5 1 8 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
dress or general appearance from the others, and nearly all spoke broken Cherokee, while still retaining their own language. As most of the Indians had come under Christian influence so far as to have quit dancing, there was no townhouse. Harry Smith, father of the late chief of the East Cherokee, and born about 18 1 5, also remembers them as living on the Hiwassee and calling themselves Ndtsi.
From Gans£'tf, or Rattling-gourd, another mixed-blood Chero- kee, who was born on Hiwassee river in 1820 and went west at the removal eighteen years later, it appears that in his time the Natchez were scattered among the Cherokee settlements along the upper part of that stream, extending down into Tennessee. They had then no separate townhouses. Some, at least, of them had come up from the Creeks, and spoke Creek and Cherokee as well as their own language, which he could not understand, al- though familiar with both the others. They were great dance leaders, which agrees with their traditional reputation for ceremo- nial and secret knowledge. They went west with the Cherokee at the final removal of the tribe to Indian Territory in 1838. In 1890 there were a considerable number on Illinois river a few miles south of Tahlequah, Cherokee Nation, several of them still speaking their own language, among whom were Groundhog, John Rogers, and a woman named Kehaka. Some of these may have come with the Creeks, as by an agreement between the Creeks and Cherokee, before the time of the removal, it had been arranged that citizens of either tribe living within the boundaries claimed by the other might remain without question if they so elected. Among the East Cherokee in North Carolina,* about 1890, there were several who claimed Natchez descent, but only one of full Natchez blood, an old woman named AlkFnf, who spoke with a drawling tone said to have been characteristic of that people, as older men remembered them years ago.
Haywood, the historian of Tennessee, says that a remnant of the Natchez lived within the present limits of the State as late
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