USA > Mississippi > Mississippi : comprising sketches of towns, events, institutions, and persons, arranged in cyclopedic form Vol. I > Part 99
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Said Gallatin writing of the Southern Indian tribes in 1830: "We find the nominal dignity of chief, sachem, mingo, or king, to have been but with few exceptions amongst all the Indians-not only for life, but hereditary. But another institution, belonging to all the southern, and of which traces may be found among the northern nations, deserves particular consideration. Independent of political or geographical divisions, that into families or clans has been established from time immemorial. At what time and in what manner the division was first made, is not known. At present, or till very lately, every nation was divided into clans, varying in the several nations from three to eight or ten, the members of which were dispersed indiscriminately throughout the whole nation. It has been fully ascertained that the inviolable regulations by which these clans were perpetuated amongst the southern nations, were first, that no man could marry in his own clan; secondly, that every child belongs to his or her mother's clan. Among the Choc- taws there are two great divisions, each of which is subdivided into four clans ; and no man can marry into any of the four clans be- longing to his division. The restriction among the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Natchez, does not extend beyond the clan to which the man belongs. . According to ancient custom, if an offence was committed by one or another member of the clan, the compensation to be made on account of the injury was regu- lated in an amicable way by the other members of his clan. Murder was rarely expiated in any other way than by the death of the murderer; but the nearest male relative of the deceased was the executioner, but this was done under the authority of the clan, and there was no further retaliation. The aristocratical feature of the institution of clans appears to have been general. It is among the Natchez alone that we find, connected together, a highly privileged class, a despotic government, and something like a reg- ·ular form of religious worship. They were divided into four classes, or clans, on the same principle and under the same regulations as those of the other southern tribes. They worshiped the sun, from whom the sovereign and the privileged class pre- tended to be descended ; and they preserved a perpetual sacred fire in an edifice appropriated to that purpose. The hereditary dignity of Chief, or Great Sun, descended as usual by the female line (equally true among the Hurons) ; and he as well as all the other members of his clan, whether male or female, could marry only persons of an inferior clan. Hence the barbarous custom of sac- rificing at their funerals the consorts of the Great Sun (or Chief), and of his mother. Her influence was powerful, and his authority apparently despotic, though checked by her and by some select counsellors of his own clan." The common people among the Natchez were called "Stinkards" (Miche-Miche-Quipy), and were in a high degree submissive to the Suns, nobles and men of rank.
As the powerful tribes of the Choctaws and Chickasaws are prominently identified with the region composing the State of Mis- sissippi down to, and including, the decade, 1830-1840, further ex-
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tended reference to these tribes is reserved for the conclusion of this article. Little is known of the various minor tribes of the State, above mentioned, and they may be first briefly disposed of. Of the Natchez Indians, who were finally dispersed and destroyed as a separate people by the French in 1730-32, much has been recorded elsewhere in this work in the articles entitled "Natchez Indians," "Natchez Massacre, 1729," "Fort Rosalie," "Charlevoix," and the various subjects covering the French colonial period, and but little more need be said.
Mr. H. S. Halbert has this to say of the small Indian tribes of Mississippi: "The Biloxis, when first known by Iberville, 1699, were living near Biloxi bay; but they afterwards removed north- westward to Pearl River. In 1764, they crossed the Mississippi and settled in Louisiana. In Rapides parish there is now living a small remnant of this tribe, the larger portion having again migrated within recent years, some to the Choctaws, and others to the Alibamos of eastern Texas. A study of their language has shown that they belong to the Siouan or Dakotan family, they having separated from the parent stem in some remote prehistoric time. In their native tongue, they call themselves Taneks, and refuse to be known as Biloxis. Taneks haya, 'the first people.'"
"The Pascagoulas lived on the river now bearing their name. Nothing is known of their language; but as they were always asso- ciated with the Biloxis in their various migrations, they may have spoken the language of the latter, or one closely related thereto. Their tribal name is of Choctaw origin, and signifies 'Bread People.' Paskola; paska, bread, and okla, people. In 1764, this tribe emigrated to Louisiana, and located near the Biloxis. The census of 1830 gives their number as one hundred and eleven. But little is known of their later history. It is thought that the rem- nants of the tribe are now among the Alibamos of Texas." Halbert declares that the familiar legend which purports to recount the sad story of the extermination of this tribe is only pleasing fiction.
