The Yuchi people, spelled Euchee and Uchee Native Americans!

[Artfuldodger]

Some of that stuff from the links is pure fantasy and personal speculation. Some of it may be true, but I would take most of that with a grain of salt.

As for your quote, no, they haven't been erased from history or books or maps. And they didn't hold that vast of a territory at the time of European contact. The locations and sizes of the tribes they encountered were well-documented by the first European explorers. Most of them place the Yuchi/Suwali in a minor territory in the foothills of the NC mountains at time of contact, and later in east-central TN.

I remember reading something awhile back that some of these Yuchi groups are note even related to each other. That somehow they happen to have the same name but like the ones on the Savannah River have no recent connection to the ones in Yuchi Town in West Georgia.

Oh, I definitely agree that a lot of it is pure speculation. Some of it seems to be people just looking for a group to identify with. Lots of politics even.
Plus when the Gambling casinos got popular, Native Americans came out the woodwork to get status.

I'm just trying to look at all the possibilities and go from there. Lots of mysteries that we'll never know the answers to.

 

[NCHillbilly]

I remember reading something awhile back that some of these Yuchi groups are note even related to each other. That somehow they happen to have the same name but like the ones on the Savannah River have no recent connection to the ones in Yuchi Town in West Georgia.

Oh, I definitely agree that a lot of it is pure speculation. Some of it seems to be people just looking for a group to identify with. Lots of politics even.
Plus when the Gambling casinos got popular, Native Americans came out the woodwork to get status.

I'm just trying to look at all the possibilities and go from there. Lots of mysteries that we'll never know the answers to.

There was an amazing amount of diversity here, even in historic times. John Lawson, when he traveled through the Carolinas in 1700, remarked that often, walking twenty or thirty miles would put you in the territory of a different tribe, speaking a completely different language. Some tribes, like the Creek, Cherokee, Tuscarora, and Catawba held large territories, but the spaces between them were filled with a plethora of smaller tribes from several different linguistic and cultural stocks.

 

[Artfuldodger]

Reading about the Bilbo Mound near Savannah, Construction began around 3,545 BC.
Middle layers of the mound dated from around 2165 BC and contained some of the earliest pottery in North America – the Bilbo style pottery. It was fiber tempered like its contemporary Stallings Island Pottery upstream, but had little or no decoration on it.

Interesting on that is they used Black Women to do the excavating during a WPA Works Project in 1937.

http://www.sip.armstrong.edu/Irene/essay.html

 

[Artfuldodger]

There was an amazing amount of diversity here, even in historic times. John Lawson, when he traveled through the Carolinas in 1700, remarked that often, walking twenty or thirty miles would put you in the territory of a different tribe, speaking a completely different language. Some tribes, like the Creek, Cherokee, Tuscarora, and Catawba held large territories, but the spaces between them were filled with a plethora of smaller tribes from several different linguistic and cultural stocks.

I never knew there were so many various tribes as their once were. Probably even some that are already lost.

I remember discussing the Tuscarora & Saponi with you a few years ago. They probably got absorbed by the Catawba.
Part of my family Collier and Brown came from the South Virginia-North Carolina border but I never found an ancestry connection.

 

[NCHillbilly]

I never knew there were so many various tribes as their once were. Probably even some that are already lost.

I remember discussing the Tuscarora & Saponi with you a few years ago. They probably got absorbed by the Catawba.
Part of my family Collier and Brown came from the South Virginia-North Carolina border but I never found an ancestry connection.

Many of those people died from disease before ever seeing a white man, sadly. The Tuscarora moved back up north after the Tuscarora war, and reincorporated with the Iroquois. Some of the Saponi went north to the Iroquois, also, but the rest I guess just got gradually mixed into other tribes until they lost their identity, much as many of the Cataba and Natchez did wit the Cherokee.

According to what I can find in ancestral records, I had a several-times great-grandmother who was a full blooded Tuscarora.

 

[Artfuldodger]

Many of those people died from disease before ever seeing a white man, sadly. The Tuscarora moved back up north after the Tuscarora war, and reincorporated with the Iroquois. Some of the Saponi went north to the Iroquois, also, but the rest I guess just got gradually mixed into other tribes until they lost their identity, much as many of the Cataba and Natchez did wit the Cherokee.

