bwaktok] EABLY HISTORY OF THE C3REEK INDIANS 191 
Tennessee mountains. It seems rather improbable that a tribe from 
such a distant .country could have settled among the Creeks and, 
after living in closest intimacy with them for so many years, have 
passed entirely out of existence without any further hint of their 
affiliations or any more information regarding them. And the fact 
t hut they and the Yuchi share so many points in common and appear 
in the same places, though practically never side by side, must be 
added to this as constituting strong circumstantial evidence that 
they were indeed one and the same people. 
THE ALABAMA 
Next to the Muskogee themselves the most conspicuous Upper 
Creek tribe were the Alabama, or Albamo. As shown by their lan- 
guage and indicated by some of their traditions they were connected 
more nearly with the Choctaw and Chickasaw than with the Creeks. 
Stiggins declares that the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Hitchiti, and Koasati 
languages were mutually intelligible, 1 and this was true at least of 
Choetaw, Chickasaw, and Koasati. 
According to the older traditions the Alabama had come from the 
west, or perhaps, rather from the southwest, to their historic seats, 
but these traditions do not carry them to a great distance. Adair, 
referring to the seven distinct dialects reported as spoken near Fort 
Toulouse, said that the people claimed to have come from South 
America. 2 
The following account of their origin was obtained originally from 
Se-ko-pe-chi ("Perseverance"), who is described as "one of the oldest 
Creeks, ... in their new location west of the Mississippi," about 
the year 1847, and was published by Schoolcraft: 3 
The origin of the Alabama Indians as handed down by oral tradition, is that they 
sprang out of the ground, between the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers. . . . The earliest 
migration recollected, as handed down by oral tradition, is that they emigrated from 
the Cahawba and Alabama Rivers to the junction of the Tuscaloosa [Tombigbee ?] and 
Coosa [Alabama ?] Rivers. 4 Their numbers at that period were not known. The 
extent of the territory occupied at that time was indefinite. At the point formed 
by the junction of the Tuscaloosa and Coosa Rivers the tribe sojourned for the space 
of two years, after which their location was at the junction of the Coosa and Alabama 
Rivers, on the west side of what was subsequently the site of Fort Jackson. It is 
supposed that at this time they numbered fifty effective men. They claimed the 
country from Fort Jackson to New Orleans for their hunting-grounds. . . . 
They are of the opinion that the Great Spirit brought them from the ground, and 
that they are of right possessors of this soil. 
> Stiggins, MS. 
» Adair, Hist. Am. lnds., pp. 267-268. 
» Ind. Tribes, i, pp. 266-267. 
* The name Coosa was once extended over the Alabama as well as the stream which now bears the name; 
there is some reason to think that the Tombigbee may occasionally have been called the Tuscaloosa. At 
any rate this construction would reconcile the present tradition with the one following. 