The Chozettas and Mactobys, when found by the French, were living on the Pascagoula, and may have been absorbed by that tribe, or the Biloxis. The Chatos once lived on the coast, and their ethnic affinity is unknown. Choctaw tradition asserts that they were absorbed by the Six Towns Choctaws. Their name survives in a creek near Mobile, which the Choctaws call by their name.
The Chocchumas were once a tribe of considerable importance, and in their latter days lived on the Yazoo, between the Chickasaws and the Choctaws. They spoke the Choctaw language, and their name signifies "red craw-fish." The Indian tradition says that they came from the west with the Choctaws and Chickasaws. They seem to have warred constantly with the last named tribes, whose tradition accuses the Chocchumas of many hostile acts and horse- stealing inroads. The allied tribes of the Choctaws and Chickasaws finally almost exterminated them in their stronghold on Lyon's Bluff, on the south side of Line Creek, about eight miles north of Starkville. This was about 1770 when the Chocchumas were occu-
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pying a narrow strip of territory extending from the mouth of the Yalobusha on the west to the vicinity of where West Point now stands. What remained of the tribe was merged in the Chickasaw nation in 1836. Halbert locates one of their villages six miles west of Bellefontaine, on the old Grenada road. One of their powerful chiefs, Chula Homma, Red Fox, lived here, and was slain with all his warriors at the time of the war, while all the women and children were enslaved. Adair, in his account of the Choctaw nation, p. 305, mentions that a Choctaw and a Chocchuma warrior came to him for presents in 1747. He makes frequent mention of the tribe, and says the Chocchumas were forced by war to settle between the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations.
At the first coming of the French, the Tunicas had some of their settlements on the Yazoo river, one on the Mississippi, a few miles below the mouth of the Red river, and one in Tunica county, which takes its name from the tribe. The tribe is famous for the severe defeat administered by it to Major Loftus on the Mississippi in 1763. Says Halbert, "In 1817, the entire Tunica tribe emigrated to Louisiana, one section now living near Marksville, and another near Lake Charles City. Their language has no affinity with any other Indian tongue. Their tribal name, Tunica, signifies in their lan- guage, 'the people.' "
The Yazoos, of the several tribes who lived on the river of that name, made their home nearest the mouth. Halbert inclines to the belief that the word Yazoo signifies "leaf," and that it is a Uchee word, as Yazoo has no significance in the Choctaw tongue and there is evidence that the Uchees lived in Mississippi in prehistoric times. The Yazoos seem to have followed the example of the Natchez in 1729, and massacred the French in their midst. In the latter part of the 18th century they were a small people, living in about 100 cabins. At the same period of time, the number of cabins belonging to the other small tribes on the Yazoo are given as follows: The Ofogoulas, or "Dog People," lived in about sixty; the Coroas in forty, and the Tapouchas in twenty. The Ibetoupas were neighbors of the Tapouchas, but the number of their cabins is unknown. Nothing is known concerning the language of these tribes on the Yazoo, except that it was quite distinct from the Choctaw. In 1836 they were incorporated in the Chickasaw nation. The migra- tion of the Biloxis, Pascagoulas, Tensas, some of the Six Towns Choctaws, a part of the Coshattees and Alibamos, and possibly that of a part of the Yowanni band of Choctaws, according to Halbert, is explained by their attachment to the French. When the French power gave way in 1763 to that of the English, these tribes resolved to follow the French into Louisiana, and after a great council held in Mobile in the spring of 1764 to consider the subject of expatria- tion, proceeded to carry their resolve into effect.
