416 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
shortly afterwards driven out and retired among the Creeks. 1 Hay- 
wood thus records the Chickasaw tradition regarding the event : 
The Chickasaws formerly claimed for their nation, exclusively, all the lands north 
of the Tennessee, and they have denied that the Cherokees were joined with them in 
the war against the Shawnees when they were driven from their settlements in Cum- 
berland. They said that the Shawnees first came up the Tennessee in canoes, and 
thence up Bear Creek thirty miles: and there left their canoes, and came to war with 
the Chickasaws, and killed several of their nation. The Chickasaw chiefs and war- 
riors embodied and drove them off. From thence they went to the Creeks, and lived 
with them for some time. They then returned and crossed at the Chickasaw Old 
Field, above the Muscle Shoals. From thence they went to Duck River and the 
Cumberland River, and settled there; and the Chickasaws discovered their settle- 
ments. Two of the chiefs of the Chickasaws who were in those days their principal 
leaders— the one named Opoia Matehah and the other Pinskey Matehah— raised their 
warriors and went against the Shawnees, and defeated them and took all their horses 
and brought them into the nation. The Cherokees, they said, had no share in the 
conquest, and that they drove the Shawnees themselves, without any assistance from 
any red people. 
Haywood adds that ' ' this information is contained in a public doc- 
ument of the nation, signed by Chenobee, the king, Maj . George Col- 
bert, and others." 2 
This is part of a brief against the claims of the Cherokee to land 
north of the Tennessee and must be interpreted in the light of that 
fact, nor must too much confidence be placed in the particular narra- 
tive given, since the mythizing tendency always lays hold of such 
events, and, moreover, events belonging to several different years 
may be crowded together to set off one main fact. 
French writers hold the Chickasaw, or the British traders through 
them, responsible in large part for the Natchez uprising of 1729, and 
from what Adair tells us there was evidently ground for the accusa- 
tion. 3 At any rate, after the Natchez had been defeated and driven 
away by the Louisiana French, the latter turned their attention 
to the Chickasaw as allies of those implacable foes, and Bienville 
undertook to crush them by two simultaneous movements against 
their towns, from the north and south. The movements were not 
synchronized, however, and resulted in utter failure. D'Artaguette 
led 140 whites and about 300 Indians from his post on the Illinois, but 
between the Mississippi River and the Chickasaw country they were 
set upon by Indians and their English allies at the town of Hashuk 
humma, 4 their leader and a few others were captured and burned 
to death, and the rest of the force killed or dispersed. The army 
approaching from the south consisted of 500 French and numerous 
Choctaw allies. They attacked one of the palisaded villages of the 
Chickasaw, but were repulsed with heavy loss and retreated to 
Mobile. The Chickasaw on their side are said to have had 60 killed, 
i Hanna, Wilderness Trail, n, p. 241. » Adair, Hist. Am. Inds., pp. 353-354. 
* Haywood, Hist, of Term., p. 426. * Warren in Pub. Miss. Hist. Soc., vra, p. 550. 
