SWANTOX] INDIAN THIBES 1)1' TllK I.OWKi; M ISSISSI I'l'l VAl.LKV 255 



appears, being tlu'ii diMiiik, but. il" we jiic to acccj)! the slatcniciit 

 coiitaiiu'il in ( Jovcrnor (Hen's letter. (Iicy had Ix'cn iii^t inat('(| to the 

 deed 1)V a storekeeper. lie persnaded *' the Nolehee kin*;"" to punish 

 the ort'enders, but the Catawbas, having set out to take revenge, the 

 Natehez, ah)ng with the Pedee Indians, were forced to come farther 

 down among the settlements for safety." This separation seems to 

 have beiMi permanent, as they are mentioned in 1751 as one of the 

 small tribes " that live among our settlements." '' In October, 1755, 

 two women of the Pedee tribe were killed and scalped and two boys 

 carried away captive, and the deed was said to have been counnitted 

 by some Cherokee and "" one Notchee, which was called the Notchee 

 doctor."'' This Natchez Avas evidently already settled Avith the 

 Cherokee, though whether he had belonged to the former Catawba 

 band of Natchez or not can not be determined. It is, however, very 

 likely that the CataAvba Natchez had already joined those among the 

 Cherokee, for we hear nothing further regarding them. 



The Natchez appear in Cherokee tradition " under the name of 

 Anintsi, abbreviated from Ani-Na'tsi, the plural of Na'tsi. Mooney 

 says, '" They seem to have been, regarded by the Cherokee as a race 

 of wizards and conjurers, probably due in part to their peculiar re- 

 ligious rites and in part to the interest whicli belonged to them as the 

 remnant of a broken tribe."'' Mr. Mooney being an authority on 

 everything connected with the Cherokee, we can not do better than 

 subjoin his statements regarding that band of the Natchez Avhich 

 lived among them. lie says: 



The venerable James Wafford. a prominont mixed-blood Cherokee who was 

 born hi 1806 near the site of Clarkesville. (ia.. when it was all Indian country, 

 and who afterwards removed with his tribe to Indian Territory, informed the 

 writer in 1890 that the " Notchees " had their town on the north bank of 

 Hiwassee river, just above Peachtree creek, on the spot where a Baptist mission 

 was established l)y the Rev. Evan .Jones about 1S20, and a few miles above 

 the present Murphy, Cherokee county, N. C. On his mother's side he had 

 himself a strain of Natchez blood. His grandmother had told him that when 

 she was a young woman — say about 1775 — she had occasion to go to this 

 town on some business, which she was obliged to transact through an mter- 

 preter, as the Natchez had then been there so short a time that only one or 

 two spoke any Cherokee. They were all in the one town, which the Cherokee 

 called Gwalgwa'hl, " Frog Place," but he was unable to say whether or not it 

 had a towuhouse. In 1824. as one of the census enumerators for the Cherokee 

 Nation, he went over the same section and found the Natchez then living jointly 

 with the Cherokee in a town called Gu'laniyT at the junction of Brasstown and 

 Gumlog creeks, tributary to Hiwassee river, some 6 miles southeast of their 



"Gregg, Hist, of the Old Cheraws, 10-11. A letter preserved among the Tublic 

 Documents of South Cnrolina states that this murder was performed by the Natchez 

 and Wateree together. 



" Ibid., 14. 



'^ \h\A., 15. 



''Mooney in Atner. Anthrop., n. s., i, 517. 



