CHICKASAW TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS, ETC.  (cont.)
Page 544

Tennessee, in Kentucky, and even up to the Ohio river. Adair gives the following:

“The Chikkasah country lies in about thirty-five degrees of N. Lat., at the distance of one hundred and sixty miles from the eastern side of the Mississippi * * * * * about half way from Mobile to the Illinois.
“The Chikkasah are now [Adair’s Hist. N. A. Inds. was published in London in 1175 settled between the heads of the two most western branches of Mobile river and within twelve miles of Tahrehatche (Tallahatchie, rock creek] * * * * * In 1720 they had four contiguous settlements, which lay nearby in the form of three parts of a square, only that the eastern side was five miles shorter than the western, with the open part toward the Choktah.  One was Yaneka, about a mile wide and six miles long * * * * ; another was ten miles long * * * * and from one to two miles broad.  The towns were called Shatara, Chookheereso, Hykehah, Tuskawillao, and Phalacheho.  The other square, Chookka Pharaah"6 or ‘the long house,’ was single and ran four miles in length and one mile in breadth. It was more populous than their whole nation contains at present * * * * scarcely 430 warriors."7

An historian of Tennessee tells us that before the Revolution,

“The Chickasaws held considerable possessions, for towns and fields, on the north side of the Tennessee. The ‘Chickasaw Old Fields,’ above Muscle Shoals, are well known; they had some small towns in the same section,” etc. 8

D. Coxe in his Carolana (1741) says:

“River of the Cusates, Cheraquees or Kasqui (Tennessee] river * * * a cataract is on it, also the tribe of the Chicazas.”9
July 23d, 1805 the Chickasaws ceded lands in Kentucky and Tennessee. Oct. 19, 1818, they ceded the remaining portion of their lands in those States. See U. S. Statutes at Large, Ind. Treat.

In customs the Chickasaws and Choctaws were very much alike, and their languages were nearly identically the same. The Chickasaw trade language was used as a medium of intercourse by the nations along the lower Mississippi. Lemoyne d’ Iberville makes the following statements:

"Bayagoula, Ouma, Chicacha, Colapissa, show little difference in their language.” “The Oumas, Bayogoulas, Theloel, Taensas, the Colas, the

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6Says one of the old writers, substantially: The Choctaws (a part of Bienville’s force) precipitated an action at Schioufalay, “the first of the fortified villages which they reached.” Colonial Mobile. This was the Battle of Ackia, where Bienville was badly whipped and retreated.
7Adair’s History of the North American Indians.
8Putnam’s History of Middle Tennessee. The reader should not confound these Chickasaw Old Fields with the Chickasaw Old Fields in Lee county, Miss., to the west of Tupelo.
9Coxe’s Carolana.
 

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