moot] former CATAWBA CLASSIFICATION. 69 



themselves simply as ''people," or ''Indians," in their lani^uage nieya 

 or nieye, abbreviated to nie or ye, or sometimes expanded into Kataha 

 nie, "Catawba Indians" (Gatschet). 



G-allatin in 1830 classed the Catawba as a distinc^t stock, and they 

 were so regarded until (latschet visited them in Sonth Carolina in 

 1S81 and obtained from tliem a vo(;abnlary of over 1,000 words, 

 among which he found numerous Siouan correspondences. On the 

 strength of this testimony they were classed with the Siouan stock in 

 tiie First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in the 

 same year. No further investigation of the subject was niade until 

 Hale's account of the Tutelo language, published in 1883, Gatschet's 

 further discovery of the Biloxi in 1880, and the autlior's notice of the 

 Siouan affinity of the Saponi in 1800 proved beyond question that 

 some of the oldest forms of the Siouan languages must be looked for in 

 the east. The nuiterial obtained by Mr. Gatschet was then turned over 

 for critical examination to Mr. Dorsey, a specialist in the well-known 

 Siouan tribes of the west, with the result that he pronounced the 

 Catawba a Siouan language. This established, it followed that the 

 Woccon and other languages known to be closely related to the 

 Catawba must also belong to the same stock. As nearly all the tribes 

 of both Carolinas from Cape Fear river to the Combahee were closely 

 allied politically witli the Catawba, with whom they were afterward 

 incorporated, it is probable, though not certain, that they were all of 

 the same linguistic stock. 



According to a Catawba tradition related in Schoolcraft, the people 

 originally came from the north, driven by the "Connewaugos," by which 

 is evidently meant the Iroquois. They settled on Catawba river, and 

 after a desperate struggle with the Cherokee, who claimed i)rior rights 

 in the region, they succeeded in maintaining their position ; and Broad 

 river was adopted as the boundary between the two tribes. So nuich 

 of the tradition may be acce])ted as genuine. The lest of it, relating 

 with great exactness of detail how they had lived in Canada, how the 

 Connewango were aided by the Frencli, how tlie Catawba lived for 

 a time in Kentucky and in what is now Botetourt county, Virginia; 

 how they settled on Catawba- river about 1000, how in one battle with 

 the Cherokee they lost 1,000 men and the Cherokee lost 1,100, and 

 how the Catawba exterminated the Waxhaw to the last man inune- 

 diately afterward — all this is absurd, the invention and ignorant sur- 

 mise of the would-be historian who records the tradition, and of a piece 

 with Schoolcraft's identitication of the Catawba with "the lost Fries." 

 The Catawba were found living about where we have always known 

 them as early as 1507. Kentucky river was called by that name among 

 the Shawano and other northern tribes because up that river lay the 

 great war trail to the Catawba country. The creek bearing the name 

 in Botetourt county, Virginia, was so called from a chance encounter 

 of Shawano or others with a party of Catawba, who used to enter 



