226 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
has a quantity of cattle and kills them sometimes to feast his friends. No one has 
ever been able to make him take sides with one of the three European nations who 
know him, he alleging that he wishes to see everyone, to be neutral, and not to espouse 
any of the quarrels which the French. English, and Spaniards have with one another. 1 
Traditionally the name is supposed to have had some connection 
with the eastward migration of this tribe, and it is associated with 
the word ay eta, to go. No reliance can be placed upon this, how- 
ever, any more than on Gatschet's derivation from the Yuchi word 
meaning "man." 2 
As the principal body of Muskogee in Georgia, aside from the 
Kasihta, it is possible that these are the Chisi, Ichisi, or Achese of 
the De Soto chroniclers, 3 since Ochisi (Otci'si) is a name applied to 
the Muskogee by Hitchiti-speaking peoples. 4 Spanish dealings 
with them in the seventeenth century have already been recounted. 5 
In the period between 1670 and 1700 we find them placed on maps, 
along with the Kasihta, about the headwaters of the Chattahoochee 
and Coosa, but when they are first clearly localized they are on the 
upper course of the Ocmulgee not far from Indian Springs, Butts 
County, Georgia. On French maps the Altamaha and Ocmulgee 
together are often called "Riviere des Caouitas." After the general 
westward movement, which took place after the Yamasee war, they 
settled on the west bank of the Chattahoochee River between the 
Yuchi on the south and a town known as Chattahoochee. 
This last-mentioned place was the first Muskogee settlement on 
Chattahoochee River and is said to have been established to enable 
its occupants to open trade with the Spaniards. Bartram says that 
the people of this town spoke the true Muskogee language, and it is 
probable that it branched off from the Coweta, though it may have 
been made up from several settlements. It was in Troup or Heard 
Counties, Georgia, and was abandoned before Hawkins's time, 
1798-99. 
The first Coweta settlement on the Chattahoochee was probably 
at a place afterwards called Coweta Tallahassee, though at the period 
last mentioned it was occupied by people from Likatcka, itself a 
branch of Coweta. 6 D. I. Bushnell, Jr., has published parts of a 
journal kept by a member of General Oglethorpe's expedition to the 
Creek towns in 1740, in which he gives some account of the people of 
Coweta. 7 In 1761 they had 130 hunters and their trader was George 
Galpin. 8 In 1797 Hawkins gives the names of five traders, Thomas 
i MS in Ayer Coll., Newberry Lib. The story about slaughtering Indians who were pulling a cannon 
crops up in connection with the I'opham colony (see Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1st ser., I, p. 252). 
2 Gatschet, Creek Mig. Leg., i, p. 19. 
'■i Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, I, p. 10; u, p. ">». 
4 Hence the name "Ocheese River" (p. 215). f-'ee Hawkins in Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., ix, p. 209; and 
p. 148. 
6 See pp. 220-222. 
e Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., ix, p. 63. 
i Amer. Anthrop., n.s.,vol. x, pp. 572-574, 1908. 
s Ga. Col. Docs., vni, p. 522. 
