180 BELIEFS AND USAGES OF CHICKASAW [PTH. ANN. 44 
Only dim memories are preserved of the numerous wars waged by 
the ancestors of the present Chickasaw when they were living in Mis- 
sissippi. There is a belief that they were then fighting all of the 
surrounding peoples. They remember their last war with the Creeks, 
which took place in the last decade of the eighteenth century and 
resulted in a brilliant victory for the Chickasaw. The story has it 
that about 100 Chickasaw beat off 2,000 hostile Creeks, and this is not 
far from the truth, the Creeks having been seized by a panic. The 
native story also states that the Cherokee had vainly endeavored to 
dissuade the Creeks from entering upon this contest. 
When they were fighting another tribe, they were guarded by two 
dogs, one white and one yellow, which were invisible to themselves 
but visible to the enemy. These would run among the latter and 
knock them over so that the Chickasaw could kill them more readily. 
When the Chickasaw started out to fight, they could hear the noise 
made by these dogs, which was like that of a thunderstorm, but they 
could not see them. It is thought that they might have lived in the 
ground. 
On another occasion seven Chickasaw were surrounded in a small 
cave by a large body of Osage (Wacaci). By some magic means the 
latter were caused to fall asleep and the Chickasaw killed them all. 
They say that they used to trade at a town of the whites called Bal- 
bancha situated on a river which they would descend in bark canoes. 
Balbancha appears to have been the old name of New Orleans; the 
Mississippi River was known as Sakti Ja"fa okéna (“ Chickasaw bluff 
watercourse”). It is improbable that they ever used bark canoes to 
any extent; they ordinarily employed dugouts. 
TERMS OF RELATIONSHIP 
The Chickasaw and Choctaw terms of relationship cover, for the 
most part, the same categories as the corresponding terms in Mus- 
kogee,!® but there are some notable differences. In the following 
discussion the Muskogee terms, as given in the Forty-second Annual 
Report, are constantly referred to, but the application of the Chicka- 
saw terms is sufficiently indicated in the two tables. 
Brrra RevatioNsHies 
1. afo (grandfather) is very nearly equivalent in use to the Mus- 
kogee potca. When applied to the father’s sister’s husband, how- 
ever, and the husbands of his female descendants, it takes the 
diminutive suffix -osi. Since Choctaw and Chickasaw do not, like 
Muskogee, categorize all of the father’s sister’s male and female 
descendants together, the use of this term varies correspondingly. 
18 See 42d Ann. Rept. Bur. Amer. Ethu., pp. 80-86. 
