Yuchi

Yuchi Indian Tribe

The Yuchi have attracted considerable attention owing to the fact that they were one of the very few small groups in the eastern part of North America having an independent stock language. Their isolation in this respect, added to the absence of a migration legend among them and their own claims, have led to a belief that they were the most ancient inhabitants of the extreme southeastern parts of the present United States. The conclusion was natural, almost inevitable, but the event proves how little the most plausible theory may amount to in the absence of adequate information. Strong evidence has now come to light that these people, far from being aboriginal inhabitants of the country later associated with them, had occupied it within the historic period.

Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians

Fig. 38. Yuchi Square-Ground During Ceremony

in 1904 and 1905 Frank G. Speck received first hand accounts from the Yuchi Indians in Oklahoma concerning their culture, customs, history and religious practices. After performing due diligence and comparing what he was told with previously published and unpublished material on the Yuchi Indians he published his Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians. If researching the Yuchi Indians, then this is the premiere source of material for you.

The Late Slave Raiding Period 1705-1721

This is the period when Native Americans increasingly became the pawns of France and Great Britain in their struggle over North America. For a quarter of a century, France had formally claimed all lands within the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio River Basins, based on the explorations of LaSalle. With the founding of the first capital of the Province of Louisiana, Mobile, in 1702, France also claimed the basin of the Mobile-Alabama-Tallapoosa-Coosa-Etowah-Coosawattee River System. At the same time, France recognized the claim of the Kingdom of Spain to the Chattahoochee-Flint River System all the way to what is now the northeastern … Read more

Yuchi Indians

Yuchi Tribe. Significance unknown, but perhaps, as suggested by Speck (1909), from a native word meaning “those far away,” or “at a distance,” though it is also possible that it is a variant of Ochesee or Oeese, which was applied by the Hitchiti and their allies to Indians speaking languages different from their own. Also called: Ani’-Yu’tsl, Cherokee name. Chiska, probably a Muskogee translation of the name of one of their bands. Hughchee, an early synonym. Round town people, a name given by the early English colonists. Rickohockans, signifying “cavelanders” (Hewitt, in Hodge, 1907), perhaps an early name for a … Read more

Ceremonial Songs of the Creek and Yuchi Indians

The investigations described in the introduction to the first part of this volume included the work of collecting dance and medicine songs. The greater part of these came from the Creeks of Taskigi town, one of the tribal subdivisions of the Creek Nation. A smaller number of songs were obtained from the Yuchi. Frequent reference will be made in the following pages to the account of the Yuchi in Part I of this volume. Reference will also be made to an account of the Creeks by the author, published in the Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 2, No. … Read more