Osochi Tribe: Meaning unknown.
Osochi Connections. Within recent times the closest connections of this tribe have been with the Chiaha, though their language is said to have been Muskhogean, but there is some reason to think that they may have been originally a part of the Timucua. (See below.)
Osochi Location. Their best known historic seat was in the great bend of Chattahoochee River, Russell County, Alabama, near the Chiaha. (See also Georgia and Florida.)
Osochi Villages. The town of Hotalgi-huyana was populated in part from this tribe and in part from the Chiaha. The census of 1832 gives two settlements, one on the Chattahoochee River and one on a stream called Opillike Hatchee.
Osochi History. The suggestion that the Osochi may have been Timucua is founded
- On the resemblance of their name to that of a Timucua division in northwest Florida called by the Spaniards Ossachile or Ugachile
- On the fact that after the Timucua uprising of 1656 some of the rebels “fled to the woods,”
- The later mention of a detached body of Timucua in the neighborhood of the Apalachicola.
Early in the eighteenth century they seem to have been living with or near the Apalachicola at the junction of the Chattahoochee and Flint. From what Hawkins (1848) tells us regarding them, we must suppose that they moved up Flint River somewhat later and from there to the Chattahoochee, in the location near the Chiaha above given. They migrated to Oklahoma with the rest of the Lower Creeks, and maintained their separateness in that country for a while but were later absorbed in the general mass of the Creek Population.
Osochi Population. The following estimates of the effective male population of the Osochi occur: 1750, 30; 1760, 50; 1792, 50. The census of 1832-33 returned a total of 539, but one of the two towns inhabited by these Indians may have belonged to the Okmulgee.