254 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [f.li-l. 43 



of much information, and of great influence among the Indians of 

 the towns in the neighborhood of this/'" 



In the Creek war of 1813-1-1 they Avere kept from joining the hostile 

 Indians by the Talisi chief. In 1832 they accompanied tlie Creeks 

 to the former Indian territory, now incorporated in Okhihoma. In 

 1885 John Leslie, or Lasley, of Abika, from whom Doctor Gatschet 

 collected his vocabulary of Natchez, represented his tribe in the 

 Creek " house of warriors," though practically without a constit- 

 uency.'' When Mr. James Mooney visited Eufaula, near Abika, five 

 years later, '' he was still alive at an advanced age, together with 

 several other relatives, all speaking their own language," '' but in 1907 

 the present writer was told at Eufaula that he was dead and that no 

 one remained at Abika who could speak the language consecutively. 



It is a curious fact that there is a manuscript " History of the 

 Creek Indians " among the archives of the Wisconsin Historical 

 Society, written by a mixed blood Natchez living among the Creeks, 

 named George Stiggins. 



Most important of the Natchez fragments next to those who settled 

 among the Creeks were the Natchez who went to live with the Chero- 

 kee. Mooney says " The Cherokee generally agree that the Natchez 

 came to them from the Creek country,"'- but if this applies to the 

 first comers, they can hardly have stopped in the Creek country 

 before moving again, for Bienville, in 1742, states that finding them- 

 selves an incumbrance to the Chickasaw^, then closely pressed by the 

 French, they had retired to the Cherokee,'^ and the Jesuit father, 

 Vivier, writing in 1750, says of this nation: "Only a few remain 

 scattered among the Chicachats and Cheraquis, where they live pre- 

 cariously and almost as slaves." <^ At a very early date, however, 

 such as came directly from the Chickasaw or indirectly through the 

 Creeks were joined by a band that had been living among the Catawba 

 Indians, but had had a misunderstanding with them. In 1734 a dele- 

 gation of 26 of these Indians had applied to the government of 

 South Carolina for permission to settle their people on Savannah 

 river,^ and the request was evidently granted, for Adair mentions 

 " Nacliee " as one of the tribes making up the more than 20 dialects 

 of the Catawba nation.^ In 1744 the records of South Caro- 

 lina note that " seven Catawbas had been barbarously murdered by 

 the Notchee Indians, who live among them," the Catawbas, as it 



"Hawkins's Sketch in Ga. Oist. Soc. Coll., in, 42. 



''Mooney in Avicr. Anthrop., n. s., i, 521. 



<' Ibid., 510-517. 



"* Gayarre, Hist. I.ouisiana. i, 519-520. 



« Jes. Rol., I, XIX, 214-215. 



'Rivers tjuotort in Mooney. Si(ui;in tril)os of tbe East, 84. 



" Adair, Hist. Amer. Ind., ii, 225, 



