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The wars of the Five Nations with the Hurons (1634-49) the Neutral
Nation (1651), the Eries (1654-56), and the Andastes and Shawnees
(1660-76), may be studied at first hand in the Jesuit Relations covering
those periods. They are summarized in part by Parkman in his Jesuits
in North America...

We have seen that the Iroquois completed their conquest of the
Eries about 1656, and expelled them from their home south of Lake Erie
so completely that it remained practically an uninhabited country for
nearly three-quarters of a century afterwards. Six years later, they
turned their arms against the Shawnees and other tribes of the Ohio
Valley, and waged an unrelenting war against them for more than a de-
cade. Charlevoix says the Iroquois completed the conquest of the
Shawnees in 1672.

During the years between, it is probable that the Iroquois had succeeded in
expelling the Shawnees from their earlier home in the Central Ohio
Valley, and driven them to its mouth, up the Cumberland and Ten-
nessee rivers, and across the Cumberland Gap into Carolina and Georgia,
where they seem to have had two or more villages during most of the
last quarter of the seventeenth century. [Hanna XXX about dispersal pattern.]

..........
"The trade of Fort Frontenac is carried on within the extent of the
lake of the same name with the Iroquois, who live in the environs, and
who never trade but with New England, formerly called New Holland,
at Albany, formerly called Orange, a place distant about seventeen or
eighteen leagues from the last canton of the Iroquois, called Agnie
[Mohawks]. The reason for their not coming down into our habitations
at all, is, that those who go to hunt the beaver, finding few on the north
coast of the lake, where they are now rare, go to seek for them towards
the South, at the west of Lake Erie, where they abound;

"Because, before the destruction of the Islinois [Illinois] and of the Kentaienton-ga (inhabitants of the Erie village, Kentaienton) and Ganeiens-gaa ^ (Gachnawas-haga or Gannaouens, i.e., the KANAWAHAS [Iroquois name from the "rapids" at Point of Rocks - Piscataway nation proper], later known as CONOYS, Ganawese, etc.) whom the Iroquois subdued in a year; the CHAOUANONS [Shawnee], Ouabachi [Wea?], Tiotontaraeton-ga (Totontaraton-ga?'), Gandostoge-ga (Susquehannocks), MOSOPELEA [MOSOPELEA LISTED SEPARATELY FROM SHAWNEE here], Sounikae-ronons (Oniasontke-ronons[?]), and Ochiat-agon-ga (Ochateguins, Champlain's name for the Hurons), whom they also overthrew in a few years, they did not dare to hunt in quarters over-run by so many enemies, who have the same apprehension of the Iroquois and are little accustomed to trading in the skins of these animals, only carrying on commerce with the English very rarely, because they are not able to go without much trouble, time, and risk."

- La Salle to the Abbe Bernou, bearing date August 22, 1681 (or 1682)
.........
The Onondaga chief, Outreouate, told Governor La Barre at Famine Bay in 1684,
that one reason the Five Nations waged war against the Illinois and Miamis (in 1680),
was, that "they have engaged the Chaouanons in their interest, and entertained them in
their country." La Salle at La Chine in 1669 had been told by the
Senecas that he might find the villages of the Honniasontkeronon and the
CHAOUANONS on the Ohio River, above "the Falls" [Falls of the Ohio at Louisville];
and he lighted a fire for some of the latter at his Fort of St. Louis on the
Ilinois [River]in 1683...
........

WASHINGTON'S NOTE

Under date of October 24th, after leaving the mouth of Captina or Grape-vine Creek,
Washington wrote: "About five miles from the Vine Creek comes in a
very large creek to [from] the eastward, called by the Indians, Cut
Creek [now Fish Creek, in Marshall County, West Virginia, about ten
miles below Moundsville], from a town or tribe of Indians which, they
say, was cut off entirely in a very bloody battle between them and the
Six Nations. This creek empties just at the lower end of an island
[Fish Creek Island]."
.........
SHAWNEE TSWIGHELI (Sewekily, Hathawakhila) DIVISION
FLEE SOUTH FROM FIVE NATIONS

In James Adair's History of the American Indians in the Souths
written by a man who had traded with the Southern Indians as early
I735, the author in describing the territories of the Creek Indians
in what is now the state of Georgia, writes: "The upper part of the
Musckogee Country is very hilly, the middle, less so, and the lower Towns,
level. These are settled by the remains of the Oosecha, Okone, and
Sawakola nations. With them is also one Town of the Shawano.""
Sawakola, or Sawokli, appears to be the original form of the word "Ass-
wikale" or "Sewickiey" [Hanna's gloss].

1681 LASALLE SHAWNEE CONTACT

In a letter written by La Salle to one of his friends in France,
relating his operations from August 22, 1680, to the autumn of 1681, he
speaks of his efforts to induce the Illinois and Miami Indians to settle
their villages near his station on the Illinois River, in January and
February, 1681. "Meanwhile," he adds, "a Chaouenon captain, who
commands five hundred warriors and lives on a great river which empties
into the Ohio, and from there into the Mississippi, having learned of
my arrival [at Fort Crevecoeur], sent to me to ask the protection of the
King. I gave him the same reply I had given the Illinois, that if he
wished to join me that autumn, to go to the sea, I would after that assure
him of the protection of the King; but that, his country not being
accessible to us because of its great distance, I could not promise it to
him in Canada. He agreed to my proposition, and ought to be at the
entrance of the said river at the beginning of autumn, with as many
men as possible."

