In the year 1732, when Georgia was first settled, the territory of the Creek confederacy, including at that time the Seminoles, was bounded on the west by Mobile River, and by the ridge that separates the waters of the Tombigbee from those of the Alabama, the ordinary though contested boundary between them and the Choctaws; on the north by the Cherokees ; on the northeast by the Savannah; on every other quarter by the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. It is believed that at the end of the seventeenth century, the Creeks occupied, south of the thirty-fourth degree of north latitude, the eastern as well as the western banks of the Savannah.

It is not possible to ascertain when the confederacy was consolidated to that extent. During the forty preceding years, we find the Indians between Savannah River and St. Augustine, on various occasions, divided amongst themselves and taking adverse parts in the conflicts between the Spaniards of Florida and the English settlers of South Carolina. It may be, that, as has been seen recently, the contending European powers drew to their respective sides different portions of the confederacy. But we cannot ascertain whether, by the names of Appalachians and Creeks, both of which occur in Hewatt and other early writers, distinct tribes are designated. It is probable that the appellation of Appalachians was geographical and applied to the Indians living on the Appalachicola, or Chatahoochee River, as the name of Creeks seems to have been given from an early time to those inhabiting generally the country adjacent to the river Savannah.

The Creek confederacy now consists of several tribes speaking different languages. The Muskhogees are the prevailing nation, amounting to more than seven eighths of the whole. The Hitchittees who reside on the Chatahoochee and Flint rivers, though a distinct tribe, speak a dialect of the Muskhogee. The Seminoles or Isty-semole, (" wild men,") who inhabit the peninsula of Florida, are pure Muskhogees, who have gradually detached themselves from the confederacy, but who were still considered as members of it, till the United States treated with them as with an independent nation. The name of Seminoles was given to them, on account of their being principally hunters and attending but little to agriculture. A

* According to Adair, the river Coosa was the boundary in his time.

vocabulary is wanted in order to prove conclusively the entire identity of their language with the Muskhogee.

There is some diversity in the accounts given by the Muskhogees of their origin. The chiefs of the delegation, who attended at Washington in the year 1826, agreed that the prevailing tradition amongst them was, that the nation had issued out of a cave near Alabama River. The Hitchittees said that their ancestors had fallen from the sky. These modes of speaking, common to several of the tribes, only show that they have lost the recollection of any ancient migration, and that they consider themselves as aborigines. Independent of the ancient division into families or clans, which will be hereafter adverted to, Mr. Mitchell, a former Indian agent, said that there was, at no distant time, a political division of the nation into four principal towns or tribes, viz. the Cussetah, the Cowetah, the Tukawbatchie, and the Oscoochee, to which the Creeks, though now dispersed throughout the whole of their country, still respectively belong. This division, however, whether geographical or political, has no connexion with the distinction of languages.

The Uchees and the Natches, who are both incorporated in the confederacy, speak two distinct languages altogether different from the Muskhogee. The Natches, a residue of the well-known nation of that name, came from the banks of the Mississippi, and joined the Creeks less than one hundred years ago. The original seats of the Uchees were east of the Coosa and probably of the Chatahoochee; and they consider themselves as the most ancient inhabitants of the country. They may have been the same nation which is called Apalaches in the accounts of De Soto's expedition, and their towns were till lately principally on Flint River. It appears, however, certain that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, they were, at least in part, seated on the western banks of the Savannah. It has already been seen that, in 1736, they claimed the country below and above Augusta. In Jeffrey's Map they are laid down in the same manner, but with a note that those settlements had been deserted in 1715. This was the year of the signal defeat of the Yamassees, who were assisted by the Creeks. The Yamassees were driven across the river; and it is probable that the Uchees were amongst their auxiliaries, and that, weakened by this defeat, they found it safer to remove to a greater distance from the English settlements, towards Flint River.

It has been ascertained that two other small tribes intimately connected together, to wit, the Alibamons and the Coosadas or Quesadas, who reside near the river Talapoosa, also speak a language or a dialect distinct from that of the Muskogees; but its vocabulary has not been obtained. The Talapoosa and the Coosa form by their junction Alabama River; and the Alibamons must certainly be the residue of the nation of that name, mentioned by the French writers as living in the vicinity of the old French fort on the Alabama. These five languages, the Muskhogee and the Hitchittee, the Uchee, the Natches, and the Alibamon or Coosada are, it is believed, the only ones spoken by the different tribes of the Creek confederacy. The Appalachicolas, with whom a separate treaty has recently been made by the United States, are a portion of the Seminoles, residing west of St. Mark's near the mouth of the Appalachicola or Chatahoochee River. It may be here observed, that, although we have no vocabulary of the Piankishaws and of the Kickapoo, it is fully ascertained that they respectively speak dialects of the Miami and of the Saukee. The Alibamons are the only existing tribe, east of the Mississippi, of whose language we have no positive knowledge, and cannot say whether it is peculiar to them, or belongs to the same stock as some of the other tribes. I incline to the opinion that it is a dialect of the Choctaw, or Muskhogee.

