Notes on the Floridian Peninsula; its Literary History, Indian Tribes and Antiquities

CHAPTER II.
THE APALACHES

Derivation of the name.—Earliest notices of.—Visited and described by Bristock in 1653.—Authenticity of his narrative.—Subsequent history and final extinction.

Among the aboriginal tribes of the United States perhaps none is more enigmatical than the Apalaches. They are mentioned as an important nation by many of the early French and Spanish travellers and historians, their name is preserved by a bay and river on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and by the great eastern coast range of mountains, and has been applied by ethnologists to a family of cognate nations that found their hunting-grounds from the Mississippi to the Atlantic and from the Ohio river to the Florida Keys; yet, strange to say, their own race and place have been but guessed at. Intimately connected both by situation and tradition with the tribes of the Floridian peninsula, an examination of the facts pertaining to their history and civilization is requisite to a correct knowledge of the origin and condition of the latter.

The orthography of the name is given variously by the older writers, Apahlahche, Abolachi, Apeolatei, Appallatta, &c., and very frequently without the first letter, Palaxy, Palatcy. Daniel Coxe, indeed, fancifully considered this first vowel the Arabic article a, al, prefixed by the Spaniards to the native word.¹³⁰ Its derivation has been a questio vexata among Indianologists; Heckewelder¹³¹ identified it with Lenape or Wapanaki, “which name the French in the south as easily corrupted into Apalaches as in the north to Abenakis,” and other writers have broached equally loose hypothesis. Adair¹³² mentions a Chikasah town, Palacheho, evidently from the same root; but it is not from this tongue nor any of its allies, that we must explain its meaning, but rather consider it an indication of ancient connections with the southern continent, and in itself a pure Carib word. Apáliché in the Tamanaca dialect of the Guaranay stem on the Orinoco signifies man,¹³³ and the earliest application of the name in the northern continent was as a title of the chief of a country, l’homme par excellence,¹³⁴ and hence, like very many other Indian tribes (Apaches, Lenni Lenape, Illinois,) his subjects assumed by eminence the proud appellation of The Men. How this foreign word came to be imported will be considered hereafter. Among the tribes that made up the confederacy, probably only one partook of the warring and energetic blood of the Caribs; or it may have been assumed in emulation of a famous neighbor; or it may have been a title of honor derived from the esoteric language of a foreign priesthood, instances of which are not rare among the aborigines.

In the writings of the first discoverers they uniformly hold a superior position as the most polished, the most valorous, and the most united tribe in the region where they dwelt. The fame of their intrepidity reached to distant nations. “Keep on, robbers and traitors,” cried the Indians near the Withlacooche to the soldiers of De Soto, “in Apalache you will receive that chastisement your cruelty deserves.” When they arrived at this redoubted province they found cultivated fields stretching on either hand, bearing plentiful crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, and plums,¹³⁵ whose possessors, a race large in stature, of great prowess, and delighting in war, inhabited numerous villages containing from fifty to three hundred, spacious and commodious dwellings, well protected against hostile incursions. The French colonists heard of them as distinguished for power and wealth, having good store of gold, silver, and pearls, and dwelling near lofty mountains to the north; and Fontanedo, two years a prisoner in their power, lauds them as “les meilleurs Indiens de la Floride,” and describes their province as stretching far northward to the snow-covered mountains of Onagatano abounding in precious metals.¹³⁶

