Woodward's Reminiscenses - Part 1



WHEELING, WINN PARISH, LA.
May 2, 1857
E. HANRICK, Esq. -- My Old Friend: The Montgomery Mail comes occasionally 
directed to me at this office; and, whether the paper is paid for or not, 
I am unable to say, though I requested a gentleman to do so, and he says 
the money was forwarded. If such is not the case, call on the Editor and 
pay what is due, and also pay for another year's subscription, and write 
to me at this office, and you shall have your money immediately. It is 
through the Mail I frequently hear you are living, which I hope will be 
the case for many years to come. My friend, how time and things have 
changed since first we met! I think it has been forty years, the last 
winter, since I first saw you, at Granville, Pitt county, N. C., rolling 
tar barrels. And your city, Montgomery, about that time, or shortly after, 
was started, or begun, by Andrew Dexter, and now, I suppose, is one of the 
most desirable spots in the Southwest. I knew the spot where Montgomery 
stands before any white man ever thought of locating there. When I look 
back on things as they were and what they are now, it makes me feel -- as 
I am -- old. You and I have lived in fast times, which our heads will 
show, my friend; so, let it rock on -- we will only sleep the sounder when 
it comes to our time to rest. I also see announced in the Mail the death 
of several old friends, among them Gen. Shackelford, whom I have known 
from my boyhood. I was with him in Florida, in 1812, in an expedition 
against the Seminoles. There are but few of that detachment of Georgians 
now living -- in fact, I know of none, unless it be Dr. Fort, of Macon, 
Ga., John H. Howard, of Columbus, Ga., Col. R. Broadnax, of Ala, and 
myself. If there are any more of them, it is very few, and I have lost the 
hang of them; but, should I live, I will be in Milledgeville, Ga., on the 
first day of July, 1862, which will be fifty years from the time we 
started on that expedition. If you are then living in Montgomery, I will 
give you a call.
I also see that my old friend, Major Thomas M. Cowles, is no more. He was 
a good man -- I knew him before he was a man. He was fit to live in any 
country that God may think proper to occupy with honest men. He belonged 
to my staff, and accompanied me to Fort Mitchell, with an escort under the 
command of Gen. Wm. Taylor, to conduct Gen. LaFayette to Montgomery. I 
shall never forget a visit that Major Cowles and myself paid to Billy 
Weatherford, old Sam. Moniac, who, many years before, had accompanied 
Alex. McGillivray to New York, in General Washington's time. I have often 
thought that I would give you and friend Hooper, of the Mail, a little 
sketch of what I had learned from those men and others, in relation to 
Indian matters; but they are all dead, and what I have heard and know 
would, in many instances, contradict what has gone to the world as 
history, and I do not know that mankind would be better off, even if I 
could undeceive and give them what I do know in relation to Indian 
history, and so I will let it pass. But, still, there is one thing I want, 
if it can be got hold of, and, if George Stiggins is living in your 
country, he has it. It is a manuscript given to me by the widow of Col. 
Hawkins. It is in the hand-writing of Christian Limbo, who lived with Col. 
Hawkins many years. It was copied from Col. Hawkins' own manuscript, which 
was burned shortly after his death. I knew Col. Hawkins well. He knew more 
about Indians and Indian history, and early settlements and expeditions of 
the several European nations that undertook to settle colonies in the 
South and Southwest, than all the men that ever have or will make a scrape 
of a pen upon the subject. The loss of his papers was certainly a very 
great loss to those who would wish to know things as they really were, and 
not as they wished them. Stiggins, you know, had some learning, and was a 
half breed of the Netchis tribe, tho' raised among the Creeks. He spoke of 
writing a history of the Creeks and other Southern tribes, and I loaned 
him my papers. I presume he has done by this time what he contemplated, 
and please see him and get my papers, if you can, and take care of them 
until you have a chance to send them to me. You will also find among the 
papers some in my hand-writing, that I intended for a Mr. Daniel K. 
Whitaker, of Charleston, S. C., who was concerned in a Southern literary 
journal.

Yours, truly, old friend,
THOS. S. WOODWARD.



