- ated contiguous to Pearl river, which, Mr. Ware tells me,
they still visit and venerate. The Creeks entertain a tradition[228] of coming from the west side of the Mississippi, and that too at so recent a date, as to have heard of the landing of White people {236} on the Atlantic coast soon after their arrival. The Seminoles, Utchis, and Yamasees are a portion of those more ancient people whom they found in possession of the country, and with whom they carried on an exterminating warfare. Indeed, many of the people of that country discovered by Soto, and some of them numerous and powerful, are now no longer in existence. Those whom he calls the Cutifa-chiqui, then governed by a female, held a court equally as dignified as that of Powhatan in Virginia.
The Choctaws possess in an eminent degree that thirst for revenge, which forms so prominent a trait in the disposition of the man of America. By far too indiscriminate in its object, murder and accidental death are alike fatal to the perpetrator, and scarcely any lapse of time, or concession short of that of life, is taken. It is but a few years ago, that two Choctaws in the town of Natchez, firing at each other, in the same instant, fell both dead on the spot: one of them, in defence of a life which he had forfeited; the other, in quest of revenge for the death of a relative.
By a recent treaty,[229] effected through the influence of*
