SECT. III.] SOUTHERN INDIANS EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 97 amongst themselves have ceded the whole of their territory, and accepted in exchange other lands beyond the Mississippi. Their number is estimated at twenty-eight thousand ; of whom about twenty-three thousand are Muskhogees proper, two thou- sand four hundred Seminoles, twelve hundred Uchees, six hundred Hitchittees, five hundred Alibamons and Quesadas, and three hundred Natches. We have copious vocabularies of the Muskhogee ; one ob- tained by the late Mr. Hawkins, and transmitted by Mr. Jeffer- son to the American Philosophical Society ; two others taken at my request in 1825-6, by Mr. Ridge, Colonel Hambly, and Mr. Denny, from two distinct Muskhogee delegations then at Washington ; a fourth since transmitted by the Rev. L. Compere, a Methodist missionary to that nation. The com- parative vocabulary is extracted from those several sources. Its form did not permit me to give the several variations, which are more numerous than in the different vocabularies of any other tribe ; and it is not improbable that they arise from actual vari- eties of dialects, rather than from errors of the persons who collected the vocabularies. Those words have been selected which had the greatest number of authorities in their favor. As Hawkins's vocabulary differed most from the other, a separ- ate specimen taken exclusively from that has been appended. The small specimen of the Hitchittee was obtained at the same time from a chief of that tribe by Mr. Ridge. The Uchee language is the most guttural, uncouth, and difficult to express with our alphabet and orthography of any of the Indian languages within our knowledge. The vocabu- lary here given is extracted from one taken by Dr. Ware, in Mr. Duponceau's collection, and from another obtained by Mr. Ridge from an Uchee chief at Washington. Mr. Ridge had probably the best Indian ear, but was not so correct in his Eng- lish orthography. The Natches vocabulary I took myself from Is-ah-laktih, an intelligent chief of the remnant of that nation.*
- The vowels a, e, i, o, and the diphthong- ?'e, are, in that vocabulary
and in the Muskhogee words marked G., to be pronounced as in French; the u is the short one of but, nut; the zh is the French/; the oo,y, and all the consonants as in English ; the g, always hard. The Uchee and Hitchittee words taken by Mr. Ridge are, as well as Mr. Haw- kins's and Mr. Compere's Muskhogee words, written in conformity with the English orthography. VOL. II. 13
