THE YOWANNE, OR HIOWANNA, INDIANS.  (cont.)
Page 407
 

Red creek, thence up said creek to a pine tree standing on the left bank of the same, and blazed on two of its sides, about twelve links southwest of an old trading path leading from the town of Mobile to the Hewanee towns, much worn, but not in use at the present time."6 This “old trading path” therefore had been abandoned prior to 1803. It would seem that the people living immediately on the Chickasahay made use of the Yowanne Trading Path already described, while the Yowanne people who lived more to the east, must, after the abandonment of the “old trading path” leading by the pine tree, have made another trail which united with the Big Trading Path in some other quarter.
After the founding of Mobile in 1702, or Fort Louis as it was officially named, the main trading road from there to Yowanne seems at all times to have been much used. This is true of the English, French and Spanish as well as American Mobile. Along it were carried all the articles of civilization so attractive to the savage heart - gaily colored cloth, hatchets, fire-arms and, alas, fire-water, too, while in return the whites received deer skins and peltries generally, besides in time of distress Indian corn as well as the pumpkin and other vegetables which the white man had learned from the Indian to relish.

The Chickasahay Trading Path, or Pascagoula Trail, mentioned above, united with the Yowanne Trading Path about six miles below the confluence of the Chickasahay and Buckatunna rivers. This would be the route the Yowanne people would travel in going to the mouth of Pascagoula river. From the place where the two trading paths united, or crossed, the Pascagoula Trail trending northeasterly crossed the route of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad near State Line, then a few miles beyond it crossed the Big Trading Path in the center of township 6, range 4 west, Washington County, and then went on to its terminus at St. Stephens.

There was also at least one trail from Yowanne to the Chickasaw Nation. Adair mentions three trails that led from the Chickasaws down into the Choctaw Nation. When he visited Mobile he traveled the western trail, “the horse path that runs from the Chickasaws nearest the Mississippi to Mobile.” It is impossible at this day, from the lack of records and tradition, to give any account of this western trail. But it went to Yowanne, which he

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6 7 U. S. Stat. at Large, p. 88.
 

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