SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 653 



other towns, but when he signed a treaty surrendering the lands of the 

 confederacy, a body of Indians from the Upper Creeks attacked him 

 in his home and killed him. Hobo-hithli Yahola, who exerted the most 

 powerful influence in the Nation, was not a chief and owed his pre- 

 eminence very largely to oratorical gifts. There was a rough divi- 

 sion between the chiefs and higher officials and the mass of the 

 people which was exploited in later times in order to secure to the 

 former a greater proportion of the annuities from the United States 

 Government, but this never exceeded the limits of a tenuous and 

 nebulous aristocracy. 



Among the Chickasaw each totemic division or iksa had its own chief 

 and the head of one of these, according to Schoolcraft's informant, was 

 automatically chief of the nation. Cushman calls him "king" but says 

 that his power was strictly circumscribed. If what Romans remarks of 

 the head chief in his time is correct, it is evident that inheritance was 

 a minor qualification for leadership. He states that the grand chief, 

 Opaya Mataha 



has killed his man upwards of forty times, for which great feats he has been 

 raised to this nominal dignity, which by all savages is as much regarded, as among 

 us a titular nobleman would be if he should be obliged to be a journeyman taylor 

 for his maintenance. (Romans, 1775, p. 64.) 



The following note by Adair who knew the people intimately shows 

 that Chickasaw headship was far removed from that of Powhatan, 

 Utina, or the Great Sun : 



When any national affair is in debate, you may hear every father of a family 

 speaking in his house on the subject, with rapid, bold language, and the utmost 

 freedom that a people can use. Their voices, to a man, have due weight in 

 every public affair, as it concerns their welfare alike. (Adair, 775, pp. 215-216.) 



And when we get to the Choctaw we find a still further devolution 

 of chiefly authority. Each of the three or four main Choctaw 

 divisions seems to have had a head chief from early times but the 

 missionary Beaudoin affirms that the head chieftainship of the nation 

 was a very late institution, brought on by white contact. Though 

 the towns, cantons, and families had their separate heads, there was 

 nothing absolute in the authority of any of them. Inheritance 

 counted even less than among the Creeks, and the greatest of all 

 Choctaw chiefs, Pushmataha, was of such obscure origin that it was 

 a matter of comment. 



We know so little about the structure of the old Cherokee state or 

 confederacy that it is impossible for us to tell whether inheritance 

 played any part in the attainment of power, but such incidental 

 evidence as we have is quite to the contrary. The Cherokee chiefs 

 seem for the most part to have been self-made men like those of the 

 Choctaw. Charles Hicks, a prominent chief living in the early part 

 of the last century, says of the government under the head chief : 