According to what I can find in ancestral records, I had a several-times great-grandmother who was a full blooded Tuscarora.

Did these tribes have physical traits different from other tribes? Maybe not 30 miles apart but would the Seminoles have different features or skin tones from the Cherokee?

Would their tribal name mean or would other tribes know them by being taller, darker, etc.

 

[NCHillbilly]

Did these tribes have physical traits different from other tribes? Maybe not 30 miles apart but would the Seminoles have different features or skin tones from the Cherokee?

Probably some physical differences, but not as much of that as language and culture.

 

[Artfuldodger]

The Creeks assimilated a number of smaller tribes as part of their own, including the Yuchis, also spelled (and pronounced) Ugee or Euchee, and the Kiokees, who settled along the western bank of the Savannah River in what would become Columbia County.
Savannah is also an Indian name, likely a corruption of the French word for “Shawnee,” and the name of a tribe living across the river on land future English settlers would call, South Carolina. During the mid 1600′s, those settlers enlisted the aid of the Savannah Indians to drive out the marauding Westo tribe, who dominated the river and plagued anyone else who settled there. South Carolina rewarded the victors with a village of their own called, “Savannah Town,” and by renaming the former Westobou River after them.

Shortly after 1674 the Hathawekela or that part of the Shawnee afterward so called, settled upon Savannah River, and in 1681 they proved of great assistance to the new colony of South Carolina by driving a tribe known as Westo, probably part of the Yuchi, from the middle Savannah.

 

[Artfuldodger]

The Westo Indians, who lived along the Savannah River near Augusta from about 1660 to 1680, were one of the most important Native American groups in the southeastern United States. They obtained firearms from the English in Virginia before most other Indians in the Southeast did, which gave them a tremendous military advantage over bow-and-arrow Indians. The Westos used this advantage to enslave natives throughout Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. They then traded their captives to colonists in Virginia and South Carolina for items of European manufacture, including guns, ammunition, steel hatchets, blankets, and glass beads.

https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/westo-indians

 

[NCHillbilly]

The Creeks assimilated a number of smaller tribes as part of their own, including the Yuchis, also spelled (and pronounced) Ugee or Euchee, and the Kiokees, who settled along the western bank of the Savannah River in what would become Columbia County.
Savannah is also an Indian name, likely a corruption of the French word for “Shawnee,” and the name of a tribe living across the river on land future English settlers would call, South Carolina. During the mid 1600′s, those settlers enlisted the aid of the Savannah Indians to drive out the marauding Westo tribe, who dominated the river and plagued anyone else who settled there. South Carolina rewarded the victors with a village of their own called, “Savannah Town,” and by renaming the former Westobou River after them.

Shortly after 1674 the Hathawekela or that part of the Shawnee afterward so called, settled upon Savannah River, and in 1681 they proved of great assistance to the new colony of South Carolina by driving a tribe known as Westo, probably part of the Yuchi, from the middle Savannah.

It seems that the Creeks were more of a massive confederation of smaller tribes than one ethnic large tribe.

 

[redneck_billcollector]

Did these tribes have physical traits different from other tribes? Maybe not 30 miles apart but would the Seminoles have different features or skin tones from the Cherokee?

Would their tribal name mean or would other tribes know them by being taller, darker, etc.