Although partial and transient collisions with the Creeks occurred subsequent to the settlement of Georgia, no actual war with them took place for near fifty years. They took an active part in that of the Revolution against the Americans, and continued their hostilities till the treaty concluded at Philadelphia, in 1795. They then remained at peace eighteen years; but, at the beginning of the last war with Great Britain, a considerable portion of the nation, excited, it is said, by Tecumseh, and probably receiving encouragement from other quarters, took arms without the slightest provocation, and at first committed great ravages in the vicinity of their western frontier. They received a severe chastisement; and the decisive victories of General Jackson at that time, and some years later over the Seminoles, who had renewed the war, have not only secured a permanent peace with the Southern Indians, but, together with the progress of the settlements, have placed them all under the absolute control of the United States. The Creeks and Seminoles after some struggles

amongst themselves have ceded the whole of their territory, and accepted in exchange other lands beyond the Mississippi. Their number is estimated at twenty-eight thousand; of whom about twenty-three thousand are Muskhogees proper, two thousand four hundred Seminoles, twelve hundred Uchees, six hundred Hitchittees, five hundred Alibamons and Quesadas, and three hundred Natches.

We have copious vocabularies of the Muskhogee; one obtained by the late Mr. Hawkins, and transmitted by Mr. Jefferson to the American Philosophical Society; two others taken at my request in 1825-6, by Mr. Ridge, Colonel Hambly, and Mr. Denny, from two distinct Muskhogee delegations then at Washington; a fourth since transmitted by the Rev. L. Compere, a Methodist missionary to that nation. The comparative vocabulary is extracted from those several sources. Its form did not permit me to give the several variations, which are more numerous than in the different vocabularies of any other tribe; and it is not improbable that they arise from actual varieties of dialects, rather than from errors of the persons who collected the vocabularies. Those words have been selected which had the greatest number of authorities in their favor. As Hawkins's vocabulary differed most from the other, a separate specimen taken exclusively from that has been appended. The small specimen of the Hitchittee was obtained at the same time from a chief of that tribe by Mr. Ridge.

The Uchee language is the most guttural, uncouth, and difficult to express with our alphabet and orthography of any of the Indian languages within our knowledge. The vocabulary here given is extracted from one taken by Dr. Ware, in Mr. Duponceau's collection, and from another obtained by Mr. Ridge from an Uchee chief at Washington. Mr. Ridge had probably the best Indian ear, but was not so correct in his English orthography. The Natches vocabulary I took myself from Is-ah-laktih, an intelligent chief of the remnant of that nation.*

The vowels a, e, i, o, and the diphthong ie, are, in that vocabulary and in the Muskhogee words marked G., to be pronounced as in French; the u is the short one of but, nut; the zh is the French j; the oo, y, and all the consonants as in English; the g, always hard. The Uchee and Hitchittee words taken by Mr. Ridge are, as well as Mr. Hawkins's and Mr. Compere's Muskhogee words, written in conformity with the English orthography.

De Soto was the first European who discovered the Mississippi. He crossed it in the year 1541, near the thirty-fifth degree of north latitude, and after his death the remnant of his companions, reduced to about three hundred, descended it to its mouth, and with their frail barks were fortunate enough to reach Panuco on the Mexican coast. Although the Spaniards became thus early acquainted with that large river, and their ships must have passed annually in sight of its mouth, it remained unknown for one hundred and fifty years after De Soto's expedition; and the river was on that account designated by the name of "Rio Escondido." Father Marquette and M. Joliette, in the year 1673, reached it by the way of the Fox River of Michigan and of the Wisconsin. Ten years later La Salle descended it to its entrance into the sea.* But, having sailed from France with the intention of forming a settlement on its banks, he passed by its mouth in 1685, without recognising it, and landed in the Bay of St. Bernard at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. In his attempt to reach thence the Mississippi by land, he was murdered by his own people; it was only in March, 1699, that D'Iberville entered the river from the seat; and the French, who had first established themselves at the mouth of the Mobile and at Biloxi, did not lay the foundation of New Orleans till the year 1717.

The seashore from the Mobile to the Mississippi, and the banks of that river, were then inhabited by several small tribes, of which the Natches were the principal. All the rest of the country from the Gulf of Mexico to Cumberland River, if not to the Ohio, bounded on the west by the Mississippi and on the east by the Creeks and the Cherokees, was inhabited by the Choctaws and the Chicasas, two distinct nations, but of the same

* He reached the sea on the 7th of April, 1683. See Tonti's relation in the fifth volume of "Voyages au Nord." Tonti was the friend and companion of La Salle, and his relation of the inland expeditions of that enterprising traveller is the most authentic we have, though disfigured by embellishments in very bad taste, introduced by the Paris publisher. The only good relation of La Salle's last voyage is that of Joutel.

A British ship, probably that mentioned by Dr. Cox in his "Carolana," entered the river in September of the same year, and ascended it to the place thence called English Town. (Charlevoix). There is no evidence that supports the assertion, that the river had formerly been visited by English vessels.