INDIAN LEGENDS OF KENTUCKY. 49 



the latter, with "large projecting lips, and broad, flat negro noses;" and upon Peter 

 Martyr's account of Balboa's journey across the Isthmus of Darien, where, it is said, 

 " There is a region, not above two days' journey from Quarequa, in which they 

 found only blackamoors, &c." Stevenson's Travels in South America, and Juarros' 

 History of Guatimala, are quoted as confirming this story by collateral evidence. 



If the country had been as thoroughly explored when Dr. McCulloh wrote as it 

 has been since, he would hardly have considered the admitted diversity of shades 

 of complexion as justifying so distinct a classification as he has adopted. 1 



At the close of his chapter on the " social and moral institutions of the barbar- 

 ous tribes," his views of their traditions are thus expressed : — 



" The ancient histories of the migrations of the barbarous tribes are equally 

 confused with those they relate concerning their origin, and in no instance can be 

 presumed to extend back beyond a century of years anterior to the immediate 

 inquiries of the Europeans. 



" After a deliberate examination of their respective traditions of emigration, 

 I cannot consider them as throwing the least degree of light upon the history of 

 their origin. They certainly only relate to the partial removals or emigrations of 

 these people from one to another part of the American continent. This belief is 

 in strict conformity with everything we know of their actual condition when we 

 first became acquainted with them. They were continually engaged in war with 

 each other, and, according as they were fortunate or unsuccessful, they either 

 enlarged their country, or abandoned it, to be incorporated with another people. 



"Every change of political circumstances, therefore, altered the limits of an Indian 

 territory ; which would, in the course of a single century, leave but an indistinct 

 impression on their minds as to any former country from which they may have 

 emigrated. A vague idea of a previous removal might be retained by their oldest 

 people, which they might state to be from some particular point of the compass ; 

 but beyond this they seem to have retained no precise information." 



As native traditions have not been without their believers, and are blended with 

 the progress of information and opinion, it may be well, before leaving the subject, 

 to illustrate them further. 



In a manuscript history of the western country, by Rev. John P. Campbell, of 

 Chillicothe, who died near the close of 1814, it is said: — 



" Mr. Thomas Bodley was informed by Indians of different tribes northwest of 

 the Ohio, that they had understood from their old men, and that it had been a 

 tradition among their several nations, that Kentucky had been settled by whites, 

 and that they had been exterminated by war. They were of opinion that the old 

 fortifications, now to be seen in Kentucky and Ohio, were the productions of those 

 white inhabitants. Wappockanitta, a Shawnee chief, near a hundred and twenty 

 years old, living on the Anglaze river, confirmed the above tradition. 



"An old Indian, in conversation with Col. James F. Moore, of Kentucky, 



1 See Dr. Morton's remarks on the complexion of the American Indians, in Schoolcraft's Itistory, 

 Condition, and Prospects of Am. Indians, II, 320. 

 1 