The Seminoles were a polyglot of numerous peoples, and not what we would think of as some early European contact tribe. The most famous, or at least the most well known Seminole, Osceola, whose name was William "Billy" Powell, was born in the Upper Creek Town of Talisi/Tallassee Alabama to a white father and a woman who was at least half white. His family fled to Florida after Andrew Jackson defeated the Red Sticks at Horseshoe Bend with Peter McQueen. When one looks at Billy Powell's family tree, it appears he had more European and possibly African blood than he did native blood, it actually is doubtful that he had any native blood. Many Lower Creek peoples also ended up migrating to the SOWEGA/FLA border lands like the Miccosukee(which made up some Lower Creek Towns and some unaffiliated Towns) and some Yuchi Towns that were taken in by the Lower Creeks as refugees in the 17th Century. Some of the Upper Creeks even had Shawnee towns that migrated with them to Florida after the Creek Civil War/Red Sticks War/1st Creek War (different names for the same war). The British Maps of the Colony of GA had a people called the Seminoles living in deep SOWEGA along the banks of the Lower Flint on into the disputed border area with Spanish Florida who also had claims to SOWEGA until the end of the 7 Years War when Britain got Florida. By the end of the 7 Years War, there were very few "native" Florida natives left in Florida, the couple of Hundred that might have survived to that time all lived in Mission Towns and were at least Catholics in name, the Apalachee from the North Florida area were probably the largest single group. The Spanish, and there is some debate about this, referred to the non Christian natives that had been migrating into a largely vacant Florida as possibly cimarrón, for wild ones or run a ways, which the muskogee speaking people pronounced as simanó-li, hence Seminole. What many think now is that the Spanish used the term wild ones to mean non christians. The Apalachee were more than likely absorbed into these people too, along with hundreds of run away slaves from all over the settled south. The Red Sticks and Lower Creeks that migrated to Florida also brought their African Slaves with them....and yes, they owned African Slaves, William Weatherford, one of the Red Stick War leaders that made peace with the US owned probably around 150 African Slaves at the start of First Creek War and was a rather affluent planter in the Tensaw Region of what is now South Alabama, and he had a plantation further north...he was well known for raising probably some of the best race horses in the South. But I digress...there was no "Creek" tribe, but a confederation of numerous towns in Alabama, Georgia and North Florida that spoke related languages, though often different dialects of those languages. Alexander McGillivray, one of the great Creek leaders, barely could speak any of the dialects and conversed in English, he needed a translator to speak at councils. These "Creeks" and Miccosukee peoples are who became the Seminoles of the 18th and 19th Century....along with some of the Yuchi which settled with the Lower Creek Towns as refugees....so there is no distinct Seminole look....there are many Seminole peoples who did not have a drop of native blood in them in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, they were of African decent. On an aside note, one of my favorite characters from Southern History became the leader of the Independent Nation of Muskogee, which was recognized for a time by Britain, he became a great War Leader for some of the Lower Creek and Seminole factions to include a couple of Florida Panhandle Yuchi Towns, he led them in a War against the Spanish, created the Creek Navy, the only Indian nation in America that actually had a Navy with actual European style war ships. He went on to become one of the most wanted men by the Spanish and the State of Georgia at the time....he started life as the son of a moderately wealthy Maryland Planter, who became a Tory. At age 15 or 16 he joined a Maryland Tory Regiment at the start of the Revolutionary War, making his way up in the ranks to become a junior officer while still a teenager. He got stationed in British West Florida, which is where he came into contact with the local natives and was adopted by a Miccosukee Family in Fowl Town, (or near Fowl Town, his biography is not clear) near present day Bainbridge....I of course am speaking of William Augustus Bowles.....aka Billy Bowles.

 

[westcobbdog]

Artful thanks for posting some much interesting info. Enjoy learning from the experts comments, too.

 

[Hillbilly stalker]

Osceola was the first, and possibly the only, enemy combatant that the U.S Army captured under a flag of truce. I have a very old book that describes the Seminole war in explicit detail. It often mentions of the run away slaves the tribe adopted. It speaks of Okeechobee (Wildcat the Seminole) quiet often also.

 

[redneck_billcollector]

Osceola was the first, and possibly the only, enemy combatant that the U.S Army captured under a flag of truce. I have a very old book that describes the Seminole war in explicit detail. It often mentions of the run away slaves the tribe adopted. It speaks of Okeechobee (Wildcat the Seminole) quiet often also.

