A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians

Gatschet, Albert S. A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians. Pub. D.G. Brinton, Philadelphia, 1884.

Tequesta Indian Tribe

Of the Tequesta people on the southeastern end of the peninsula we know still less than of the Calusa Indians. There was a tradition that they were the same people which held the Bahama or Lucayo Islands, and the local names of the Florida coast given by Fontanedo may partly refer to this nationality. They obtained their name from a village, Tequesta, which lay on a river coming from Lake Mayaimi (Fontanedo in Ternaux-C., XX, p. 14) and was visited by Walter Raleigh (Barcia, Ensayo, p. 161). The lands of the Aïs formed the northern portion of the Tequesta domains, … Read more

Taensa Indian Tribe

On account of the recent discovery of their consonantic language, which proves to be disconnected from any other aboriginal tongue spoken in North America, a peculiar interest attaches itself to the tribe of the Taensa Indians, whose cabins stood in Tensas county, Louisiana, bordering east on Mississippi river.

Seminole Indian Tribe

The term semanóle, or isti simanóle, signifies separatist or runaway, and as a tribal name points to the Indians who left the Creek, especially the Lower Creek settlements, for Florida, to live, hunt and fish there in entire independence. The term does not mean wild, savage, as frequently stated; if applied now in this sense to animals, it is because of its original meaning, “what has become a runaway”: pínua simanóle wild turkey (cf. pín-apúiga domesticated turkey), tchu-áta semanóli, antelope, literally, “goat turned runaway, wild,” from tchu-áta, ítchu háta goat, lit., “bleating deer.” The present Seminoles of Florida call themselves … Read more

Notes On Creek History

1775 Mousons Map

To offer a history of the Creek tribe from its discovery down to our epoch to the readers does not lie within the scope of this volume, and for want of sufficient documents illustrating the earlier periods it could be presented in a fragmentary manner only. But a few notes on the subject, especially on the Oglethorpe treaties, will be of interest to the reader. In the year following their departure from the West Indies (1540), the troops led by H. de Soto traversed a portion of the Creek territory, taken in its extent as known to us from the … Read more

Newly Analyzed – Migration Legend of the Creek Indians

1735 - A Map of the County of Savannah

In 2007, Architect Richard L. Thornton, a Creek scholar and member of the People of One Fire research alliance began sporadically looking online for the Migration Legend. He had no success for the next seven years. On December 21, 2012, Thornton was a key cast member on the premier of the hit History Channel Series, “America Unearthed.” The program was about the evidence of Maya refugees settling in Georgia and becoming some of the ancestors of the Creek Indians. After the program was broadcast in the United Kingdom in early 2013, Thornton received a brief, congratulatory email from Clarence House, … Read more

Naktche Indian Tribe

Of the Lower Mississippi tribes the most powerful and populous was that of the Naktche, settled at the beginning of the eighteenth century in nine villages on and about St. Catherine creek

Mikasuki Indian Tribe

“Miccosukee” is a town of Florida, near the northern border of the State, in Leon County, built on the western shore of the lake of the same name. The tribe established there speaks the Hitchiti language, and must hence have separated from some town or towns of the Lower Creeks speaking that language. The tribe was reckoned among the Seminole Indians, but does not figure prominently in Indian history before the out break of the Seminole war of 1817. It then raised the “red pole” as a sign of war, and became conspicuous as a sort of political center for … Read more

List Of Creek Towns

In this alphabetic list of ancient Creek towns and villages I have included all the names of inhabited places which I have found recorded before the emigration of the people to the Indian Territory. The description of their sites is chiefly taken from Hawkins “Sketch” one of the most instructive books which we possess on the Creeks in their earlier homes. Some of these town names are still existing in Alabama and Georgia, although the site has not infrequently changed. I have interspersed into the list a few names of the larger rivers. The etymologies added to the names contain … Read more

Linguistic Groups Of The Gulf States

In the history of the Creeks, and in their legends of migration, many references occur to the tribes around them, with whom they came in contact. These contacts were chiefly of a hostile character, for the normal state of barbaric tribes is to live in almost permanent mutual conflicts. What follows is an attempt to enumerate and sketch them, the sketch to be of a prevalently topographic nature. We are not thoroughly acquainted with the racial or anthropological peculiarities of the nations surrounding the Maskoki proper on all sides, but in their languages we possess an excellent help for classifying them.

Koassáti Indian Tribe

The ancient seat of this tribe was in Hawkins’ time (1799), on the right or northern bank of Alabama River, three miles below the confluence of Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers. Coosada, Elmore County, Alabama, is built on the same spot. “They are not Creeks,” says Hawkins (Hawkins, Sketch of the Creek Country $$$, pp. 35, 1799.), although they conform to their ceremonies; a part of this town moved lately beyond the Mississippi, and have settled there.” G. W. Stidham, who visited their settlement in Polk county, Texas, during the Secession war, states that they lived there east of the Alibamu, … Read more

Kataba Indian Tribe

Kataba is a derivative for Cawtaba, so the following information is referencing the Cawtaba Indians. The Kataba Indians of North and South Carolina are mentioned here only incidentally, as they do not appear to have had much intercourse with any Maskoki tribe. The real extent of this linguistic group is unknown; being in want of any vocabularies besides that of the Kataba, on Kataba river, S. C., and of the Woccons, settled near the coast of N. C.

Hitchiti Indian Tribe

The Hitchiti tribe, of whose language we present an extensive specimen in this volume, also belongs to the southeastern group, which I have called Apalachian. Hitchiti town was, in Hawkins time, established on the eastern bank of Chatahuchi River, four miles below Chiaha. The natives possessed a narrow strip of good land bordering on the river, and had the reputation of being honest and industrious. They obtained their name from Hitchiti creek, so called at its junction with Chatahuchi river, [and in its upper course Ahíki (Ouhe-gee); cf. List] from Creek: ahí-tchita “to look up (the stream).” They had spread … Read more

Gatschet’s Translation of the Migration Legend of the Creek People

Page 1 from the Migration Legend

In 1884, Albert Samuel Gatschet published a translation of the Creek Migration Legend in his infamous “A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians.” The Creek and Hitchiti text that came with the same manuscript were then translated from Gatschet’s translation back into Hitchiti and Creek, his translation did not emanate from those. Where then did he get his translation from? A translation from the English had been preserved in a German book of the period, and the style of this piece showed it to be an “authentic and comparatively accurate rendering of the original”. The German book referred to is a collection of pamphlets treating of colonial affairs, and published from 1735 to 1741; its first volume bears the title: Ausfuehrliche Nachricht von den Saltzburg-ischen Emigranten, die sick in America niedergelassen haben. Worin, etc. etc., Herausgegeben von Samuel Urlsperger, Halle, MDCCXXXV, The legend occupies pp. 869 to 876 of this first volume, and forms chapter six of the “Journal” of von Reck, the title of which is as follows: Herrn Philipp Georg Friederichs von Reck Diarium von Seiner Reise nach Georgien im Jahr 1735. F. von Reck was the commissary of those German-Protestant emigrants whom religious persecution had expelled from Salzburg, in Styria, their native city.

So what follows is an English translation from the German translation of the presumed English translation of the original “Migration Legend of the Creek People.”