68 The Winning of the West 



The Appalachians were in the barbarous rather 

 than in the merely savage state. They were divided 

 into five lax confederacies: the Cherokees, Chicka- 

 saws, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles. The latter 

 were merely a southern offshoot of the Creeks or 

 Muscogees. They were far more numerous than 

 the northwestern Indians, were less nomadic, and 

 in consequence had more definite possession of par- 

 ticular localities; so that their lands were more 

 densely peopled. 



In all they amounted to perhaps seventy thou- 

 sand souls. 1 It is more difficult to tell the numbers 

 of the different tribes; for the division lines be- 

 tween them were very ill defined, and were subject 

 to wide fluctuations. Thus the Creeks, the most 

 formidable of all, were made up of many bands, 

 differing from each other both in race and speech. 



1 Letters of Commissioners Hawkins, Pickens, Martin, and 

 Mclntosh, to the President of the Continental Congress, Dec. 

 2, 1785. (Given in Senate Documents, ssd Congress, 2d ses- 

 sion, Boundary between Ga. and Fla.) They give 14,200 

 "gun-men," and say that "at a moderate calculation" there 

 are four times as many old men, women, and children as 

 there are gun-men. The estimates of the numbers are very 

 numerous and very conflicting. After carefully consulting 

 all accessible authorities, I have come to the conclusion that 

 the above is probably pretty near the truth. It is the 

 deliberate official opinion of four trained experts, who had 

 ample opportunities for investigation, and who examined 

 the matter with care. But it is very possible that in allotting 

 the several tribes their numbers they err now and then, as 

 the boundaries between the tribes shifted continually, and 

 there were always large communities of renegades, such 

 as the Chickamaugas, who were drawn from the ranks of all. 