The run away slaves among the Seminoles were often a "casus belli" for the US and the Seminoles and a sticking point over removal. While many of the southeastern natives were often allowed to take their slaves with them during the removal act, with the Seminole it was often an issue as to who were the run away slaves and who were their slaves. Osceola was known to have a wife of African decent, which would have made her fall into the run away category. While yes, Osceola was taken under a white flag through trickery, it should be pointed out that prior to the Second Seminole War, one of the first acts of violence leading to the war, was where Osceola and his partisans actually murdered some of his enemies from within the Seminoles, to include a number of chiefs, and some white emissaries and a white trading station owner hosting a meeting with Government officials, discussing among other things, where the run away slaves fit in during removal. Osceola was an interesting person, he hated white people, though he was largely white himself, he refused to use the English language around them, though most historians believe he spoke it rather well. He was never a chief, and was often in trouble with those chiefs. He was outspoken amongst his people and eventually ended up leading, what in reality was a not so large faction, as a war leader. A muskogee tradition was that Chiefs were never war leaders, that was left to young men who the warriors trusted. While he had a deep hate for white people, he held a special dislike and hate for his fellow natives who he thought liked white people too much. The loyal lower creeks from GA and Alabama turned out to be the most effective fighters for the US Government during the 2nd Seminole War. The US used natives from all over the US territories in their campaign against the Seminoles during that war, to include native peoples from as far away as the Great Lakes region and the eastern prairies. Run away slaves, British meddling, Spanish meddling and Andrew Jackson's ego coupled with many Georgia residents desire for Florida led to the First Seminole War which started in SOWEGA near present day Bainbridge on the banks of the lower Flint River. Another famous Georgian who happened to be Creek, William McIntosh, became a Brigadier General in the GA militia and led a huge contingent of GA militia and lower creeks in this war. They protected Jackson's southern flank and ended up doing a large portion of the actual fighting, burning many Creek and Seminole towns, especially near present day Tallahassee, which is where the teenaged Osceola was living at the time with his mother's people. Osceola was romanticized by many northerners during this time frame, especially among the abolitionist, and had many partisans among the US Government from New England states. He was not the peace loving, "I want to be left alone and lead my life" David versus Goliath that many northerners painted him as, nor was he the war mongering "I want to kill all whites" that many Georgians painted him as. He was probably closer to the latter than the first though. He was heavily influenced in his youth by Peter McQueen (one of his maternal uncles who was very important to him), a Red Stick leader who did hate Americans and Paddy Walsh, a leader in the Prophet Movement among the Upper Creeks. Those two are who are responsible for the massacre at Ft. Mims that brought the US Government into the First Creek War. William Weatherford was also a Red Stick War leader at that battle, but he left with his force before the Massacre occurred and argued against carrying on the attack. The Red Sticks were the Creeks in the Creek Civil War that were influenced by the Prophets movement (introduced to them by Tecumseh whose mother was from the Shawnee of the Upper Creek Towns and his brother just before the War, and supported and encouraged by the British) and had a belief that all things "white" were evil and the Creeks could never be a prominent people if they followed any white ways or used white tools...which is funny, because they loved their muskets and rifles, iron knives and tomahawks and their European horses. They did slaughter all their livestock as part of their beliefs which led to mass starvation during the latter days of the First Creek War. There are some historians now that are tending to merge the two Creek Wars and the Seminole Wars together as an ongoing struggle between the Muscogee speaking peoples and a young America early on encouraged by both Spanish and British meddling, the factions, while often changing sides, were pretty much the same group of people. I have argued this for years....instead of 5 or 6 different wars, there was one that had relatively peaceful moments (though there were always skirmishes and raids carried out by both sides) until just before the War Between the States, when the Creeks that remained in GA, Alabama and north Florida finally merged into the white population and the Seminoles (in reality mainly Creeks also) were left with a couple of hundred people hiding in the Swamps of south Florida and the Government had more pressing matters. Oddly enough, some of the last action, very small skirmishes between local militias and small bands of natives during these many years of conflict took place in the Florida Panhandle in the decade preceding the War Between The States not far from Panama City Beach in Jackson, Washington, Bay and Walton Counties. As I sit typing this, I am sitting about 150 yards from where the last know "indian" was officially killed, one named after my William Bowles from my previous statement....a Billy Bowlegs (which was a common name BTW) who was a known pirate, thief and murderer to the residents of the budding community at St. Andrew's Florida (it became Panama City). His body was found shot, on the beach at Philip's Inlet on what is now the Walton/Bay County line in the 1850s. Ironically, during the War Between the States, these various factions in Oklahoma carried on their past differences by either siding with the Union or Confederacy......the Muscogee speaking people had factions that fought on both sides. So, what in reality started as a Civil War among the Muscogee speaking peoples of the GA, FLA and ALA region in 1813 ended in what many call the American Civil War over 50 years later. If, in fact, we do look at this as one ongoing war, it truly is the longest armed conflict that the US has ever partaken in, historians already say that about the Seminole Wars.....throw the Creek Wars in too, well......

