CHAPTER IV.

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.