, well-tempered clay
or mortar, which gives them the appearance of red brick walls, and these
houses are neatly covered or roofed with cypress bark or shingles of
that tree.” This, together with the Savanuca town on the Tallapoosa or
Oakfuske river, comprised the whole of the tribe at that time resident
in this vicinity.
Their language was called the Savanuca tongue, from the town of that
name. It was peculiar to themselves and radically different from the
Creek tongue or Lingo, by which they were surrounded; “It seems,” says
Bartram, “to be a more northern tongue;” by which he probably means it
sounded harsher to the ear. It was said to be a dialect of the
Shawanese, but a comparison of the vocabularies indicates no connection,
and it appears more probable that it stands quite alone in the
philology of that part of the continent.
While these movements were taking place from the north toward the south,
there were also others in a contrary direction. One of the principal of
these occurred while Francisco de la Guerra was Governor-General of
Florida, (1684-1690,) in consequence of an attempt made by Don Juan
Marquez to remove the natives to the West India islands and enslave
them. We have no certain knowledge how extensive it was, though it seems
to have left quite a number of missions deserted.[248]
What has excited more general attention is the tradition of the
Shawnees, (Shawanees, Sawannees, Shawanos,) that they originally came
from the Suwannee river in Florida, whose name has been said to be “a
corruption of Shawanese,” and that they were driven thence by the
Cherokees.[249] That such was the origin of the name is quite false, as
its present appellation is merely a corruption of the Spanish _San
Juan_, the river having been called the Little San Juan, in
contradistinction to the St. Johns, (el rio de San Juan,) on the eastern
coast.[250] Nor did they ever live in this region, but were scions of
the Savannah stem of the Creeks, accolents of the river of that name,
and consequently were kinsmen of the Yemassees.
§ 2.--THE SEMINOLES.
The Creek nation, so called says Adair from the number of streams that
intersected the lowlands they inhabited, more properly Muskogeh,
(corrupted into Muscows,) sometimes Western Indians, as they were
supposed to have come later than the Uchees,[251] and on the early maps
Cowetas (Couitias,) and Allibamons from their chief towns, was the last
of those waves of migration which poured across the Mississippi for
several centuries prior to Columbus. Their hunting grounds at one period
embraced a vast extent of country reaching from the Atlantic coast
almost to the Mississippi. After the settlement of the English among
them, they diminished very rapidly from various causes, principally wars
and the ravages of the smallpox, till about 1740 the whole number of
their warriors did not exceed fifteen hundred. The majority of these
belonged to that branch of the nation, called from its more southern
position the Lower Creeks, of mongrel origin, made up of the fragments
of numerous reduced and broken tribes, dwelling north and northwest of
the Floridian peninsula.[252]
When Governor Moore of South Carolina made his attack on St. Augustine,
he included in his complement a considerable band of this nation. After
he had been repulsed they kept possession of all the land north of the
St. Johns, and, uniting with certain negroes from the English and
Spanish colonies, formed the nucleus of the nation, subsequently called
_Ishti semoli_, wild men,[253] corrupted into Seminolies and Seminoles,
who subsequently possessed themselves of the whole peninsula and still
remain there. Others were introduced by the English in their subsequent
invasions, by Governor Moore, by Col. Palmer, and by General Oglethorpe.
As early as 1732, they had founded the town of Coweta on the Flint
river, and laid claim to all the country from there to St.
Augustine.[254] They soon began to make incursions independent of the
whites, as that led by Toonahowi in 1741, as that which in 1750, under
the guidance of Secoffee, forsook the banks of the Apalachicola, and
settled the fertile savannas of Alachua, and as the band that in 1808
followed Micco Hadjo to the vicinity of Tallahassie. They divided
themselves into seven independent bands, the Latchivue or Latchione,
inhabiting the level banks of the St. Johns, and the sand hills to the
west, near the ancient fort Poppa, (San Francisco de Pappa,) opposite
Picolati, the Oklevuaha, or Oklewaha on the river that bears their name,
the Chokechatti, the Pyaklekaha, the Talehouyana or Fatehennyaha, the
Topkelake, and a seventh, whose name I cannot find.
