LITMIR.BIZ

40

Hawkins, Pickens, Martin, and McIntosh, in their letter, give them 800 warriors: most other estimates make the number smaller.

41

Almost all the early writers make them more numerous. Adair gives them 4,500 warriors, Hawkins 6,000. But much less seems to have been known about them than about the Creeks, Cherokees, and Chickasaws; and most early estimates of Indians were largest when made of the least-known tribes. Adair's statement is probably the most trustworthy. The first accurate census showed the Creeks to be more numerous.

42

Hawkins, Pickens, etc., make them "at least" 27,000 in 1789, the Indian report for 1837 make them 26,844. During the half century they had suffered from devastating wars and forced removals, and had probably slightly decreased in number. In Adair's time their population was increasing.

43

"Am. Archives," 5th Series, I., 95. Letter of Charles Lee.

44

Adair, 227. Bartram, 390.

45

Bartram, 365.

46

Adair, Bartram.

47

Bartram.

48

"A Sketch of the Creek Country," Benjamin Hawkins. In Coll. Ga. Hist. Soc. Written in 1798, but not published till fifty years afterwards.

49

Do, p. 33.

50

The use of the word "beloved" by the Creeks was quite peculiar. It is evidently correctly translated, for Milfort likewise gives it as "bien aimé." It was the title used for any thing held in especial regard, whether for economic or supernatural reasons; and sometimes it was used as western tribes use the word "medicine" at the present day. The old chiefs and conjurers were called the "beloved old men"; what in the west we would now call the "medicine squaws," were named "the beloved old women." It was often conferred upon the chief dignitaries of the whites in writing to them.

51

Hawkins, 37.

52

Bartram, 386. The Uchee town contained at least 1,500 people.

53

Do.

54

Hawkins, 30.

55

Hawkins 39; Adair, 408.

56

Bartram, 184.

57

Milfort, 212.

58

Hawkins, 67. Milfort, 203. Bartram, 386. Adair, 418.

59

Hawkins and Adair, passim.

60

Do. Also vide Bartram.

61

Hawkins, 29, 70. Adair, 428.

62

"History of Alabama," by Albert James Pickett, Charleston, 1851, II., 30. A valuable work.

63

Milfort, 23, 326. Milfort's book is very interesting, but as the man himself was evidently a hopeless liar and braggart, it can only be trusted where it was not for his interest to tell a falsehood. His book was written after McGillivray's death, the object being to claim for himself the glory belonging to the half-breed chief. He insisted that he was the war-chief, the arm, and McGillivray merely the head, and boasts of his numerous successful war enterprises. But the fact is, that during this whole time the Creeks performed no important stroke in war; the successful resistance to American encroachments was due to the diplomacy of the son of Sehoy. Moreover, Milfort's accounts of his own war deeds are mainly sheer romancing. He appears simply to have been one of a score of war chiefs, and there were certainly a dozen other Creek chiefs, both half-breeds and natives, who were far more formidable to the frontier than he was; all their names were dreaded by the settlers, but his was hardly known.

64

Adair, 279.

65

See papers by Stephen D. Peet, on the northwestern tribes, read before the state Archaeological Society of Ohio, 1878.

66

Barton, xxv.

67

General W. H. Harrison, "Aborigines of the Ohio Valley." Old "Tippecanoe" was the best possible authority for their courage.

68

"Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Col. James Smith," etc., written by himself, Lexington, Ky., 1799. Smith is our best contemporary authority on Indian warfare; he lived with them for several years, and fought them in many campaigns. Besides several editions of the above, he also published in 1812, at Paris, Ky., a "Treatise" on Indian warfare, which holds much the same matter.

69

See Parkman's "Oregon Trail." In 1884 I myself met two Delawares hunting alone, just north of the Black Hills. They were returning from a trip to the Rocky Mountains. I could not but admire their strong, manly forms, and the disdainful resolution with which they had hunted and travelled for so many hundred miles, in defiance of the white frontiersmen and of the wild native tribes as well. I think they were in more danger from the latter than the former, but they seemed perfectly confident of their ability to hold their own against both.

70

See Barton, the Madison MSS., Schoolcraft, Thos. Hutchins (who accompanied Bouquet), Smythe, Pike, various reports of the U. S. Indian Commissioners, etc, etc.

71

I base this number on a careful examination of the tribes named above, discarding such of the northern bands of the Chippewas, for instance, as were unlikely at that time to have been drawn into war with us.

72

The expressions generally used by them in sending their war talks and peace talks to one another or the whites. Hundreds of copies of these "talks" are preserved at Washington.

73

Do.

74

Smith, "Remarkable Occurrences," etc., p. 154. Smith gives a very impartial account of the Indian discipline and of their effectiveness, and is one of the few men who warred against them who did not greatly overestimate their numbers and losses. He was a successful Indian fighter himself. For the British regulars he had the true backwoods contempt, although having more than the average backwoods sense in acknowledging their effectiveness in the open. He had lived so long among the Indians, and estimated so highly their personal prowess, that his opinion must be accepted with caution where dealing with matters of discipline and command.

75

The accounts of the Indian numbers in any battle given by British or Americans, soldiers or civilians, are ludicrously exaggerated as a rule; even now it seems a common belief of historians that the whites were generally outnumbered in battles, while in reality they were generally much more numerous than their foes.

76

Harrison (loc. cit.) calls them "the finest light troops in the world"; and he had had full experience in serving with American and against British infantry.

77

Any one who is fond of the chase can test the truth of this proposition for himself, by trying how long it will take him to learn to kill a bighorn on the mountains, and how long it will take him to learn to kill white-tail deer in a dense forest, by fair still-hunting, the game being equally plenty. I have known many novices learn to equal the best old hunters, red or white, in killing mountain game; I have never met one who could begin to do as well as an Indian in the dense forest, unless brought up to it—and rarely even then. Yet, though woodcraft is harder to learn, it does not imply the possession of such valuable qualities as mountaineering; and when cragsman and woodman meet on neutral ground, the former is apt to be the better man.

78

To this day the wild—not the half-tame—Indians remain unequalled as trackers. Even among the old hunters not one white in a hundred can come near them. In my experience I have known a very few whites who had spent all their lives in the wilderness who equalled the Indian average; but I never met any white who came up to the very best Indian. But, because of their better shooting and their better

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