About a century subsequent to these writers, we find a very minute and extraordinary account of a nation called Apalachites, indebted for its preservation principally to the work of the Abbé Rochefort. It has been usually supposed a creation of his own fertile brain, but a careful study of the subject has given me a different opinion. The original sources of his information may be entirely lost, but that they actually existed can be proved beyond reasonable doubt. They were a series of ephemeral publications by an “English gentleman” about 1656, whose name is variously spelled Bristol, Bristok, Brigstock, and Bristock, the latter being probably the correct orthography. He had spent many years in the West Indies and North America, was conversant with several native tongues, and had visited Apalacha in 1653. Besides the above-mentioned fragmentary notes, he promised a complete narrative of his residence and journeys in the New World, but apparently never fulfilled his intention. Versions of his account are found in various writers of the age. The earliest is given by Rochefort¹³⁷, and was translated with the rest of the work of that author by Davies¹³⁸, who must have consulted the original tract of Bristock as he adds particulars not found in the Abbé’s history. Others are met with in the writings of the Geographus Ordinarius, Nicolas Sanson d’ Abbeville¹³⁹, in the huge tomes of Ogilby¹⁴⁰ and his high and low Dutch paraphrasers Arnoldus Montanus¹⁴¹ and Oliver Dapper,¹⁴² in Oldmixon’s history,¹⁴³ quite fully in the later compilation that goes under the name of Baumgarten’s History of America,¹⁴⁴ and in our own days has been adverted to by the distinguished Indianologist H. R. Schoolcraft in more than one of his works. It consists of two parts, the one treating of the traditions, the other of the manners and customs of the Apalachites. In order to place the subject in the clearest light I shall insert a brief epitome of both.

The Apalachites inhabited the region called Apalacha between 33° 25´ and 37° north latitude. By tradition and language they originated from northern Mexico, where similar dialects still existed.¹⁴⁵ The Cofachites were a more southern nation, scattered at first over the vast plains and morasses to the south along the Gulf of Mexico (Theomi), but subsequently having been reduced by the former nation, they settled a district called Amana, near the mountains of Apalacha, and from this circumstance received the name Caraibe or Carib, meaning “bold, warlike men,” “strangers,” and “annexed nation.” In after days, increasing in strength and retaining their separate existence, they asserted independence, refused homage to the king of Apalacha, and slighted the worship of the sun. Wars consequently arose, extending at intervals over several centuries, resulting in favor of the Cofachites, whose dominion ultimately extended from the mountains in the north to the shores of the Gulf and the river St. Johns on the south. Finding themselves too weak to cope openly with such a powerful foe, the Apalachites had recourse to stratagem. Taking advantage of a temporary peace, their priests used the utmost exertions to spread abroad among their antagonists a religious veneration of the sun and a belief in the necessity of an annual pilgrimage to his sacred mountain Olaimi in Apalacha. So well did their plan succeed, that when at the resumption of hostilities, the Apalachites forbade the ingress of all pilgrims but those who would do homage to their king, a schism, bitter and irreconcileable, was brought about among the Cofachites. Finally peace was restored by a migration of those to whom liberty was dearer than religion, and a submission of the rest to the Apalachites, with whom they became amalgamated and lost their identity. Their more valiant companions, after long wanderings through unknown lands in search of a home, finally locate themselves on the southern shore of Florida. Islanders from the Bahamas, driven thither by storms, tell them of lands, fertile and abounding in game, yet uninhabited and unclaimed, lying to the southwards; they follow their advice and direction, traverse the Gulf of Florida, and settle the island of Ayay, now Santa Cruz. From this centre colonies radiated, till the majority of the islands and no small portion of the southern mainland was peopled by their race.

Such is the sum of Bristock’s singular account. It is either of no credibility whatever, or it is a distorted version of floating, dim traditions, prevalent among the indigenes of the West Indies and the neighboring parts of North America. I am inclined to the latter opinion, and think that Bristock, hearing among the Caribs rumors of a continent to the north, and subsequently finding powerful nations there, who, in turn, knew of land to the south and spoke of ancient wars and migrations, wove the fragments together, filled up the blanks, and gave it to the world as a veritable history. To support this view, let us inquire whether any knowledge of each other actually existed between the inhabitants of the islands and the northern mainland, and how far this knowledge extended.

The reality of the migration, though supported by some facts, must be denied of the two principal races, the Caribs and Arowauks, who peopled the islands at the time of their discovery. The assertions of Barcia, Herrera, and others that they were originally settled by Indians from Florida have been abundantly disproved by the profound investigations of Alphonse D’Orbigny in South America.¹⁴⁶ On the other hand, that the Cubans and Lucayans had a knowledge of the peninsula not only in the form of myths but as a real geographical fact, even having specific names in their own tongues for it (Cautio, Jaguaza), is declared by the unanimous voice of historians.