WHEELING, WINN PARISH, LA.,
December 9, 1857.
E. HANRICK, Esq.:
My Old Friend: -- Your letter came to hand safe, after taking its time, as 
I have, in going through the world, quite leisurely. You will find five 
dollars enclosed: pay yourself, and hand the other two and a half to the 
editor of the Mail: say to him, that after he has worked that out, and he 
learns that I have not worked out, he may continue to send his paper. I 
see my letter to you, of May last, in the Mail. The editor speaks in very 
flattering terms of my capability in giving sketches and making them 
accurate and interesting. I would be proud that I could do so, and prove 
to his readers that he was not mistaken. It is true, I have known Alabama 
a great while, and many of its earliest settlers -- particularly Indians 
and Indian countrymen. And I would most willingly, if I thought any facts 
that have come within my knowledge, or circumstances related to me by 
others in whom I could place the most implicit reliance, would be 
interesting to the readers of the Mail, give them. But as I write no 
better than in my younger days, but much worse; and as anything I might 
write would to most persons be of little interest, I must now abandon it. 
Besides, you know my capacity for embellishment (the only thing that suits 
too many readers,) is not such as would render my sketches very 
interesting to many. I have no doubt but that, if I could be with you, and 
many more old acquaintances that I left in Alabama, (and hope they still 
live,) and could get around a lightwood fire, I could interest you -- or, 
at least, spin over old times and bring many things to your recollection 
that you have forgotten. (I do not allude to old store accounts. Though 
you have lost many, I never heard of your forgetting one.)
I often wish myself back in Alabama, and have as often regretted leaving 
Tuskegee. I was the founder of Tuskegee. I selected the place for the 
county site, or place for the court house, in 1833. I built the first 
house on that ridge, though James Dent built the first house on the court 
house square, after the lots were laid off. The day I made the selection, 
there was a great ball-play with the Tusgegees, Chunnanugges, Chehaws and 
Tallesees. A Col. Deas, a South Carolinian, was with me. Ned, those were 
good days, were they not? I can never recall them, nor many other things 
that were very cheering to me then. I wonder if my five cedar trees, that 
I planted at the McGarr place when I owned it, are living yet? Ned, I, in 
company with my family, old Aunt Betsy Kurnells, (or Connells,) Tuskeneha, 
and old John McQueen, dug up those cedars, when they were very small, from 
under a large cedar that shaded the birth-place of Ussa Yoholo, or, Black 
Drink, who, after the murder of General Thompson, in Florida, was known to 
the world as Oceola. This man was the great grand-son of James McQueen. 
You know his father -- the little Englishman, Powell. His mother was Polly 
Copinger. The rail road from Montgomery to West Point runs within five 
feet, it not over the place, where the cabin stood in which Billy Powell, 
or Ussa Yoholo, was born. The old cedar was destroyed by Gen. McIver's 
negroes, when grading the road. It was in an old field, between the 
Nufaupba (what is now called Ufaupee), and a little creek that the Indians 
called Catsa Bogah, which mouths just below where the rail road crosses 
Nufaupba; and on the Montgomery side of Nufaupba, and on a plantation 
owned by a Mr. Vaughn, when I left the country, rests the remains of old 
James McQueen, a Scotchman, who died in 1811, aged -- from what Col. 
Hawkins and many others said he was -- 128 years. He informed Col. Hawkins 
that he was born 1683, and came into the Creek nation in 1716, a deserter 
from an English vessel anchored at St. Augustine, East Florida, for 
striking a naval officer. When I planted those cedars, I had a wife and 
three children. I thought, then, to make at the foot of one of them a 
resting place. But more than twenty years have elapsed, and many changes 
have taken place with me and those that were with me then, and I care but 
little now when or where I may be picked up. But still, I would be glad to 
know that the cedars were spared; for, none who knew the hands of those 
that assisted me in planting them there, could think of molesting them -- 
unless, there should be one with a marring hand, like him that destroyed 
the old lettered beech at the old Federal crossing of the Persimmon creek, 
and the old Council Oak that once stood in front of Suckey Kurnells' or 
Connells' house, which you knew well. Yes, it was under that oak, where 
you and I have heard many a good yarn spun, both by our white as well as 
red friends -- many of whom have long since gone to that world of which we 
read and talk so much, and so much dreaded by many, (if not more,) and 
which never can be known to living man. Yes, friend, it was under that 
oak -- held as sacred by the Indians, and should have been as memorable 
among Alabamians, as the old Charter Oak of New England was, among the 
people of the North where you and I have aided in placing the brand of 
Molly Thompson upon many a black bottle. I rented out the plantation one 
year, while I owned it, and forbid the tree being touched. The man renting 
it complained so much about it shading his crops, I allowed either three 
or five dollars for it, I now forget which, and would now pay $100 to have 
it living, as it was when I left the place, were it possible to restore 
it. You have often heard of our mutual friend, old Capt. Billy Walker, 
tell about him and myself, camping there with Cols. Hawkins, Barnett and 
McDonald, of the army, and Gen. John Sevier, one of the heroes of King's 
Mountain. (Col. Barnett was the father of Tom. and Nat. Barnett.) On the 
side of the Indians there were Billy McIntosh, Big Warrior, Alex. 
Kurnells, and many others. Kurnells was the interpreter, wearing that 
Iroquois coat you have often seen in the possession of the big woman, his 
wife. On that occasion, Kurnells exhibited many Indian curiosities; among 
them was the buck's horn, resembling a mans' hand, which you have seen in 
my possession since. Some years ago I gave the horn to Bishop Soule, of 
Nashville. There is not an Indian in the Creek nation that ever visited 
Alex. Kurnell's, but would recognize the horn as quick as you would your 
horse shoe. Gen. Sevier lived but a few days after this, and his remains 
lie in the hill near old Fort Decatur; but not a stone or board marks the 
resting place of the patriot, which is the case with hundreds of others 
that lived in his day, and like himself, served their country for their 
country's good, and not their own.

