The history of the Kan-hatki or Ikan-hatki (“White ground”) is parallel with that of the Fus-hatchee. They appear on the De Crenay map, in the lists of 1738, 1750, 1760, and 1761, and in those of Bartram, Swan, and Hawkins. 1 In 1761 their officially recognized traders were Crook & Co. Swan gives Kan-hatki as one of two towns occupied by Shawnee refugees, but this statement was probably due to the presence of some Shawnee from the neighboring settlement of Sawanogi. In September, 1797, Hawkins states that the trader here was a man named Copinger. 2 He gives the following account of the town:
E-cim-hut-ke; from e-cim-na, earth, and hut-ke, white, called by the traders white ground. This little town is just below Coo-loo-me, on the same side of the river, and five or six miles above Sam-bul-loh, a large fine creek which has its source in the pine hills to the north and its whole course through broken pine hills. It appears to be a never-failing stream, and fine for mills; the fields belonging to this town are on both sides of the river. 3
In the census list of 1832 is a town called ”Ekim-duts-ke” which may be intended for this, but we know that a large part of the Kan-hatki went to Florida after 1813, and the name above given may have belonged to an entirely different settlement, since it could be translated ”a section line” or “a boundary line.” The later history of the Kan-hatki is bound up with that of the Fus-hatchee, to which the reader is referred.
See: Fus-hatchee Tribe
Citations:
- MSS., Ayer Lib.; Hamilton, Col. Mobile, p. 190; Miss. Prov. Arch., I, p. 94; Ga. Col. Docs., VIII, p, 523; Bartram, Travels, p. 461; Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, v, p. 262; Ga. Hist Soc. Colls., III, p. 25.[↩]
- Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls., IX, pp. 168, 195.[↩]
- Ga. Hist. Soc. Colls.,III, p. 34.[↩]