A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. on the head waters probably of the Santee and Pedee, and, according to Adair, could still muster lour hundred warriors in 1743. Vot they are mentioned by the historians of South Carolina, only in 1712, as auxiliaries against the Tuscaroras ; in 1715, as having joined the other northern tribes in the con- federacy against the colony; in 1756, as requesting that a fort might be built upon their lands; for the last time in 1760, as auxiliaries against the Cherokees. It must thence be inferred that, excepting the short war of 1715, they were always at peace with Carolina. Their perpetual wars with the Shaw- noes, with the Cherokees, and, finally, with the Six Nations, may have kept them sufficiently occupied, and compelled them to remain on friendly terms with the only people, by whom they could be supplied with arms and ammunition. Another cause for their peaceable disposition towards the English, may be found in the slow progress of the settlements in that quar- ter. " In 1736, settlements had extended partially about eighty or ninety miles from the seacoast. Between 1750 and 1760, settlements were commenced two hundred miles from Charles- ton by emigrants from Pennsylvania and Virginia. Between the seacoast settlements and those to the westward, a consider- able tract of country was for several years left in the undisturbed possession of the aborigines." * The boundaries and extent of the territory occupied by the Catawbas, cannot be ascertained, and may not always have been the same. It is probable that the Cherokees were origi- nally in possession of the country on the upper waters of the Savannah, the Santee and the Pedee. If, as has been sug- gested, the Woccons, who bordered on the Tuscaroras, spoke a dialect of the Catawba language, it must have had a consid- erable extent, and may have been that of the Congarees, of the Cheraws, and of some other of the small tribes.f It is altogether distinct from the Cherokee, but has some affinities
- Ramsay's History of South Carolina, Vol. I. Chap. vi.
f The Cheraws are said to have joined the Catawbas, and to have been living amongst them in 1768. (Rev. E. Potter's letter to Dr. Stiles in the tenth volume of 1 Mass. Hist. Coll.) Adair mentions the Cheraws, Waterees, Congarees,Enoes, &c, as having joined the Cataw- bas ; but I believe hirn mistaken when he says that they spoke different dialects. The words collected forty years ago by B. Smith Barton are, all but one, identical with those of Mr. Miller's vocabulary taken this year. (1835.) Barton's New Views, &c. (Philad. 1797.)
