mooney] THE END OF THE NATCHEZ 5 19
as 1750 and were even then numerous. He refers to those with the Cherokee, and tells a curious story which seems somehow to have escaped the notice of other writers. According to his statement, a portion of the Natchez, who had been parceled out as slaves among the French in the vicinity of their old homes after the downfall of their tribe, took advantage of the withdrawal of the troops to the north, in 1758, to rise and massacre their masters and make their escape to the neighboring tribes. On the return of the troops after the fall of Fort Duquesne they found the settlement at Natchez destroyed and their Indian slaves fled. Some time afterward a French deserter seeking an asylum among the Cherokee, having made his way to Great Island town, on Tennessee river, just below the mouth of the Teilico, was surprised to find there some of the same Natchez whom he had formerly driven as slaves. He lost no time in getting away from the place to find safer quarters among the mountain towns. ' Notchy creek, a lower affluent of the Teilico, in Monroe county, Tennessee, evidently takes its name from these refugees. Haywood states also that, although incorporated with the Cherokee, the Natchez continued for a long time a sepa- rate tribe, not marrying or mixing with other tribes, and having their own chiefs, and holding their own councils, but their nation had now (1823) yielded to the canker of time and hardly any- thing was left but the name. 8
We hear little of those who had taken refuge with the Chicka- saw. Bienville, writing in 1742, says that, finding themselves an incumbrance to the Chickasaw, who were sorely pressed by the French, they had retired to the Cherokee. 8 Haywood states that the Chickasaw received and protected them, refusing to give them up even on the demand of the French, and that some had remained with the Chickasaw ever since, while others
��1 Haywood, Natural ami Aboriginal History of Tennessee^ 1823, pp. 105-106.
- Ibid , pp. 106-7.
8 Bienville in Gayarre, Louisiana, 185 1, p. 525.
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