2.31 America: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 7/20)

We shall return to the traditional history of the American colonies, the problems in the "Old Northwest", the French and Indians War and finally the American Revolution at a later time, but feeling that school texts have overlooked much material about the southern Indians and their relationships with the whites and imported Africans, we shall devote a few additional paragraphs to these subjects. At times the Indians cooperated with the British, as when Creeks, Yamacraws and Cherokees helped Oglethorpe in battles with Spanish troops, who attacked St. Simons Island in 1742. Natives crewed the scout boats used for communications along the chain of sea island forts and they raided Florida, killing or capturing unwary Spaniards, Yamasees and Negroes. At other times the Indians fought the colonists, but in between there was considerable merging of red, white and black races.

In this 18th century Creeks constituted one of the largest racially heterogeneous tribes. Other more or less "pure-bred" tribes, such as the Catawbas, had existed, but now there were only a few hundred of them left and the Catawba language had been lost. Various Catawbas conversed in assorted tongues belonging to several different language families. The first mention of the term "Seminole" was in 1771 and it was probably taken from the Spanish cimarron (wild) which became simanoli in Chickasaw. Lower and then Upper Creeks drifting into Florida formed the nucleus of the Seminole "nation", with a few remnants from earlier days - Calusas and Tequestas. (See also page 1013). There never was a unified Seminole nation and those Indians then, as today, did not necessarily understand one another. The Lumbees of southeastern North Carolina offer an even more bizarre grouping. Numbering still some 40,000 today, they constitute one of the largest tribes in the United States, but actually they are an aggregation of diverse remnant tribes and also blacks and whites, having geography more than anything else in common. There is no Lumbee language.

It is thus apparent that the mixtures that developed among the southern Indians was not entirely one of intermingled tribes, as the whites mixed with the natives on a much grander scale than some care to admit. A considerable numb er of colonists married Indians and reared families and then, of course, the packhorsemen and factors, living for extended periods among the Indians, formed unions with native women. Many of the tribes had cultures which condoned premarital sex for the young Indian girls. Such a large mestizo population emerged that great numbers of 18th century "Indian" chiefs had such names as McDonald, Perryman, Colbert, Brown, etc. It wasn't long before the natives and the whites and mestizos living among them began to insist that they owned their lands outright and that in every respect they inhabited a sovereign, independent nation. Attempts were made to reestablish centralized states, yet no chief spoke for a unified Cherokee or Creek nation and colonists repeatedly took advantage of this to obtain lands. Many of the tribes were ethnic melting pots. The terms Creek and Muskhogee did not even appear until this century. Creek or Muskhogee, the primary language, in all probability was not a first language or perhaps even understood by a majority of the Creeks. Lower Creeks, a major part of the confederation, themselves composed of different ethnic groups, for the most part spoke Hitchiti, which was unintelligible to those speaking Creek proper.