_Apalaches_, on Apalache Bay.
_Chickasaws_, head waters of Mobile river.
_Choctaws_, between the Mobile and Mississippi rivers.
_Coshattas_, on the Red river.
_Creeks_, see _Muskokis_.
_Hitchitees_, sub-tribe of Creeks.
_Muskokis_, between Mobile and Savannah rivers.
_Seminoles_, in Florida.
_Yamassees_, around Port Royal Bay, South Carolina.
7. THE CATAWBAS, YUCHIS, TIMUCUAS, NATCHEZ, CHETIMACHAS, TONICAS, ADAIZE,
ATAKAPAS, ETC.
Within the horizon of the Muskoki stock were a number of small tribes
speaking languages totally different. We may reasonably suppose them
to have been the débris of the ancient population who held the land
before the Muskokis had descended upon it from the north and west. The
_Catawbas_ in the area of North and South Carolinas were one of these,
and in former times are said to have had a wide extension. South of them
was the interesting tribe of the _Yuchis_. When first heard of they were
on both banks of the Savannah river, but later moved to the Chatahuche.
They call themselves “Children of the Sun,” which orb they regard as
a female and their mother. Their gentes are the same as those of the
Creeks, and are evidently borrowed from them. Descent is counted in the
female line. Women are held in honor, and when De Soto first met them
they were governed by a queen.[104]
Some of both these tribes still survive; but this is not the case with
the _Timucuas_, who occupied the valley of the St. John river, Florida,
and its tributaries, and the Atlantic coast as far north as the St. Mary
river. They have been extinct for a century, but we have preserved some
doctrinal works written in their tongue by Spanish missionaries in the
seventeenth century, so we gain an insight into their language.[105] It
is an independent stock.
Near the Choctaws were the _Natchez_, not far from the present city of
that name. An account of them has been preserved by the early French
settlers of Louisiana. They were devoted sun-worshippers and their chief
was called “The Sun,” and regarded as the earthly representative of the
orb. They constructed artificial mounds, upon which they erected temples
and houses, and were celebrated for their skill in weaving fabrics from
the inner bark of the mulberry tree and for their fine pottery. In their
religious rites they maintained a perpetual fire, and were accustomed to
sacrifice captives to their gods, and the wives of their chieftain at his
death.
The _Taensas_ were a branch of the Natchez on the other bank of the
Mississippi. Attention has been drawn to them of late years by the
attempt of a young seminarist in France to foist upon scholars a language
of his own manufacture which he had christened _Taensa_, and claimed
to have derived from these people.[106] The Natchez language contains
many words from the Muskoki dialects, but is radically dissimilar from
it.[107] A few of the nation still preserve it in Indian Territory.
The _Chetimachas_ lived on the banks of Grand Lake and Grand River, and
were but a small tribe. They are said to have been strictly monogamous,
and to have had female chieftains. Their chief deity was Kut-Kähänsh, the
Noon-day Sun, in whose honor they held sacred dances at each new moon.
The _Tonicas_ are frequently mentioned in the early French accounts of
the colony of Louisiana. They lived in what is now Avoyelles parish, and
were staunch friends of the European immigrants. Their language is an
independent stock, and has some unusual features in American tongues,
such as a masculine and a feminine gender of nouns and a dual in three
pronouns.
The _Adaize_ or Atai were a small tribe who once lived between Saline
river and Natchitoche, La. They spoke a vocalic language, differing from
any other, though including a number of Caddo words, which was owing to
their having been a member of the Caddo confederacy.
The _Atakapas_ had their hunting grounds about Vermilion river and the
adjacent Gulf coast. Their name in Choctaw means “man-eaters,” both they
and their neighbors along the Texan coast having an ugly reputation
as cannibals, differing in this from the Muskokis and their neighbors
east of the Mississippi, among whom we have no record of anthropophagy,
even of a ritual character. The later generations of Atakapas have been
peaceful and industrious. Their language, though in the main quite alone,
presents a limited number of words evidently from the same roots as their
correspondents in the Uto-Aztecan family.
The coast of Texas, between the mouths of the Colorado and Nueces rivers,
was the home of the _Carankaways_. The Spaniards gave them a very black
character as merciless cannibals, impossible to reduce or convert;
but the French and English settlers speak of them in better terms. In
appearance they were tall and strong, with low foreheads, hooked noses,
prominent cheek bones, tattooed skins, and wore their black hair long
and tangled. The older writers affirm that they spoke Atakapa, and were
a branch of that tribe; but the scanty material of their idiom which we
possess seems to place them in a stock by themselves.
The _Tonkaways_ are a small tribe who lived in northwest Texas, speaking
a tongue without known relationship. A curious feature of their mythology
is the deification of the wolf. They speak of this animal as their common
ancestor, and at certain seasons hold wolf dances in his honor, at which
they dress themselves in wolf skins and howl and run in imitation of
their mythical ancestor and patron. A branch of them, the Arrenamuses, is
said to have dwelt considerably to the south of the main body, near the
mouth of the San Antonio river.
The lower Rio Grande del Norte was peopled on both its banks by a stock
which was christened by Orozco y Berra the _Coahuiltecan_, but which
Pimentel preferred to call the Texan. The latter is too wide a word, so
I retain the former. There is not much material for the study of its
dialects, so we are left in the dark as to the relationship of many
tribes resident in that region. They were small in size and rich in
names. Adolph Uhde gives the appellations and locations of seventy-four,
based on previous works and personal observations.[108] The missionary
Garcia, in his _Manual of the Sacraments_, published in the last century,
names seventeen tribes speaking dialects of the tongue he employs, which
appears to be a branch of the Coahuiltecan.[109]
It is useless to repeat the long list, the more so as the bands were
unimportant and have long since become extinct, with a few exceptions.
They were in a savage condition, roving, and depending on hunting and
fishing. The following appear to have been the principal members of the