298 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY f bull. 73 
the Cherokee in retaliation for the murder of a Cherokee Indian. 1 
The documents add that the murder had been committed at the 
instigation of some English traders. The tradition of the event 
remained in the country for a long time, as is evident by the following 
statements of Ramsey. In recounting the various tribes which 
formerly inhabited Tennessee he says: 
A small tribe of Uchees once occupied the country near the mouth of Hiwassee. 
Their warriors were exterminated in a desperate battle with the Cherokees. 2 
In another place he adds that this conflict occurred at ' ' the Uchee 
Old Fields, in what is now Rhea County." The site is now in Meigs 
County. 3 He also says that the survivors were compelled to retreat 
to Florida, where they became incorporated with the Seminole, but 
he has evidently brought together two widely separated fragments of 
Yuchi history. It is apparent that the extermination was not as 
complete as he represents, nor did the whole tribe leave the country. 
Mr. Mooney quotes testimony from a Cherokee mixed blood named 
Ganse" ti, or Rattling-gourd, who was born on Hiwassee River in 
1820 and went west with his people in 1838, to the effect that "a 
number of Yuchi lived, before the removal, scattered among the 
Cherokee near the present Cleveland, Tenn., and on Chickamauga, 
Cohutta, and Pinelog Creeks in the adjacent section of Georgia. 
They had no separate settlements, but spoke their own language, 
which he described as 'hard and grunting.' Some of them spoke 
also Cherokee and Creek.'' 4 As the existence of the northern 
band of Yuchi was not suspected when Mr. Mooney penned the above 
he naturally assumed that they had drifted north from the Creek 
country before a boundary had been fixed between the tribes. It is 
now apparent that they were descendants of the Yuchi whose history 
we have been tracing. On Mitchell's map (pi. 6) and several others 
we find "Chestoi O. T." (i. e., Chestowee old town) laid down upon 
the Hiwassee a short distance above its mouth. After the removal 
some of these Yuchi probably reunited with the main part of their 
tribe in the Creek Nation; a few are said to be still living in Tennessee, 5 
and there is a modern town named "Euchee" on Tennessee River, 
near the northern end of Meigs County. 
Before taking up the largest Yuchi divisions, those on Savannah 
River, it will be convenient to consider the third branch of the tribe, 
since it did not have the permanency of the Savannah bands, and 
historical information regarding it goes back to an earlier date. This 
third branch was located when we first learn of it in what is now the 
State of Florida, a short distance west of the Choctawhatchee River, 
for which reason the people are called Choctawhatchee Yuchi. 
» Proc. Board Dealing with Indian Trade, MS., 'Ibid., p. 84. 
p. 87. ■'Nineteenth Ann. Kept. Bur. Amer. Ethn. , p. 385. 
3 Ramsey, Annals of Tenn., p. 81. 5 Information, from T. Michelson. 