This is becoming tedious to you, no doubt, and I must stop. But you can 
excuse it, as I live alone and have so little to employ my time about, 
that my mind is often led to contemplate things that have passed and would 
have been forgotten, but for my lonely situation. It affords me some 
satisfaction to think and talk, (when I meet an old friend,) of old times; 
and after commencing to write, these old things would appear, and I felt 
bound to give them some attention.

Yours,
T. S. W.



WINN PARISH, LA., Dec. 24, 1857
J. J. HOOPER, Esq.:
I wrote a letter to my old friend, E. Hanrick, of Montgomery, last May, in 
which I spoke of giving you some few sketches of Indians and their 
history. Why I alluded to these things, I had a short time before seen an 
extract in your paper taken, I think, from a Mobile paper, making some 
inquiry about the true meaning or the signification of Alabama. And from 
the article, I supposed the writer to think that the word Alabama was of 
the Jewish origin, by giving the name of Esau's wife, who spelt her name 
Al-i-ba-ma, (if she could spell.) Now whether she borrowed her name from 
Jedediah Morse, or he the name from her, it matters not, as both spell it 
alike. The word Alabama, and many other words among the Indians, as well 
as customs, have been seized upon by some to establish a fact that never 
existed: that is, to prove that the North American Indians descended from 
the Lost Tribes of Israel. Now it would be as easy to prove that such 
tribes never existed, and much easier to prove that they dwindled away 
among those Eastern nations that frequently held them in bondage, than to 
prove that anything found in the native Indian is characteristic of the 
Jew. I have traveled among a great many tribes, and circumcision is 
unknown to them; and besides, an Indian in his native state is proverbial 
for his honesty, and from the records handed to us as authentic, the great 
Author of all nature was put to much trouble to keep the Jews and the 
property of their neighbors in their proper places.
I will return to my letter. I see it published in an October number of 
your paper, and shortly after its appearance, I received a letter from a 
Mr. J. D. Driesbach, of Baldwin Co., Ala, requesting me to give him what 
information I could of the persons whose names were mentioned in my 
letters to Mr. Hanrick, and any thing I knew of Indians and their history 
that I thought would be interesting; also, informing me that he had seen 
in the possession of Joseph Stiggins, the son of Geo. Stiggins, a 
manuscript of George Stiggins, which had been loaned to Col. Pickett when 
he wrote the History of Alabama: and whether interesting or not, I 
scribbled off some twenty or thirty pages and sent to him, and among other 
things I gave him what I understood to be the origin of Alabama, as we 
have it from the Indians. I find in Col. Pickett's answer to Mr. Hobbs, 
that he agrees with me how Alabama took its name. I am satisfied that Col. 
Pickett is correct. I also stated to Mr. Driesbach, that I had heard Col. 
Hawkins say in his time, that he had made every inquiry in his power to 
ascertain if Alabama had any other meaning than the mere name of an Indian 
town, but never could, unless the name -- as it was possible -- might be 
the Indian corruption of the Spanish words for good water, though he 
doubted that.

Col. Pickett is correct, as to the Alabama Town being just below 
Montgomery, for I was at it when they lived there, and it was called 
Esanchatty, from the red bluffs on which a portion of Montgomery is built. 
The Tarwassaw Town was a little lower down the river than the Colonel has 
it, though it is a matter of no importance. The Autauga, or what the 
Indians called Autauga or Dumplin Town, was at the place where Washington 
is in Autauga county. The Alabamas, and those little towns connected with 
them, extended down the river as far as Beach creek, that mouths just 
above Selma, and up the river to where Coosawda is -- on the Autauga side. 
To spell it the way the Indians pronounced it, and the way Col. Hawkins 
spelt, is Coowarsartda. The Alabamas differed from the Musqua or 
Muscogees, as do the Choctaws from the Chickasaws; but were what the 
Indians call the "same fire-side" people. There was much of their dialect 
that differed from that of the common Creek or Musqua, as the Western 
Indians used to call them, and no doubt once they were a different tribe.

