4 [36] TRANS. ST. I.OUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



THE MIGRATION LEGEND OF THE KASI'HTA TRIBE 



is one of the most fascinating legendary accounts that has reached 

 us fiom a remote antiquity, and is mythical in its first part. The 

 Kasi'hta tribe, among which it originated, had a considerable 

 town of the Lower Creek Indians on Chatahutchi river, eastern 

 shore, and with its three branch villages counted about iSo heads 

 of families in 1799. It was built at the junction of Apatd-i creek 

 with Chatahuchi river, at a short distance from Yuchi and Ka- 

 wita towns. A passage in the legend accounts for the fact, that 

 Kasi'hta was at Tchikilli's time regarded as the most influential, 

 most honored town of the Lower Creeks, or, as he expresses it, 

 '"'the oldest." B. Hawkins, United States agent of the Creek In- 

 dians and author of a "Sketch" composed in 1799, gives interest- 

 ing particulars about the town (pp. 58. 59 ; published by Ga. Hist- 

 Soc. 1848}. The Creek Indians, of whom the Kasi'hta were a 

 part, formed the central people of the Maskoki race and linguis- 

 tic family, and were subdivided into Upper Creeks (on Coosa and 

 Tallapoosa rivers) and Lower Creeks (on Chatahuchi river and 

 affluents) ; they formed a political body and defensive league 

 called the Creek Confederacy. The other divisions of that lin- 

 guistic family were the Cha'hta with Chicasa, the Alibamu and 

 Koassdti, the Hitchiti- speaking towns on Lower Chatahuchi 

 river, Flint river and east of it ; the Seminole Indians, who speak 

 either Creek or Hitchiti, the extinct Yamassi and Yamacraws, 

 and, lastly, the Apalaches, once near St. Mark's river, Florida. 



Tchikilli, the head-chief of the Upper and Lower Creeks, deliv- 

 ered the legend in an allocution held before Governor James Ogle- 

 thorpe, at Savannah, Georgia, in the year 1735. The British colo- 

 nial authorities and people were present, and also some sixty 

 men of Tchikilli's Indian retinue. After delivery, the interpreter 

 handed it over, written upon a buftaloskin, to the colonists, and 

 the same year it was brought to England. It appears from an 

 article in the "American Gazetteer," London, 1762, vol. ii.. Art. 

 Georgia, that the contents were written in red and black charac- 

 ters (pictographic signs, we suppose), and that afterwards it was 