The most remarkable of these myths was that of the fountain of life, placed by some in the Lucayos, but generally in a fair and genial land to the north.¹⁴⁷ From the tropical forests of Central America to the coral-bound Antilles the natives told the Spaniards marvellous tales of a fountain whose magic waters would heal the sick, rejuvenate the aged, and confer an ever-youthful immortality. It may have originated in a confused tradition of a partial derivation from the mainland and subsequent additions thence received from time to time, or more probably from the adoration of some of the very remarkable springs abundant on the peninsula, perchance that wonderful object the Silver Spring,¹⁴⁸ round which I found signs of a dense early population, its virtues magnified by time, distance, and the arts of priests. We know how intimately connected is the worship of the sun with the veneration of water; heat typifying the masculine, moisture the feminine principle. The universality of their association in the Old World cosmogonies and mythologies is too well-known to need specification, and it is quite as invariable in those of the New Continent. That such magnificent springs as occur in Florida should have become objects of special veneration, and their fame bruited far and wide, and handed down from father to son, is a most natural consequence in such faiths.¹⁴⁹

Certain it is that long before these romantic tales had given rise to the expeditions of De Leon, Narvaez, and De Soto, many natives of the Lucayos, of Cuba, even of Yucatan and Honduras,¹⁵⁰ had set out in search of this mystic fount. Many were lost, while some lived to arrive on the Floridian coast, where finding it impossible either to proceed or return, they formed small villages, “whose race,” adds Barcia,¹⁵¹ writing in 1722, “is still in existence” (cuia generacion aun dura). This statement, which the cautious investigator Navarrete confirms,¹⁵² seems less improbable when we reflect that in after times it was no uncommon incident for the natives of Cuba to cross the Gulf of Florida in their open boats to escape the slavery of the Spaniards,¹⁵³ that the Lucayans had frequent communication with the mainland,¹⁵⁴ that the tribes of South Florida, as early as 1695, carried on a considerable trade with Havana,¹⁵⁵ that the later Indians on the Suwannee would on their trading excursions not only descend this river in their large cypress canoes, but proceed “quite to the point of Florida, and sometimes cross the Gulph, extending their navigations to the Bahama islands and even to Cuba,”¹⁵⁶ and finally that nothing was more common to such a seafaring nation as the Caribs than a voyage of this length.¹⁵⁷

Another remarkable myth, which certainly points for its explanation to an early and familiar intercourse between the islands and the mainland, is the singular geognostic tradition prevalent among the Lucayans, preserved by Peter of Anghiera, to the effect that this archipelago was originally united to the continent by firm land.¹⁵⁸ Doubtless it was on such grounds that the Spaniards concluded that they owed their original settlement to migrations from the Floridian peninsula.

Turning our attention now to this latter land, we should have cause to be surprised did we not find signs that such adventurous navigators as the Caribs had planned and executed incursions and settlements there. That these signs are so sparse and unsatisfactory, we owe not so much to their own rarity as to the slight weight attached to such things by the early explorers and discoverers. From the accounts we do possess, however, there can be no doubt but that vestiges of the Caribbean tongue, if not whole tribes identical with them in language and customs, have been met with from time to time on the peninsula.¹⁵⁹ The striking similarity in the customs of flattening the forehead, in poisoning weapons, in the use of hollow reeds to propel arrows, in the sculpturing on war clubs, construction of dwellings, exsiccation of corpses,¹⁶⁰ burning the houses of the dead, and other rites, though far from conclusive are yet not without a decided weight. It is much to be regretted that Adair has left us no fuller information of those seven tribes on the Koosah river, who spoke a different tongue from the Muskohge and preserved “a fixed oral tradition that they formerly came from South America, and after sundry struggles in defence of liberty settled their present abode.”¹⁶¹

Thus it clearly appears that the frame, so to speak, of the traditions preserved by Bristock actually did exist and may be proved from other writers. But we are still more strongly convinced that his account is at least founded on fact, when we compare the manners and customs, of the Apalachites, as he gives them, with those of the Cherokee, Choktah, Chickasah, and Muskohge, tribes plainly included by him under this name, and proved by the philological researches of Gallatin to have occupied the same location since De Soto’s expedition.¹⁶² We need have no suspicion that he plagiarized from other authors, as the particulars he mentions are not found in earlier writers; and it was not till 1661 that the English settled Carolina, not till 1699 that Iberville built his little fort on the Bay of Biloxi, and many years elapsed between this latter and the general treaty of Oglethorpe. If then we find a close similarity in manners, customs, and religions, we must perforce concede his accounts, such as they have reached us, a certain degree of credit.