About the close of the American Revolution, a large portion of the 
Alabamas and Coowarsartdas returned to Texas on the Trinity, being under 
the control of a Chief called Red Shoes, or Stillapikachatta. I visited 
these Indians in 1816, in company with Mr. Angus Gilchrist and Mr. Edward 
McLauchlin. Mr. McLauchlin was the best Indian interpreter I ever knew, 
except Hamly, who was raised by Forbes and Panthom, in Florida. Red Shoes 
was then living, and lived for year after. I inquired much into his 
history and that of his people. He gave the same account of their being 
driven from their old homes in the West and their settlement in Alabama 
and a part of Georgia, as has been given me by the Creeks. And if Indian 
tradition and what I have heard from Col. Hawkins -- who, I think, was the 
most sensible man I ever was acquainted with, and whose opportunities were 
as good if not much better than any one else of his day possessed, to 
collect correct information in relation to the early settlements of the 
Creeks and their confederates in Alabama and Georgia -- are to be relied 
on, Col. Pickett must have been wrongly informed as to the fights with the 
Muscogees and Alabamas upon the sources of Red river, as well as to the 
Muscogees settling in Ohio, the Alabamas settling on the Yazoo, and the 
destruction of their fort by DeSoto, and the Alabamas being the first to 
settle in what is now known as the Creek country.

It has always been a contested point, with the Indians, whether 
Tuckabatchee, or old Cusetaw opposite Fort Mitchell on the Chattahoochee 
river, was settled first; but it is generally conceded that Cusetaw was 
settled first. These two towns have, in almost every instance, furnished 
the head Chiefs of the nation: Tuckabatchee furnishing the upper town 
Chief -- Cusetaw, the lower town Chief. This fact is well known to all who 
have been well acquainted with the Creeks. Besides, John Ferdinand Soto, 
who by most persons has been called Hernando DeSoto, after landing his 
forces in Florida, passed through a portion of Georgia, and across the 
entire State of Alabama, before he could have reached the Yazoo in 
Mississippi. And in addition to this, one of the severest battles Soto had 
with the Indians, was fought with the Creeks at what is now known as 
Cuwally. It is either in Montgomery or Tallapoosa county; I do not now 
know how the county lines run. Cuwally is a name given it by the whites, 
not knowing how to give it the Indian pronunciation. To spell it as the 
Indians pronounced it, it would be Thleawalla, which signifies rolling 
bullet. Thlea, is an arrow or bullet; walla, is to roll. The Indians say 
it was there that a spent ball was seen rolling on the ground, and from 
that the place took its name. Besides, the Tuckabatchees have now in their 
possession a number of plates of copper in various shapes, which the 
Spaniards used as a kind of shield, to protect themselves from the arrows 
of the Indians. These plates were taken from the Spaniards at that fight. 
And from what Col. Pickett says of the fights upon the sources of Red 
River it would appear that the Indians were some years on their route 
going East. I have not seen nor heard any traditionary account of any 
thing of the sort in my intercourse with the various tribes that I have 
been among, and the sources of Red River must have been very imperfectly 
known in that day, by any of the Europeans that had visited this country, 
and are still very imperfectly known by many of our own people to this 
day; for Red river does not, as believed by many, head in the Rocky 
Mountains, but is a mere leak or drain from the prairies, except those 
little streams that head in the Ozark hills of Arkansas. Besides, it is 
not such a country as Indians would likely stop long in, particularly 
traveling on foot, as they were obliged to do; for the Southwestern 
Indians knew nothing of horses until they were introduced into the country 
by the Spaniards. And building forts with logs, by a people who knew 
nothing of the uses of the axe, nor had any, would, I think, be a tough 
undertaking. All that I have seen and heard satisfies me at least, that 
the Creeks, Alabamas and the other little bands connected with them, 
originally inhabited the skirts of timbered country between the Rio Grande 
or Del Norte and the Mississippi river, near the Gulf coast, which the 
names of the creeks, rivers, and many other things, will show. The 
Choctaws, Chickasaws, Nitches, Nacogdoches and Natchitoches Indians 
inhabited pretty much the same country.

It is true that Cortez found a much more civilized and much more timid 
race to contend with, than any of the tribes that I have mentioned. And 
that the Creeks, Alabamas and others that I have named, ever were or 
considered themselves subjects of the great Mexican Empire, I am very much 
inclined to doubt, from what I know of them. Even the present civilized 
and christianized rulers of Mexico, who are almost to a man of the old 
race, never exercise any control over the Indians within her borders, and 
this has been the case ever since she got from under the Spanish yoke.

