Spread of English-Speaking Peoples 73 



not held to be very formidable fighters, when com- 

 pared with their fellows of the lowlands. 8 In 1760 

 and 1761 they had waged a fierce war with the 

 whites, had ravaged the Carolina borders, had cap- 

 tured British forts, and successfully withstood Brit- 

 ish armies; but though they had held their own in 

 the field, it had been at the cost of ruinous losses. 

 Since that period they had been engaged in long 

 wars with the Chickasaws and Creeks, and had been 

 worsted by both. Moreover, they had been much 

 harassed by the northern Indians. So they were 

 steadily declining in power and numbers. 9 



Though divided linguistically into two races, 

 speaking different dialects, the Otari and Erati, the 

 political divisions did not follow the lines of lan- 

 guage. There were three groups of towns, the 

 Upper, Lower, and Middle; and these groups often 

 acted independently of one another. The Upper 

 towns lay for the most part on the Western Waters, 

 as they were called by the Americans, the streams 

 running into the Tennessee. Their inhabitants were 

 known as Overhill Cherokees and were chiefly 

 Otari ; but the towns were none of them permanent, 

 and sometimes shifted their positions, even chang- 

 ing from one group to another. The Lower towns, 

 inhabited by the Erati, lay in the flat lands of upper 

 Georgia and South Carolina, and were the least 

 important. The third group, larger than either of 

 the others and lying among the hills and mountains 



8 "Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 95. Letter of Charles Lee. 



9 Adair, 227. Bartram, 390. 



D VOL. V. 