He begins by stating that Apalacha was divided into six provinces; Dumont,¹⁶³ writing from independent observation about three-fourths of a century afterwards, makes the same statement. Their towns were inclosed with stakes or live hedges, the houses built of stakes driven into the ground in an oval shape, were plastered with mud and sand, whitewashed without, and some of a reddish glistening color within from a peculiar kind of sand, thatched with grass, and only five or six feet high, the council-house being usually on an elevation.¹⁶⁴ If the reader will turn to the authorities quoted in the subjoined note, he will find this an exact description of the towns and single dwellings of the later Indians.¹⁶⁵ The women manufactured mats of down and feathers with the same skill that a century later astonished Adair,¹⁶⁶ and spun like these the wild hemp and the mulberry bark into various simple articles of clothing. The fantastic custom of shaving the hair on one-half the head, and permitting the other half to remain, on certain emergencies, is also mentioned by later travellers.¹⁶⁷ Their food was not so much game as peas, beans, maize, and other vegetables, produced by cultivation; and the use of salt obtained from vegetable ashes, so infrequent among the Indians, attracted the notice of Bristock as well as Adair.¹⁶⁸ Their agricultural character reminds us of the Choktahs, among whom the men helped their wives to labor in the field, and whom Bernard Romans¹⁶⁹ called “a nation of farmers.” In Apalache, says Dumont,¹⁷⁰ “we find a less rude, more refined nation, peopling its meads and fertile vales, cultivating the earth, and living on the abundance of excellent fruit it produces.”

Strange as a fairy tale is Bristock’s description of their chief temple and the rites of their religion—of the holy mountain Olaimi lifting its barren, round summit far above the capital city Melilot at its base—of the two sacred caverns within this mount, the innermost two hundred feet square and one hundred in height, wherein were the emblematic vase ever filled with crystal water that trickled from the rock, and the “grand altar” of one round stone, on which incense, spices, and aromatic shrubs were the only offerings—of the platform, sculptured from the solid rock, where the priests offered their morning orisons to the glorious orb of their divinity at his daily birth—of their four great annual feasts—all reminding us rather of the pompous rites of Persian or Peruvian heliolatry than the simple sun worship of the Vesperic tribes. Yet in essentials, in stated yearly feasts, in sun and fire worship, in daily prayers at rising and setting sun, in frequent ablution, we recognize through all this exaggeration and coloring, the religious habits that actually prevailed in those regions. Indeed, the speculative antiquarian may ask concerning Mount Olaimi itself, whether it may not be identical with the enormous mass of granite known as “The Stone Mountain” in De Kalb county, Georgia, whose summit presents an oval, flat, and naked surface two or three hundred yards in width, by about twice that in length, encircled by the remains of a mural construction of unknown antiquity, and whose sides are pierced by the mouths of vast caverns;¹⁷¹ or with Lookout mountain between the Coosa and Tennessee rivers, where Mr. Ferguson found a stone wall “thirty-seven roods and eight feet in length,” skirting the brink of a precipice at whose base were five rooms artificially constructed in the solid rock.¹⁷²

One of the most decisive proofs of the veracity of Bristock’s narrative is his assertion that they mummified the corpses of their chiefs previous to interment. Recent discoveries of such mummies leave us no room to doubt the prevalence of this custom among various Indian tribes east of the Mississippi. It is of so much interest to the antiquarian, that I shall add in an Appendix the details given on this point by later writers, as well as an examination of the origin of those mummies that have been occasionally disinterred in the caves of Tennessee and Kentucky.¹⁷³

One other topic for examination in Bristock’s memoir yet remains—the scattered words of the language he mentions. The principal are the following;¹⁷⁴

Mayrdock—the Viracocha of their traditions.

Naarim—the month of March.

Theomi—proper name of the Gulf of Mexico.

Jauas—priests.

