S WANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 111 



aded town on Tennessee River, which appears for the first time in these 

 documents, was occupied by Cherokee. It is now known quite defi- 

 nitely that the Rechahecrians who won a battle against the allied 

 Powhatan Indians and Virginia colonists in 1656 were not Cherokee, 

 and there is no certainty that the Rickohokans of whom Lederer speaks 

 were of that tribe. One of the earliest appearances of the name in 

 English narratives is in Woodward's account of his visit to the Westo 

 town on Savannah River in 1674 in which he states that the "Cowatoe 

 and Chorakae Indians" lived on the head branches of the Savannah. 

 In 1684 the South Carolina government is said to have made a 

 treaty with the Cherokee signed by 5 chiefs of Toxawa and 3 

 of Keowa. In 1690 we are informed that James Moore and Col. 

 Maurice Mathews journeyed across the Appalachian Mountains in 

 order to discover gold, but retired on account of a difference with 

 the Indians. In 1693 some Cherokee chiefs went to Charleston to 

 ask protection against their enemies, the Catawba, Shawnee, and 

 Congaree. About 1700, guns were introduced, and in 1711 traders 

 began to arrive. Two years later, 310 Cherokee took part in Moore's 

 expedition against the Tuscarora under Captains Harford and 

 Thurston. Seventy Cherokee joined the Catawba and other northern 

 Indians at the outbreak of the Yamasee War, but they soon with- 

 drew and peace with the English followed. In the course of the 

 negotiation, a British detachment under Colonel Chicken penetrated 

 into the heart of the Cherokee country. About the same time they 

 and the Chickasaw together expelled the Shawnee from the Cum- 

 berland Valley. In 1730 Sir Alexander Cuming set out on a self- 

 constituted mission to the tribe, a peace ceremony was held, and 

 seven Indians were taken on a visit to the English court (pi. 8). As 

 early as 1701, a party of 6 French Canadians had penetrated the 

 Cherokee country on their way from the Mississippi to Carolina, 

 and the discovery of a supposed Frenchman in the tribe in 1736 

 frightened the English into believing that France was pushing po- 

 litical designs in that quarter. This man, often represented as a 

 French Jesuit, was a Swiss named Christian Gottlieb Priber, an 

 economic dreamer who hoped to set up an ideal state among "natural 

 men" far from the effete conventions of Europe. He was at last 

 captured and imprisoned in Frederica, Ga., where he died. In 1738 

 what appears to have been the first smallpox epidemic to visit this 

 tribe broke out. During the very early colonial period, part of the 

 Tuskegee and part of the Yuchi came to live among the Cherokee. 

 In the eighteenth century the Cherokee gradually pushed their settle- 

 ments down the Tennessee River until they came into direct contact 

 with the Creeks. The contests which followed seem generally to 

 have favored the Cherokee and are said to have culminated in the 