As previously stated, prior to 1730, the Natchez tribe of Indians occupied a region of moderate extent on the Mississippi in the vicin- ity of the present city of Natchez. Their villages lay along St. Cath- arine's Creek. Father Charlevoix states that the Natchez, in their
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external appearance did not differ from the other Indians of Louis- iana or Canada. He estimates the number of their warriors in 1721 at about 2,000, though this would appear to be an exaggeration, judging from the details of their wars with the French a few years later. Only a few years before this period, the Natchez had claimed some 4,000 warriors. Says Schoolcraft, "This numerical decline of the Natchez may be ascribed to the oppressive power of the chief, and the consequent decline and extinction of the external rites of the sun-worship in the country. Tradition represents the last Sun of the Natchez to have been an inflated man, who, with a high notion of his descent, office and position, appears to have neglected the means of preserving his peaceful relations with the French, with whom he waged war. The French under Louis XIV. had other notions of political power, than to yield to a forest king. They extinguished his idolatrous fire, attacked the nation with irresistible impetuosity, killed the greater number of them, and finally drove the remainder to a place of refuge on the Washita river, where monumental evidence of their residence still exist. They were compelled to take shelter in the Creek confederacy, of which they yet constitute an element." An early writer, Adair, thus explains the causes leading up to the massacre of 1729, and the destruction of the tribe by the French. "Some of the old Natchez Indians who formerly lived on the Mississippi, two hundred miles west of the Choctaws, told me the French demanded from every one of their warriors a dressed buck-skin, without any value for it, i. e., they taxed them ; but that the warriors hearts grew very cross, and loved the deer-skins. As those Indians were of a peaceable and kindly disposition, numerous and warlike, and always kept a friendly intercourse with the Chickasaws, who never had any good will to the French, these soon understood their heart-burnings, and by the advice of the English traders, carried them white pipes and tobacco in their own name and that of South Carolina-per- suading them with earnestness and policy to cut off the French, as they were resolved to enslave them in their own land. The Chick- asaws succeeded in their embassy. But as the Indians are slow in their councils on things of great importance, though equally close and intent, it was the following year before they could put their grand scheme in execution. Some of their head-men, indeed, op- posed the plan, yet they never discovered (revealed) it. But when these went a hunting in the woods, the embers burst into a raging flame. They attacked the French, who were flourishing away in the greatest security and, it is affirmed, they entirely cut off the garri- son, and neighboring settlements, consisting of fifteen hundred men, women and children-the misconduct of a few indiscreet persons, occasioned so great a number of innocent lives to be thus cut off." Still another account says: "Near the banks of the Mississippi, between the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes, in a region of great fertility, dwelt the Natchez Indians. The great chief of the tribe was revered as one of the family of the Sun, and his power was almost despotic. The French who came among them coveted their
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land, and Chopart, the French commander, demanded as a planta- tion the site of their principal village. In concert with the Chero- kees (Chickasaws?) and a part of the Choctaws, a general mas- sacre of the French was determined on. The butchery began on the morning of November 28, 1729, and before noon nearly every Frenchman in the colony was slaughtered. The Jesuit Du Poisson, Du Codere, commander of the Yazoo post, the planter De Koli and his son, together with the Capuchin missionary to the Natchez nation, were all killed, only two white men, mechanics, being saved. Two hundred victims had fallen. New Orleans was in terror; but the brave Le Sueur, repairing to the Choctaws, won 700 of them to his side, while the French forces, under Loubois, gathered on the river. Le Sueur, with his Choctaws, on the morning of January 29, 1730, surprised the Natchez villages, liberated the captives, and brought off sixty scalps and eighteen prisoners, losing but two of his own men. He completed his victory February 8, when the Natchez Indians fled, some taking refuge with the Chickasaws and Maskokis, others crossing the Mississippi to the vicinity of Natch- itoches. These were pursued and driven still farther west. The Great Sun and more than 400 prisoners were shipped to Hispaniola and sold as slaves. The Natchez nation no longer existed." (Drake, Indian Tribes of the United States, p. 156.) There are still a few Natchez Indians among the Creeks in the Indian Territory, and a number near the Missouri border, in the Cherokee Hills.