According to a writer in 1791,[255] they lived in a state of frightful
barbarity and indigence, and were “poor and miserable beyond
description.” When the mother was burdened with too many children, she
hesitated not to strangle the new-born infant, without remorse for her
cruelty or odium among her companions. This is the only instance that I
have ever met in the history of the American Indians where infanticide
was in vogue for these reasons, and it gives us a fearfully low idea of
the social and moral condition of those induced by indolence to resort
to it. Yet other and by far the majority of writers give us a very
different opinion, assure us that they built comfortable houses of logs,
made a good, well-baked article of pottery, raised plenteous crops of
corn, beans, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, tobacco, swamp and upland rice,
peas, melons and squashes, while in an emergency the potatoe-like roots
of the china brier or red coonta, the tap root of the white coonta,[256]
the not unpleasant cabbage of the palma royal and palmetto, and the
abundant game and fish, would keep at a distance all real want.[257]
As may readily be supposed from their vagrant and unsettled mode of
life, their religious ideas were very simple. Their notion of a God was
vague and ill-defined; they celebrated certain festivals at corn
planting and harvest; they had a superstition regarding the
transmigration of souls and for this purpose held the infant over the
face of the dying mother;[258] and from their great reluctance to
divulge their real names, it is probable they believed in a personal
guardian spirit, through fear of offending whom a like hesitation
prevailed among other Indian tribes, as well as among the ancient
Romans, and, strange to say, is in force to this day among the lower
class of Italians.[259] They usually interred the dead, and carefully
concealed the grave for fear it should be plundered and desecrated by
enemies, though at other times, as after a battle, they piled the slain
indiscriminately together, and heaped over them a mound of earth. One
instance is recorded[260] where a female slave of a deceased princess
was decapitated on her tomb to be her companion and servant on the
journey to the land of the dead.
A comparison of the Seminole with the Muskogeh vocabulary affords a most
instructive lesson to the philologist. With such rapidity did the former
undergo a vital change that as early as 1791 “it was hardly understood
by the Upper Creeks.”[261] The later changes are still more marked and
can be readily studied as we have quite a number of vocabularies
preserved by different writers.
Ever since the first settlement of these Indians in Florida they have
been engaged in a strife with the whites,[262] sometimes desultory and
partial, but usually bitter, general, and barbarous beyond precedent in
the bloody annals of border warfare. In the unanimous judgment of
unprejudiced writers, the whites have ever been in the wrong, have ever
enraged the Indians by wanton and unprovoked outrages, but they have
likewise ever been the superior and victorious party. The particulars of
these contests have formed the subjects of separate histories by able
writers, and consequently do not form a part of the present work.
Without attempting a more minute specification, it will be sufficient to
point out the swift and steady decrease of this and associated tribes by
a tabular arrangement of such censual statistics as appear most worthy
of trust.
CENSUAL STATISTICS OF THE LOWER CREEKS AND
SEMINOLES.
_Date._ _Number._ _Authority._ _Remarks._
1716 1000 Roberts[263] L. Creek war. on Flint river.
1734 1350 Anon.[264] Lower Creek warriors.
1740 1000 Anon.[265] “ “ “
1774 2000 Wm. Bartram[266] Lower Creeks.
1776 3500 Romans[267] Gun-men of U. and L. Creeks.
1820 1200 Morse[268] “Pure blooded Seminoles.”
1821 5000 J. H. Bell[269] All tribes in the State.
1822 3891 Gad Humphreys[270] Seminoles E. of Apalachicola
1823 4883 Pub. Docs.[271] All tribes in the State.
1836 1660 Sprague[272] Serviceable warriors.
1843 42 Sprague[273] Pure Seminole warriors.
1846 70 Sprague[274] “ “ “
1850 70 Sprague[275] “ “ “
1856 150 Pub. papers Mixed warriors.
1858 30 Pub. papers “ “
Probably within the present year (1859) the last of this nation, the
only free representatives of those many tribes east of the Mississippi
that two centuries since held undisturbed sway, will bid an eternal
farewell to their ancient abodes, and leave them to the quiet possession
of that race that seems destined to supplant them.