I can neither read French nor Spanish; but the few translations in English 
that I have seen taken from the travels of the early visitors, both of the 
French and Spanish, to this country, are very contradictory, and for that 
reason I have been inclined to credit the Indian tradition. And, even if a 
history taken from European travelers, somewhat in the shape of a novel, 
is to be relied on, some man, in his account of the conquest of Florida, 
admits that the Creeks, Muscogees or Coosas disputed the passage of Soto 
through the country -- that is, Alabama and Georgia. It has been a long 
time since I read it, and then but little; but if I am not mistaken, it 
spoke of a war, or battle, with a Chief called Tuscaloosa. The Creeks 
themselves said that there was once among them a giant Chief, Tustanugga 
Lusta, or Black Warrior, who fought with Soto, and that his home was on 
the river of that name. I have seen no history of Louisiana except the Tax 
Collectors' Book -- and that I dislike to read -- and cannot say at what 
time Bienville and his brother, Iberville, came to the country. But one 
thing is certain, the French knew something of Mobile and its immediate 
vicinity at an early day; but they knew very little of the interior of 
Alabama, until after the defeat of Gen. Braddock, near Pittsburg, which 
was in 1755. The next year they come down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers 
and drove the Nitches Indians from where the present city of Natchez, 
Miss., now is. The Nitches Indians immediately emigrated to join their old 
Western friends, the Creeks, and settle at the Talisee old fields, on 
Taliseehatchy or Talisee creek, now in Talladega county, Ala.; and the 
French very shortly after moved up the Alabama river, to the junction of 
Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and built a little village near to old Fort 
Jackson. I have seen Indians, as well as negroes, that traded with the 
French while there, though their stay was but a few years. James McQueen, 
a Scotchman -- the first white man I ever heard of being among the 
Creeks -- and a Polander, by the name of Monlar, with the Nitches Indians 
and Creeks, broke up the French settlement at the fork of the rivers. And 
it was on the return of the French down the Alabama river, that they threw 
up an entrenchment at Durand's or Durant's Bend, and another at the mouth 
of Cahawba -- and the Alabam Indians were said to be the most bitter 
enemies, except the Nitches, that the French had. We are to judge from 
Col. Pickett's version of the matter, that there were neither Alabamas nor 
Muscogees in what is known to the whites as the Creek country, before Soto 
passed through. The Chattahoochee Indians, who were Muscogees, would show, 
as long as they lived there, many places where DeSoto or Soto had camped. 
There is a place on the Apalachicola that is yet known as one of Soto's 
camps. The Indians call it Spanny Wakka -- that is, "the Spaniards lay 
there." The Indians could tell of the old Spanish fortification in Jones 
county, Ga., also the one on the Ocmulgee, above Fort Hawkins, and it is 
evident they must have been in the country before Soto passed through -- 
and, besides, I was in Florida in 1818, and had with me many of the 
Creeks, who could point out places where the Spaniards, under Soto, had 
camped, and the marks of old roads and causeways were then visible. And 
with the single exception of Soto himself, all the early explorers of that 
country, who were mostly Spanish and some French, would only ascend the 
navigable rivers a small distance, in water crafts constructed for the 
purpose, and could have known but little of the indians in the interior. 
And as to Red River, when Cortez conquered Mexico, it is a doubt with me 
if it was then a tributary of the Mississippi river, as the Atchafalaya 
evidently was once the channel of Red River, and made its way to the Gulf 
of Mexico through Berwick's Bay; and, even in Soto's time did it go into 
the Mississippi river, it could only have been navigated, with small 
crafts, as far up as Alexandria, for the river above the falls will show 
that it was once a raft, as far up as Long Prairie, in Arkansas, and that 
would have prevented early explorers from knowing much of the sources of 
the river or what Indians, if any, lived on it.