It has been stated that the Choctaws occupied the great central part of the State of Mississippi. The trader, James Adair, who spent forty years among the Indians, writing in 1775, locates them as follows: "The Choctaw country lies in about 33 and 34 deg. north latitude. According to the course of the Indian path, their western lower towns are situated 200 computed miles to the north- ward of New Orleans; the upper ones, 150 miles to the southward of the Chickasaw nation, 150 miles to the west of the late dangerous French Alabama garrison in the Muskhogee country, and 150 to the north of Mobile, which is the first settlement, and only town, except New Orleans, that the French had in West Florida. Their country is pretty much in the form of an oblong square. The barrier towns, which are next to the Muskhogee and Chickasaw countries, are compactly settled for social defense, according to the general method of other savage nations; but the rest, both in the center, and toward the Mississippi, are only scattered plantations, as best suits a separate easy way of living." He estimates their numbers after the cession of West Florida to the English at less: than 4,500 warriors. All writers unite in saying that the Choctaws were gathered on their eastern frontier, into compact villages, for purposes of defense, but lived widely separated within the interior of their country. According to Adair, Koosah (Coosa) was the largest town in the nation, and was distant from Mobile about 180 miles, "at a small distance from the river which glides by that low and unhealthy old capital." He also speaks of a remote, but con- siderable town, called "Yowanne," that lay 40 miles below the
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seven southernmost towns of the nation, towards Mobile, which was distant 120 miles, "As it is a remote barrier, it is greatly harassed by the Muskhogee, when at war with them." When Adair wrote, the town was ruled by the Mingo Humma Echeto, the Great Red Chieftain, and was defended by a palisaded fort. It is evident that the Englishman, Adair, bore little good will toward the Choctaws, whom he characterizes as "of a base, ungrateful, and thievish dis- position-fickle and treacherous-ready-witted, and endued with a surprising flow of smooth artful language on every subject within the reach of their ideas; in each of these qualities, they far exceed any society of people I ever saw. Except the intense love they bear to their native country, and their utter contempt of any kind of danger in defense of it, I know of no other virtue they pos- sess." He declares that "having no rivers in their country (though it abounds with springs and creeks), few of them can swim like other Indians, which often proves hurtful to them when high freshes come on while they are out at war. The Choctaws flatten their foreheads with a bag of sand, which with great care they keep fastened on the skull of the infant, while it is in its tender and imperfect state. Thus they quite deform their face, and give themselves an appearance which is disagreeable to any but those of their own likeness." In another place he states that the Choctaws, "by not having deep rivers or creeks to purify themselves by daily ablutions, are becoming very irreligious in other respects, for of late years, they make no annual atonement for sin." The Choctaws by reason of the genial nature of the climate where they lived, and the fertile plains and gently sloping hills of their favored land, excelled every North American tribe in their agriculture. They largely sub- sisted on corn, and placed but limited dependence on the chase. Choctaw tradition asserts that after their creation, they subsisted for a long time on the spontaneous productions of the earth until they discovered maize a few miles distant from their sacred mound, Nanih Waiya. One version of the corn-finding myth is thus given by Halbert: "A long time ago it thus happened. In the very begin- ning a crow got a single grain of corn from across the great water, (Gulf of Mexico), brought it to this country and gave it to an orphan child, who was playing in the yard. The child named it tauchi (corn). He planted it in the yard. When the corn was growing up, the child's elders merely had it swept around. But the child, wishing to have his own way, hoed it, hilled it up, and laid it by. When this single grain of corn grew up and matured, it made two ears of corn. And in this way the ancestors of the Choc- taws discovered corn." Scholars unite in assigning to the two tribes of the Chickasaws and Choctaws a common origin, based on language, tradition, religion and customs. There are many versions of their migration legend, though all unite in certain gen- eral features, such as the immigration from the west or northwest, the prophet and his sacred pole, and the final settlement at Nanih Waiya, their great sacred mound, in the southern part of Winston county. An excellent version of this migration legend will be
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found in Mr. Halbert's account of Nanih Waiya in the second volume of the publications of the Mississippi Historical Society.
Bartram wrote of the Muscogees (Creeks) that "some of their most favorite songs and dances they have from their enemies, the Choctaws; for it seems that these people are very eminent for poetry and music; every town among them strives to excel each other in composing new songs for dances ; and by a custom amongst them, they must have at least one new song for exhibition, at every annual busk." See Bartram 516.
George S. Gaines, who knew the Choctaws well, writing early in the last century, said: "The Choctaw nation was divided into three districts. Each district had its principal chief. Mingo Puckshen- nubbee ruled the western district, situated west of Pearl river. Mingo Homostubbee was chief of the northern district, which ad- joined the Chickasaw country. Pushmattaha ruled the southeastern district. His residence was near the present site of Meridian, Miss. Major John Pitchlyn resided in the northern district, near the mouth of the Oktibbeha on the Tombigbee." Homostubbee died two or three years after the treaty of Mount Dexter, and was succeeded as mingo by his son, Mushalatubbee, a man of sense, but lacking the energy and versatility of his father. His residence was near that of Major Pitchlyn.
