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They passed even to the Choctaws and Chickasaws, crossing the rivers by portable boats of skin, and sometimes taking up a permanent abode among the Indians. Virginia and Carolina traders were not on good terms with each other, and Governor Spottswood frequently made complaints of the actions of the Carolinians.
The languages of the Chickasaws and Choctaws did not differ more from the tongue of the Cherokees, than the two divisions of the latter did from each other. The Cherokees of the hills, the Otari, spoke a dialect that could not be understood by the Cherokees of the lowlands, or Erati.
One of the editors of the "Operatives' Magazine" had gone to Arkansas with a mill-girl who had worked beside her among the looms. They were at an Indian mission to the Cherokees and Choctaws. I seemed to breathe the air of that far Southwest, in a spray of yellow jessamine which one of those friends sent me, pressed in a letter.
He went forth with the chief of the Walnut Hills, named Alahoplechia, and the chief of the White Clay, Oyelape, among their neighbors of other tribes, the Chicasaws and Choctaws, preaching a crusade against the French; urging them to unite with the Natchez, the Homochittas, and the Alabamas, and to attack and destroy the last man of the French settlements at Mobile, Boloxy, Ship Island, and New Orleans, as they were mischievous intruders from across the Salt Lake, whence they were yearly bringing their people to rob them of their homes and appropriate them.
Thinking at first they belonged to the band of robbers, who employed them to follow travellers, we hastily seized our arms, and prepared for a fight; but Gabriel asserting the dogs were a particular breed belonging to the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and other tribes of half-civilised Indians, established upon the Red River, we began shouting and firing our rifles, so as to guide towards us the Indians, whom we presumed could not be far behind their dogs.
The Cherokees, Creeks and Choctaws, with their minor associates in the Indian Territory, are, though not increasing in numbers, living in peace and something like industry. Yet they are at the mercy of any vagabond who should take it into his head to "salt" with gold-dust or silver-ore any ravine in the midst of their country. No law and no army would avail to repel the rush.
In the morning they looked to see in what direction the rod pointed, for each night the rod left its upright position, and inclined one way or another. Day after day the rod was found pointing to the east, and thither the Choctaws accordingly bent their steps.
I followed, and after me, Le Corbeau Rouge, a runner of the Choctaws. We were returning to Biloxi from a reconnaissance in the Chickasaw country. Each straight behind the other, dumb and soundless shadows, we passed along the way, hardly bruising a leaf or brushing the rustling reeds aside. "See, there is the light," grunted Tuskahoma, pointing to a glimmer through the trees.
The result justified his predictions; the young men, having no other foe, at once took to ravaging the settlements. It soon became evident that it was hopeless to expect the Creeks to behave well to the whites merely because they were themselves well treated, and from that time on the English fomented, instead of striving to put a stop to, their quarrels with the Choctaws and Chickasaws.
These ran wild, half naked, unwashed and uncombed, hatless and bonnetless through the woods and grass, followed by packs of lean and hungry curs, hallooing and yelling in pursuit of rabbits and opossums, and were as wild as the Indians they had supplanted, and whose pine-bark camps were yet here and there to be seen, where temporarily stayed a few strolling, degraded families of Choctaws.
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