 

[Hillbilly stalker]

^^^ Great read, thank you for sharing. I always thought it was a wise, but cruel move how the U.S Gov moved the Native Americans from their home lands. I assume their way of thinking was if “they were fighting to survive and out of their element”....then they wouldn’t have the ability to fight the Army. Ie Cherokee from the woodlands to the west, Apaches from the desert to the Everglades, Seminole from the glades to out west.

 

[trad bow]

Great reading. Thanks for everyone posting this information.

 

[redneck_billcollector]

It seems that the Creeks were more of a massive confederation of smaller tribes than one ethnic large tribe.

You got that right. The "Creeks" did not all even speak the same language, while most of the towns in the confederation spoke a Muscogee dialect there were some that did not. To add to the confusion, there were a number of Hitchiti speaking towns in SOWEGA, largely Miccosukee, that never were part of the Creek Confederation even though their neighboring Miccosukee towns were. There were even a couple of Shawnee towns in the Confederation in Alabama, Tecumseh's mother was from there....hence his warm welcome when he came to address the Creeks about the Prophet movement right before the War of 1812, leading to a Civil War among the various clans of both the Upper and Lower Creeks. This civil war ended up leading to the Ft. Mims Massacre bringing the US Government into their civil war. The Savannah Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution published Col. Benjamin Hawkins' records in book form in the late 1820s and it is a rich source about the politics and the make up of the Creek Nation leading up to the first Creek War. He also did a census of every Creek affiliated town, and those that were not Creek affiliated in GA. down to the number of chickens, cows, pigs, horses, adult men, women and children in each town no matter what size it was...he also addressed their homes, how many acres they farmed, the fencing, whether they took up white ways or not, the taverns in the area, the white traders, the ferries, who owned how many slaves etc...It is an eye opener. The Muscogee speaking peoples of the deep south at the dawn of the 19th Century were not what most think of when they think of Indians, many were successful planters, growing cotton and huge farms of maize, pumpkins, beans, etc...with large herds of cattle, sometimes numbering in the hundreds of head. They ran ferries along the new Federal Road, it is just fascinating how they were There were schools, some ran by Hawkins himself, teaching reading. writing and math. There were schools teaching blacksmithing (which was something else Hawkins went in depth about, the smithies in each town) Some towns had extensive textile works, and kept sheep for the wool....It was not the white man's vision of natives, They were not the naked savages, they often wore new European fashions and would fit in at the Governor's Mansion in Milledgeville. A major politician, friend of Hawkins and member of the Wind Clan among the Lower Creeks was William McIntosh, he had daughters who married a future Governor of GA and a future Supreme Court Justice...they were not savages. They were as sophisticated as any of the white people in GA. Now when they decided to go to war, that is another story....they would basically strip naked, paint themselves red and black and kill everyone, to include the children...and then a week later sit down and drink a fine french wine with you and discuss the cotton markets or the goings on in DC. Sadly not many here know their history....and what became of many of them, we know of the ones that went to Oklahoma, and the ones the fled to Florida, but a good number eventually took up white ways, and assimilated into the population of GA Ala, and Fla....hiding their ethnicity and are among us today. The Alabama, Georgia and Florida Censuses from 1840 are full of people in these states that had never shown up in previous censuses with no record of from where they came.....Many have family names that hint of their background like Bass or Brim or Redman, or with Scotts names.....simply because they all had a Scotts trader in the woodpile by then.

 

[Chrisl8n]

Do you think the native americans would have progressed to what north America is now if they hadn't had their cultures and lives disrupted by europeans? I would think not for the most part. Europeans brought good and bad with them. Kinda hard to speculate I guess.