All these circumstances induce me to believe that Col. Pickett is 
mistaken, and the source from which he derived a part of his information 
is, or was, not very reliable; and, so far as Indian tradition is 
concerned, I think my chance to have obtained correct information in 
relation to Indian history equal, at least, to that of Col. Pickett's. The 
accounts that I have had from the Indians themselves, and from Col. 
Hawkins, whose opportunity must have been as good as any one of his time, 
or any one who has lived since, are, that Cortez's object was gold, and 
that the people he first encountered in Mexico were somewhat civilized and 
very timid; and, after subduing them and taking possession of the City of 
Mexico -- if it could be called a city -- he then commenced extending his 
conquests or robberies up the Gulf coast, in the direction of what is now 
Tampico and Tamaulipas, and even as far as what is now Texas, where he 
encountered the Musquas or Muscogees, Alabamas, and others that I have 
mentioned; but finding them to be a much more hardy, warlike race than the 
Mexicans, and in order to hold on to what he had taken and subdued of the 
timid ones, he found it necessary to kill or drive these war-like tribes 
from the country, which with the great advantage of firearms, he succeeded 
in doing. The Muscogees and their confederates crossed the Mississippi 
river and called a halt at Baton Rouge, which is known to this day as Red 
Stick or Club. The Nitches, from the river which bears their name in 
Texas, crossed the Mississippi river and settled where the city of Natchez 
is now. The Choctaws settled the country on Yazoo, Pearl, Leaf, 
Chickasawha, and as far as the Tombecba rivers. The Chickasaws settled at 
Chickasaw Bluff or Memphis. The Creeks, after a short stay at Baton Rouge, 
moved and settled on the Alabama and its tributaries, the Black Warrior 
and the Chattahoochee, and Flint rivers, and, in time, went as far east as 
the Oconee river, but never went farther in that direction, and did not 
make any settlement on the Oconee until after the whites began to encroach 
on the Indians of that country from the East. The Indians that originally 
inhabited from the middle parts of the Carolinas (particularly South 
Carolina,) and Georgia to the seaboard, were known as Yamacraws or 
Yamasees, Oconees, Ogeeches, and Sowanokees or Peoples of the Glades. The 
Sowanokees are known as the Shawnees -- the other Indians know them by no 
other name to this day but Sowanokee; and the Savannah river was known as 
Sowanokee Hatchee Thlocka, which signifies the Big River of the Glades, or 
what we call Savannah. And these Indians the Creek found to be their 
equals as warriors; but when the whites began to approach them from the 
east, and the Creeks already very close on the west, the Sowanokees or 
Shawnees fell back on the north and northwest. Tecumseh was of that stock. 
The other little tribes, with the Uchees, they being the "same fireside" 
Indians with the Shawnees, all dwindled away among the Creeks and lost 
their language, except the Uchees -- they still retain theirs.

One other circumstance that convinces me that the Creeks and Alabamas had 
become pretty much one people before they settled Alabama and Georgia, is 
that the tribes they incorporated into their nation after settling the 
Creek country never would come into the family arrangement, which 
arrangement I will try and explain to you. They were laid off in 
families -- that is, Bears, Wolves, Panthers, Foxes and many others -- 
also, what they termed the Wind Family, which was allowed more authority 
than any family in the nation. There was nothing in their laws to prevent 
blood cousins from marrying, but never to marry in the same family -- 
thus, a man of the Bear family could marry a woman of the Fox family, or 
any other family he pleased and the children would be called Fox. In all 
cases, the children took the mother's family name. Years ago, you could 
not find an Indian in the nation but could tell you his family. But whisky 
has destroyed many of their old customs as well as the Indians themselves.

There is too much of this to publish, even if it were worth publishing. 
Read it, show it to Col. Pickett, burn it and send me his History of 
Alabama.

Yours,
T. S. W.



