390 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEK [ktii.axn.19 



large additional territory to the cast of this, includini;- all upon tlie 

 waters of Diu'k river and ¥Ak ci-eek. This claim Wiis dis])utcd by 

 the Cherokee. According to Ha\'wood, tiic two tribes had been 

 friends and allies in the exj)ulsioii of the Shawano, but afterwai'd. 

 shortly before the year 17()!t. the Cherokee, apparently for no siilH- 

 cient reason, picked a quarrel with the (Chickasaw and attacked them 

 in their town at the place afterward known as the Chickasaw ( )ld 

 Fields, on the north side of Tennessee river, some twenty miles beiciw 

 the present Guntersville, Alabama. The Chickasaw defended them- 

 selves so well that the assailants wi>r(> signally defeated and compelled 

 to retreat to their own countiy.' It appears, however, that the 

 Chickasaw, deeming this settlement too remote from their principal 

 towns, abandoned it after the battle. Although peace was afterward 

 made between the two tribes their rival claim continued to l)e a sub- 

 ject of dispute throughout the treaty period. 



The Choctaw, a loose confederacy of tribes formerly occupying 

 southern Mississippi and the adjacent coast region, are called Ani'- 

 Tsa''ta by the Cherokee, who appear to have had but little comiuunica- 

 tion with them, probably because the intermediate territory was held 

 by the Creeks, who were generally at war with one or the other. In 

 1708 we find mention of a powerful expedition by the Cherokee, 

 Creeks, and Catawba against the Choctaw living about Mobile bay." 



Of the Indians west of the Mississippi those best known to the 

 Cherokee were the Ani'-Wasa'si, or Osage, a powerful predatory tri))e 

 formerly holding most of the country between the Missouri and Arkan- 

 sas rivers, and extending from the Mississippi far out into the plains. 

 The Cherokee name is a derivative from Wasash'. the name by which 

 the Osage call themselves.'^ The relations of the two tribes seem to 

 have been almost constantly hostile from the time when the Osage 

 refused to join in the general Indian peace concluded in 17(38 (see 

 "The Iroquois Wars") up to 1823, when the Goveriunent interfered 

 to compel an end of the ])l<>odshed. The bitterness was largely due to 

 the fact that ever since the first Cherokee treaty with the United 

 States, made at Hopewell. South Carolina, in 1785. small bodies of 

 Cherokee, resenting the constant encroachments of the whites, had 

 been removing beyond the Mississippi to form new settlements within 

 the territory claimed Tiy the Osage, where in 1817 they already muii- 

 bcred l)etween two and three thousand persons. As showing how new 

 is our growth as a nation, it is interesting to note that Wafford. when 

 a boy, attended near the site of the present Clarkesville, Georgia, 

 almost on Savannah river, a Cherokee scalp dance, at which the women 



' Haywood, Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee, p. 24, 1823. From a contemporary reference 

 in Rivers, South Carolina, page 57, it appears that this war was in full progress in 1757. 

 ^Margry, quoted in Gatsohet, Creek Migration Legend, i, pp. 16. 87, 1884. 

 3 Wasash, French Ouasage, corrupted by the Americans into Osage. 



