CHICKASAW TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS, ETC.  (cont.)
Page 550
 

Spanish phratry, Ishpani. Its gentes:
1. shawi, raccoon;
2. Ishpani, Spanish;
3. Mingo, Royal;
4. huskoni;
5. tunni, squirrel
6. hotchon tchapa, alligator;
7. nashoba, wolf;
8. tcu 'hla, ‘hia, blackbird.”

In his Migration, Legend of the Creeks, from which the foregoing is taken, Dr. Gatschet says that further investigations would show whether the gentes, Ishpani and mingo, were not one and the same, as they appeared on Gibbs’ list; that this list was taken from a manuscript note to his Chickasa vocabulary and contained nine clans or iksa, (yeksa).
Dr. Gatschet says further:

“Spane or Spanish gens; mingoes or chiefs could be chosen from this gens only, and were hereditary in the female line; sha-e or raccoon gens; second chie!s or headmen were selected from it it kuishto or tiger gens; kointchush or catamount gens; nani or fish gens; issi or deer gens: haloba or ? gens; foshi or bird gens; hunshokone or skunk gens; the least respected of them all. 20

According to Bernard Romans, who visited the Chickasaws and Choctaws in the latter half of the 18th century, the Chicka-. saws lived “in the centre of an uneven and large nitrous savannah, have in it one town, long one mile and a half, very narrow and irregular." This they divided into several others: Melataw, hat and feather, Chatetaw, Coppertown, Chuckafalaya, long town, Hickaha, stands still, Tuckahaw, a certain weed, Ashuckhooma, red grass, and Chuccalessa, great town. Romans states that all of them were enclosed “in palisadoes." 21 Ashuckhooma was where D’ Artaguette was defeated.22

The Chickasaws were noble, brave, cheerful, and constant, while their brothers, the Choctaws, according to Adair, were libidinous, crafty, fickle, and dishonest. But the old historian may have been biased, for the writer thinks, from study of Adair’s history, that the old chronicler had a wife in the Chickasaw

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20 Gatschet’s Migration Legend of the Creeks.
21 Romans’ East and West Florida.
22See Claiborne’s Miss., and Pickett’s Ala. It seems well nigh impossible to harmonize Romans’ Chickasaw towns with Adair’s list of Chickasaw towns, though there is some resemblance in some of the names.

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