WINN PARISH, LA.
Jan. 10, 1858.
TO J. J. HOOPER, Esq.:
I wrote to you some time back some sketches relative to the Creek Indians, 
which no doubt you found too long, too tedious, and too uninteresting to 
publish. In that I sent you I made mention of a family arrangement among 
the Creeks that differed from all other tribes that I know or have 
traveled among. The Creeks are laid off in families, viz: Bears, Tigers, 
Wolves, Foxes, Deers, and almost all the animals that were known to them. 
All these families had certain privileges, and every one of a family knew 
to what family he belonged and what privileges were allowed. There was 
also what they termed the Wind family, which was allowed more privileges 
than all the rest. For instance, when an offender escaped from justice, 
all the families were permitted to pursue a certain number of days, and no 
more, except the Wind family, which had the right to pursue and arrest at 
any time -- there was no limit to their privileges in bringing an offender 
to justice. There was nothing to prevent blood relations from marrying 
with each other, but a woman of the Bear family was at liberty to take a 
husband in any family except a Bear; so it was with all the other 
families, but none were permitted to marry in the same family; for 
instance, if a man of the Wolf family marry a woman of the Fox family, the 
children would all be Foxes. Such has been the custom among the Creeks 
from the earliest history I have had of them, though their intercourse 
with the whites has changed many of their old habits and customs even 
since my time. In fact, I know a number of words in their languages and 
names of things and places that are not spoken or pronounced as they were 
when I first knew them. This has been occasioned by whites not being able 
to give the Indian pronunciation, and the Indians in many cases have 
conformed to that of the whites. A horse, for instance, is now called 
Chelocko by the whites who speak Indian, and by most of the Indians; but 
originally it was Echo Tlocko, signifying a Big Deer -- Echo is a deer and 
Thlocko is something large. The first horses the Creeks ever saw were 
those introduced by the Spaniards, and they called them big deer, as they 
resembled that animal more than any other they knew -- this is their 
tradition, and I am satisfied that it is correct. There is the Indian town 
above Montgomery, Coowersartda, that is called by the whites Coosada; also 
the town ThIeawalla, where Soto fought the Creeks, it is called by the 
whites Cuwally, and many of the Indians raised of late years call it as 
the whites do, and do not know what its original name was, nor what its 
meaning is. Thela is an arrow or bullet, and Walla is to roll; the proper 
name is Rolling Bullet; and many other such alterations have been made 
that have come within my knowledge. Indians in almost every instance learn 
our language quicker than we learn theirs, particularly our pronunciation. 
An Indian, if he speaks our language at all, almost invariably pronounces 
it as those do from whom he learns it. If he learns it from a white man 
that speaks it well, the Indian does the same; if he learns it from a 
negro he pronounces as the negro does. You may take the best educated 
European that lives, that does not speak our language, and an Indian that 
does not speak it; let both learn it; if the Indian does not learn so 
much, he will always speak what he does learn more distinctly than the 
European. This will no doubt be disputed by many, but I know it to be true 
from actual observation, and I do not pretend to account for why it is so, 
unless it is intended that at some time Americans shall all be Americans.
I believe I mentioned the name of James McQueen before. This man came 
amongst the Creeks as early as 1716 and lived among them until 1811. He 
was said to be, by those who knew him well, very intelligent, and had 
taken great pains to make himself acquainted with the history of the 
Creeks. From the early day in which he came among them, and they knowing 
at that time but little of the whites, their traditions were, no doubt, 
much more reliable than anything that can now be obtained from them. From 
what I have learned from this man, or from those who learned it from him, 
the Muscogees, or as they were originally known to the other tribes, 
Musquas, and all the little towns or bands that composed the Creek 
Confederacy, was a Confederacy before they crossed to the east of 
Mississippi river. From what I have been able to learn, Musqua, or 
Muscogee, signified Independent. Besides I knew a Capt. John S. Porter, 
formerly of the U. S. Army, who, some thirty years ago, with a few Creeks 
of the McIntosh party in Arkansas, visited California and went up the 
Pacific coast to the Columbia river, and returned by the way of Salt Lake, 
and on his return to Arkansas he wrote to me, giving an account of his 
travels. The writing covered some three or four sheets of paper; a great 
deal of it was very interesting. I do not now recollect whether I loaned 
it to George Stiggins, or a Mr. Whitaker, of Charleston, S. C. But I 
recollect among the many accounts of his travels, that on the head waters, 
or at least the waters of the Colorado of the West, he found a small 
remnant of the original Musqua. They spoke mostly a broken Spanish 
dialect, but still retained much of their old language and old family 
customs. They gave pretty much the same account of being driven from their 
old homes that I have learned from the Creeks. These people informed Capt. 
Porter that their nation was once strong, and they had many languages; 
that they inhabited the country between the Rio del Norte and Mississippi 
river, or Owea Coafka, or river of cane. They also gave him the original 
Indian name of the Del Norte, but I forget it; but Owea Coafka is what the 
Creeks call the Mississippi river. They also stated to him that they lived 
near the Gulf, on what they called Owea Thlocko Marhe, signifying the 
largest water. They say they were driven off by the Echo Thlock Ulgees, or 
horsemen, or what the Creeks in our language would call the big deer men. 
Echothlock is a big deer, as I stated before, and the proper name of the 
horse Echothlock; Ulgee means horsemen. They also stated that long after 
they left their old homes, and horses had become plenty, that the Indians 
learned the use of them, and that a number of the little tribes that once 
lived on the rivers and Gulf had taken to the prairies. They also gave 
Capt. Porter an account of a long war with some tribes high up on the Rio 
del Norte, and that one of the most warlike tribes had gone east. They 
called them as the present Creeks do, Hopungieasaw, and what are now known 
to the whites as Pyankeshaws. I recollect two women that Tuskenea carried 
to the Creek nation, of the Pyankeshaws, as the whites called them, but 
the Creeks call them Hopungieasaw, or dancing Indians.

You see that I differ with Col. Pickett as to the early settlement of the 
Creek Indians in Alabama; and should I be correct, it need not matter with 
the Colonel, for you know most people believe a history whether it be 
correct or not. I have not seen his History of Alabama, and all I have 
seen or heard from him, was his answer to Mr. Hobbs' inquiry; and I have 
no idea that he has written anything but he felt authorized to do from the 
sources that he received his information. But authors sometimes may err, 
and others wilfully misrepresent. When that is the case, we have to judge 
from circumstances. The Colonel says that Soto passed Alabama before the 
Muscogees reached that country. The Indians say they were there and fought 
him: and from the number of copper shields, with a small brass swivel, 
(that an old man by the name of Tooley worked up into bells,) would go to 
show and to prove that the Indians were correct. I have often seen the 
copper plates or shields, and a piece of the swivel, and from the cuttings 
or carvings on it, it was evidently of Spanish make. And it was only some 
twenty years after Cortez conquered Mexico, that Soto commenced his march 
from Tampa Bay, and had too few men to sacrifice them in storming a strong 
work, when it could effect nothing, for an Indian Fort in a remote 
wilderness could have interfered but little with his march westward. And 
how could the Alabamas have known that he intended passing that way? It 
seems to me that a people so illy prepared to build forts; having no axes, 
spades nor any implement of the sort, would have found it much easier to 
have concealed themselves, had it been necessary, in some of those large 
swamps which abound in the Yazoo country; and from what I know of Indians, 
they would not give one swamp or cane brake for forty forts. And as to the 
Muscogees ever having been subjects of the great Mexican empire, it is 
very doubtful, for Mexico was the name of the City itself, and applied to 
the town only. It was the city or town where the principal chiefs or body 
of the Aztecs, Anahuacs, or as the other Indians called them, Auchinang 
resided.

