148 ANTIQUITIES IN TENNESSEE, 



identical with the nation called by the Huron missionaries, Eriehonons, or Cats. 

 AVe arc justified by the statements of tlie early missionaries, explorers, and 

 historians, in supposing the Erics, C'haouanons, Ontoiigaunha, Shawuees, Uchcs, 

 and Savanas, to be the same imfortunate nation whose dominion once extended 

 from the Avatcrs of the Savannah River, in the present State of Georgia, to the shores 

 of Lake Erie, and who Avere persistently followed and relentlessly destroyed by the 

 warlike, cruel, and powerful Iroquois. 



The valleys of the Cumberland and Ohio Rivers appear to have been inhabited 

 for a considerable period by the Chaouanons, for in the earliest maps, we find this 

 region called the country of the Ancient Chaouanons. The earliest French ex- 

 plorers and missionaries describe this nation as populous and powerful, and their 

 right to the soil as well as their power was acknowledged in the earliest treaties 

 negotiated with the Algonquin tribes by La Salle, nearly two centuries ago. 

 From the earliest period of French occupation in the Mississippi valley, the 

 Chaouanons were, with others of the Algonquin tribes to whom tliey were closely 

 related by origin and language, firm friends of the French, and were instructed in 

 the Catholic religion as early as two centuries ago, by the Jesuit missionaries. 

 The cross was erected wherever they journeyed, in the wilderness, in the fertile 

 valleys and plains, upon the hills and mountains, along the banks of the rivers, 

 and upon the shores of the great lakes. In the humble wigwams, in the council 

 houses upon the elevated mounds, and within the populous Indian towns, it became 

 a sacred and mysterious emblem and an object of devout and religious worship 

 with the aborigines. 



These statements will be illustrated and sustained by the following brief ex- 

 tracts from tlie monograph which I have prepared, and to which we have before 

 alluded. 



Father James Marquette,' who set out for the "Dtscoveri/ of the Great River, 

 called by the Indians Mississippi," on the 17th of May, 1673, speaks of the Ohio 

 River as the Ouaboukigou, which finally became Ouabache, or Wabash, a name 

 now applied to the last tributary of the Ohio. " This river," says Father INIar- 

 quctte, " conies from the country on the east, inhabited by the people called 

 Chaouanons, in such numbers that they reckon as many as twenty-tliree villages 

 in one district, and fifteen iu another, lying quite near each other; they are by no 

 means warlike, and are the people the Iroquois go far to seek, in order to wage an 

 unprovoked war upon them ; and as these poor people cannot defend themselves, 

 they allow themselves to be taken, and carried off like sheep, and innocent as 

 they are, do not fail to experience at times the barbarity of the Iroquois, who 

 burn them cruelly." 



The observations upon the Chaouanons, given in the " Account of the Discovery 

 of some New Countries and Nations in North America, in 1673," by Pere Mar- 



' "Relation of the Voyages, Discoveries, and Death of Father James Marquette, and the sub- 

 sequent Voyages of Father Claudius Allouez, by Father Claudius Dablon, Superior of the Mission 

 of Jesus in New France, 1678." Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi Valley, J. G. Shea, 

 pp. 41-42. 



