History of the Muskoka and Catawba Indians

THE CATAWBAS, YUCHIS, TIMUCUAS, NATCHEZ, CHETIMACHAS, TONICAS, ADAIZE, ATAKAPAS, ETC.

Within the horizon of the Muskoki stock were a number of small tribes speaking languages totally different. We may reasonably suppose them to have been the débris of the ancient population who held the land before the Muskokis had descended upon it from the north and west. The Catawbas in the area of North and South Carolinas were one of these, and in former times are said to have had a wide extension. South of them was the interesting tribe of the Yuchis. When first heard of they were on both banks of the Savannah river, but later moved to the Chatahuche. They call themselves “Children of the Sun,” which orb they regard as a female and their mother. Their gentes are the same as those of the Creeks, and are evidently borrowed from them. Descent is counted in the female line. Women are held in honor, and when De Soto first met them they were governed by[ a queen.

Some of both these tribes still survive; but this is not the case with the Timucuas, who occupied the valley of the St. John river, Florida, and its tributaries, and the Atlantic coast as far north as the St. Mary river. They have been extinct for a century, but we have preserved some doctrinal works written in their tongue by Spanish missionaries in the seventeenth century, so we gain an insight into their language. It is an independent stock.

Near the Choctaws were the Natchez, not far from the present city of that name. An account of them has been preserved by the early French settlers of Louisiana. They were devoted sun-worshippers and their chief was called “The Sun,” and regarded as the earthly representative of the orb. They constructed artificial mounds, upon which they erected temples and houses, and were celebrated for their skill in weaving fabrics from the inner bark of the mulberry tree and for their fine pottery. In their religious rites they maintained a perpetual fire, and were accustomed to sacrifice captives to their gods, and the wives of their chieftain at his death.

The Taensas were a branch of the Natchez on the other bank of the Mississippi. Attention has been
drawn to them of late years by the attempt of a young seminarist in France to foist upon scholars a language of his own manufacture which he had christened Taensa, and claimed to have derived from these people. The Natchez language contains many words from the Muskoki dialects, but is radically dissimilar from it. A few of the nation still preserve it in Indian Territory.

The Chetimachas lived on the banks of Grand Lake and Grand River, and were but a small tribe. They are said to have been strictly monogamous, and to have had female chieftains. Their chief deity was Kut-Kähänsh, the Noon-day Sun, in whose honor they held sacred dances at each new moon.

The Tonicas are frequently mentioned in the early French accounts of the colony of Louisiana. They lived in what is now Avoyelles parish, and were staunch friends of the European immigrants. Their language is an independent stock, and has some unusual features in American tongues, such as a masculine and a feminine gender of nouns and a dual in three pronouns.

The Adaize or Atai were a small tribe who once lived between Saline river and Natchitoche, La. They spoke a vocalic language, differing from any other, though including a number of Caddo words, which was owing to their having been a member of the Caddo confederacy.

The Atakapas had their hunting grounds about Vermilion river and the adjacent Gulf coast. Their name in Choctaw means “man-eaters,” both they and their neighbors along the Texan coast having an ugly reputation as cannibals, differing in this from the Muskokis and their neighbors east of the Mississippi, among whom we have no record of anthropophagy, even of a ritual character. The later generations of Atakapas have been peaceful and industrious. Their language, though in the main quite alone, presents a limited number of words evidently from the same roots as their correspondents in the Uto-Aztecan family.

The coast of Texas, between the mouths of the Colorado and Nueces rivers, was the home of the Carankaways. The Spaniards gave them a very black character as merciless cannibals, impossible to reduce or convert; but the French and English settlers speak of them in better terms. In appearance they were tall and strong, with low foreheads, hooked noses, prominent cheek bones, tattooed skins, and wore their black hair long and tangled. The older writers affirm that they spoke Atakapa, and were a branch of that tribe; but the scanty material of their idiom which we possess seems to place them in a stock by themselves.

The Tonkaways are a small tribe who lived in northwest Texas, speaking a tongue without known relationship. A curious feature of their mythology is the deification of the wolf. They speak of this animal as their common ancestor, and at certain seasons hold wolf dances in his honor, at which they dress themselves in wolf skins and howl and run in
imitation of their mythical ancestor and patron. A branch of them, the Arrenamuses, is said to have dwelt considerably to the south of the main body, near the mouth of the San Antonio river.

The lower Rio Grande del Norte was peopled on both its banks by a stock which was christened by Orozco y Berra the Coahuiltecan, but which Pimentel preferred to call the Texan. The latter is too wide a word, so I retain the former. There is not much material for the study of its dialects, so we are left in the dark as to the relationship of many tribes resident in that region. They were small in size and rich in names. Adolph Uhde gives the appellations and locations of seventy-four, based on previous works and personal observations. The missionary Garcia, in his Manual of the Sacraments, published in the last century, names seventeen tribes speaking dialects of the tongue he employs, which appears to be a branch of the Coahuiltecan.

It is useless to repeat the long list, the more so as the bands were unimportant and have long since become extinct, with a few exceptions. They were in a savage condition, roving, and depending on hunting and fishing. The following appear to have been the principal members of the

COAHUILETCAN LINGUISTIC STOCK.

Alazapas, near Monclova.
Cacalotes, on the left bank of the Rio Grande.
Catajanos or Cartujanos, near Monclova.
Carrizos, near Monclova.
Coaquilenes, near Monclova.
Cotonames, left bank of Rio Grande.
Comecrudos, near Reynosa.
Orejones, near San Antonio de Bejar.
Pacaos or Pakawas, near San Antonio.

Among the extinct dialects of Tamaulipas was the Maratin, which at one time had considerable extension. The only monument which has been preserved of it is a wild song, in which the natives celebrated all too early their victories over the Spaniards. The text contains several Nahuatl words, but the body of the roots appear to have been drawn from some other source. Uhde locates the Maratins near Soto la Marina and along the Gulf between the Rio Panuco and the Rio Grande