Tlatuici—the mountain tribes.

Paracussi—chief; a generic term.

Bersaykau—vale of cedars.

Akueyas—deer.

Hitanachi—pleasant, beautiful.

Tonatzuli—heavenly singer; the name of a bird sacred to the sun.

Several of these words may be explained from tongues with which we are better acquainted.

Jauas and Pâracussi are words used in the sense they here bear in many early writers; the derivation of the former will be considered hereafter; that of the latter is uncertain. Tlatuici is doubtless identical with Tsalakie, the proper appellation of the Cherokee tribe. Akueyas has a resemblance, though remote, to the Seminole ekko of the same signification. In hitanachi we recognize the Choktah intensitive prefix hhito; and in tonatzuli a compound of the Choktah verb taloa, he sings, in one of its forms, with shutik, Muskohge sootah, heaven or sky. A closer examination would doubtless reveal other analogies, but the above are sufficient to show that these were no mere unmeaning words, coined by a writer’s fancy.

The general result of these inquiries, therefore, is strongly in favor of the authenticity of Bristock’s narrative. Exaggerated and distorted though it be, nevertheless it is the product of actual observation, and deserves to be classed among our authorities, though as one to be used with the greatest caution. We have also found that though no general migration took place from the continent southward, nor from the islands northward, yet there was considerable intercourse in both directions; that not only the natives of the greater and lesser Antilles and Yucatan, but also numbers of the Guaranay stem of the southern continent, the Caribs proper, crossed the Straits of Florida and founded colonies on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico; that their customs and language became to a certain extent grafted upon those of the earlier possessors of the soil; and to this foreign language the name Apalache belongs. As previously stated, it was used as a generic title, applied to a confederation of many nations at one time under the domination of one chief, whose power probably extended from the Alleghany mountains on the north to the shore of the Gulf; that it included tribes speaking a tongue closely akin to the Choktah is evident from the fragments we have remaining. This is further illustrated by a few words of “Appalachian,” preserved by John Chamberlayne.¹⁷⁵ These, with their congeners in cognate dialects, are as follows:

The location of the tribe in after years is very uncertain. Dumont placed them in the northern part of what is now Alabama and Georgia, near the mountains that bear their name. That a portion of them did live in this vicinity is corroborated by the historians of South Carolina, who say that Colonel Moore, in 1703, found them “between the head-waters of the Savannah and Altamaha.”¹⁷⁶ De l’Isle, also, locates them between the R. des Caouitas ou R. de Mai and the R. des Chaouanos ou d’Edisco, both represented as flowing nearly parallel from the mountains.

According to all the Spanish authorities on the other hand, they dwelt in the region of country between the Suwannee and Apalachicola rivers—yet must not be confounded with the Apalachicolos. Thus St. Marks was first named San Marco de Apalache, and it was near here that Narvaez and De Soto found them. They certainly had a large and prosperous town in this vicinity, said to contain a thousand warriors, whose chief was possessed of much influence.¹⁷⁷ De l’Isle makes this their original locality, inscribing it “Icy estoient cy devant les Apalaches,” and their position in his day as one acquired subsequently. That they were driven from the Apalachicola by the Alibamons and other western tribes in 1705, does not admit of a doubt, yet it is equally certain that at the time of the cession of the country to the English, (1763,) they retained a small village near St. Marks, called San Juan.¹⁷⁸ I am inclined to believe that these were different branches of the same confederacy, and the more so as we find a similar discrepancy in the earliest narratives of the French and Spanish explorers.

In the beginning of the eighteenth century they suffered much from the devastations of the English, French, and Creeks; indeed, it has been said, though erroneously, that the last remnant of their tribe “was totally destroyed by the Creeks in 1719.”¹⁷⁹ About the time Spain regained possession of the soil, they migrated to the West and settled on the Bayou Rapide of Red River. Here they had a village numbering about fifty souls, and preserved for a time at least their native tongue, though using the French and Mobilian (Chikasah) for common purposes.¹⁸⁰ Breckenridge,¹⁸¹ who saw them here, describes them as “wretched creatures, who are diminishing daily.” Probably by this time the last representative of this once powerful tribe has perished.