The Creeks or Muscogees, the Iroquois or Six Nations, were all the Indians 
that I have known or heard of forming themselves into anything like a 
confederacy. The balance, as far as my information extends, have been 
separate tribes, with a separate language, with their own peculiar 
customs, except in a few instances where two or more tribes would unite in 
case of a war. The Creeks, as I mentioned before, originally inhabited the 
skirts of timbered country bordering on the Gulf of Mexico, and between 
the Del Norte and Mississippi rivers. When the Muscogees, Nitches, 
Choctaws and Chickasaws crossed to the east of the Mississippi river, a 
town of Indians yet among the Creeks, the Autisees or Itisees, has for 
ages been called Red Stick. They settled at Baton Rouge, and no doubt it 
was from that tribe or town that the early French settlers gave it its 
present name. Eto-chatty, signifies red tree or red wood; but ask an 
Indian that is acquainted with the original names and customs, what a Red 
Stick Warrior, is, and he will tell you it is an Autisee or Otisee. I have 
taken great pains, in times passed, to have these things explained to me 
by the oldest and most sensible Indians and Indian countrymen. The 
Muscogees, from their own account, made but a short stay on the 
Mississippi or its waters. They emigrated to Alabama and Georgia, and 
settled mostly on the large creeks and rivers and near the falls and 
shoals, for the purpose of fishing. The Indians who inhabited the Gulf 
coast, and that of the Atlantic as far east as Beaufort, S. C., and the 
rivers as far back as latitude 33¡ north, previous to the settlement of 
the Muscogees in the country, were known as Paspagolas, Baluxies, Movilas, 
Apilaches, Hichetas, Uchys, Yemacraws, Wimosas, Sowanokas or Shawneys. 
Sowanoka Hatchy is the original name of Savannah river; that is, the river 
of the glades.

The Seminoles is a mixed race of almost all the tribes I have mentioned, 
but mostly Hitchetas and Creeks. The Hitchetas have by the whites been 
looked upon as being originally Muscogees, but they were not. They had an 
entirely different language of their own, and were in the country when the 
Creeks first entered it. Seminole, in the Creek language, signifies wild, 
or runaway, or outlaw.

There have many conflicting accounts about John Ferdinand Soto -- when, 
where and how he died, and where buried. According to McQueen's account, 
and that of the oldest Indians in the nation when he came to it, Soto died 
in what is called Natchitoches parish, in this State, at the last fort he 
built, called the Azadyze; and the oldest Spanish settlers of this country 
have corroborated McQueen's account. There are yet to be found among the 
people of this country, some of the descendants of Soto's men, and some of 
his name. All the Indian traditions, and those of the early Spanish 
settlers, say he died and was buried at Azadyze. It is now 142 years since 
McQueen first came to the Creek country, and Indians that were then living 
even at the age of 75 years, could give a very correct tradition of things 
that had happened only 80 or 100 years before. Indians are very particular 
in their relations of circumstances and events, and not half so apt to 
embellish as the whites, and the march of Soto through their country, and 
his fights with them, were affairs not likely to be forgotten by them, and 
would be handed down for a generation or two at least, very correct, no 
doubt. Even in my time, I have heard the old Indians, in their 
conversations, allude to the white warrior, or Tustanugga Hatke, as they 
called Soto.

You see I write, spell and dictate badly, but have given you what I heard 
from others who were best calculated to inform me upon such subjects. If 
there is anything in this that you have not seen or heard before, and you 
think it worth publishing, do so; if not, let it pass: for I assure you 
that I am not desirous to become conspicuous as a writer in a newspaper, 
or anything else -- though I doubt much if the man lives that has seen as 
much of old Indian times, and heard as much of the early history of the 
Creeks, as I have. I would like to be where I could sit and tell it over 
to you; I could make you understand it much better.

May you live long and die rich.
T. S. W.