The country of the Chickasaws adjoined that of the Choctaws on the north. They were a brave and warlike tribe, who were ever the invincible and faithful allies of the English. Their country reached to the Ohio on the north, to the Mississippi on the west, and was bounded on the east by a line drawn from the bend in the Cumberland river to the Muscle Shoals of the Tennessee, extending south into the State of Mississippi to the land of the Choctaws. Their region was as happy as any beneath the sun, and the Chick- asaws had an intense love for it. They were never a numerous people within the memory of the whites, but ever fought to main- tain their hold with an intrepidity and daring which gained for them a reputation of being the ablest warriors in the south.
Says Adair: "The Chickasaw country lies in about 35 degrees north latitude, at the distance of 160 miles from the Mississippi ; 160 miles to the north of the Choctaws, according to the course of the trading path ; about half way from Mobile to the Illinois, from south to north; to the west, northwest of the Muscogee (Creeks) about 300 computed miles, and a very mountainous mountain path ; from the Cherokees nearly west about 540 miles. The Chicka- saws are now settled between the heads of two of the most western branches of the Mobile (Tombigbee) river ; and within 12 miles of the eastern main source of Tahre Hache, which lower down is called Chocchooma river, as that nation (the Chocchumas) made their first settlement there, after they came on the other side of the Mississippi. Where it empties into this, they call it Yahshoo (Yazoo) river. Their tradition says they had 10,000 men fit for war, when they first came from the west, and this account seems very probable ; as they and the Choctaws, and also the Chocchumas,
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came from the west as one family. The Chickasaws, in 1720, had four large contiguous settlements, which lay nearly in the form of three parts of a square, only that the eastern side was five miles shorter than the western, with the open part toward the Choctaws. One was called Yaneka, about a mile wide, and six miles long, at the distance of twelve miles from their present towns. Another was ten computed miles long, at the like distance from their present settlements, and from one to two miles broad. The towns were called Shatara, Chookheerefo, Hykehah, Tufkawillao, and Phala- cheho. The other square was single, began three miles from their present place of residence, and ran four miles in length, and from one mile in breadth. This was called Chookka Phahaah, or 'the long house.' It was more populous than their whole nation con- tains at present. The remains of this once formidable people make up the northern angle of that broken square. They now consist of scarcely 450 warriors, and are settled three miles westward from the deep creek, in a clear tract of rich land, about three miles square, running afterward about five miles toward the northwest, where the old fields are usually a mile broad. The superior number of their enemies forced them to take into this narrow circle, for social defence; and to build their towns on commanding ground, at such convenient distance from one another, as to have their enemies, when attacked, between two fires." The Chickasaws were ever the inveterate enemies of the French. (See separate title for an account of the Chickasaw-French Wars.) The head man of the Chicka- saws was called "Mingo," and was often called the king. In the various treaties made with the tribe by the government of the United States from the treaty of Hopewell in 1786, to that of Ponto- toc Creek in 1832, the signature of the mingo or king is almost in- variably affixed to the instrument. His assent was necessary to all treaties. In the treaty of 1805, when the Chickasaws relin- quished part of their lands in Tennessee in consideration of $20,000, Chenubbee Mingo, the king, was granted an annuity of $100.
After the close of the war of the Revolution and the formation of the American government, the uniform policy of the United States was to treat the Indians as quasi nationalities, devoid of sovereignty, but having an absolute possessory right to the soil and its usufruct, with power to cede this right, to make peace, and to regulate the boundaries to their lands, by which the aboriginal hunting-grounds were so defined that they could be readily distinguished from the districts ceded. This policy gave rise to that long list of Indian treaties which record our later Indian history; and under it com- menced the system of annuities whereby the Indians were provided with the means of subsistence, as their exhausted hunting-grounds were ceded, and were also encouraged to take up with the ways of civilization. The following treaties were concluded between the United States and the Choctaws and Chickasaws up to and includ- ing the removal of these tribes west of the Mississippi: With the Choctaws, Jan. 3, 1786, treaty of Hopewell, commissioners, Haw- kins, Pickens, and Martin; Dec. 17, 1801, Fort Adams, Wilkinson,
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