[location of Fort Crevecouer not found yet]

SITUATION IN 1684
FRANQUELIN"S MAP OF 1684

Franquelin's 1684 "Map of Louisiana, or the Voyages of La Salle . . .
in 1679-80-81 , and '82 " (of which a reproduction is given on the following
leaf), shows a very direct and minute knowledge of La Salle's settlements at
Fort St. Louis, on the Illinois River, most of which knowledge must
have been obtained by Franquelin from La Salle himself. But it shows
a confused and erroneous idea of the Ohio Valley, and one that would
scarcely have been embodied in this map if La Salle had had any direct
personal knowledge of the Ohio to communicate to Franquelin, What
knowledge he had was probably obtained from Shawnee and other Indians
who had lived in the Ohio Valley.

The map does, however, differentiate between the Ohio and the Wabash, showing
the two rivers as distinct and separate streams, although it makes both of them
flow into the present Tennessee River, and makes the latter, under the name of
the "River St. Louis, or Chucagoa, or Casquinampogamou," to flow into the Mississippi River.

Two heads of the Wabash River are shown, both rising near the southwestern
extremity of Lake Erie, the lower one bearing the name, "Agouassake." South
of the junction of these two streams, a tributary enters the Wabash River from
the east, called the "Oiapikaming" {i.l., "White River", still so called).

Between the Upper Forks of the "Casquinampogamou" are located three Cherokee villages,
bearing the names, "Tchalaka", "Cattogui" {Katowagi was the Shawnee name for the Cherokees), and "Taligui" [Chillicothe] the last name being identical in sound with the "Talligewi" of Lenape tradition as given by Heckewelder. (On one of De l'Isle's maps the Tennessee River is called "Riviere des Casquinambaux ou Cheroquis". The name "Casquinampo" probably comes from the "Casqui" or "Casquin" Indians referred to by some of the chroniclers of De Soto's expedition.)

The first tributary entering the "Casquinampogamou" from the north,
below its Upper Forks, is called the "Misseouecipi" (not the present
Mississippi River: that stream Franquelin called the "Colbert")
with an unnamed Indian village located on its north bank.

Below this stream, a second tributary enters the main river, also coming from the
north, which is called the "Skipaki-cipi, ou la Riviere Bleue." (A similar name "Bluestone"”
is applied to one of the western heads of New River on Fry and Jefferson's map of 1751.)
This is obviously a Shawnee word, and the river to which it was intended to be
applied was undoubtedly [H.XXX?] the stream known later as the "Shawnee River",
now the Cumberland [The Kishpokotha were on the New and Kanawa Rivers]. The "Kispicotha" or "Kispokotha" is one of the five divisions of the Shawnee tribe even down to the present day. The word is also spelled Kespicotha, Kiscapocoke, Kiscopokes, Kiskapocoke, Kis-
pogogi, Kispoko, Kiskapookes, etc. The Shawnee town of Eskippaki-
thiki ("thiki" means "place"; "cipi" or "theepee", "river"), located on Lewis
Evans's map of 1755 as being on the Great Warriors' Trail, between
the mouth of the Scioto [River] and the Red River branch of the Kentucky [River],
thus bore a name practically identical with that by which the Cumberland River
was known to the Shawnees at the time of La Salle's descent of the Mississippi.

Half-way between the two rivers, Misseouecipi and Skipakicipi, on
Franquelin's map, is located the Indian Town of "Cisca", and a path
is shown leading from that town in a southeastern direction to St.
Petro on the east coast of Florida (north of St. Augustine). Beneath
this path is written the legend: "Chemin par les Casquinampo et les
Chaouenons vont en traite aux Espagnols", "Path traveled by the
Casquinampo and Shawnees in trading with the Spaniards". "Cisca"
may have been the name of a Shawnee town, and the seat of a Kiscapocoke
band of that tribe. The Ciscas and other Shawnees from the
same vicinity joined La Salle at Fort St. Louis in 1683.

On the north bank of the Skipakicipi River, Franquelin locates
another town, named "Meguatchaiki". This, also, was doubtless a
Shawnee town of the Mequachake Clan (variants, ch guttural, Macha-
chac, Machichac,'Mackacheck, Mackacheek, Maguck, Magueck, Magwa,
Makostrake, Maquichees, Mequachake, Maqueechaick, etc.)
[modern Mechoje]

A short distance west of Meguatchaiki, Franquelin locates the
town of "Chaskepe." This, too, may have been a town of the Shaw-
nees, and the name another variant of the word "Kiscapo" (Kispokotha).

In the chapter on the Shawnees, attention has already been called to the
letter written by La Salle to Governor La Barre from Fort St. Louis,
April 2, 1693, stating, "that the Chouenons, Chaskpe, and Ouabans,
have, at his solicitation, abandoned the Spanish trade, and also nine
or ten villages they occupied, for the purpose of becoming French, and
settling near Fort St. Louis. The "Chaskpe", of course, were the same as
the Chaskepe of the Cumberland River Valley. They were probably of
the Kispoko or Kispogogi Clan of the Shawnee tribe.

(De Soto visited the village of "Chisca" in the Cherokee country in 1541. The word is used by La Salle as a synonym for Chaskepe. See Margry ii., 314, 318. Mr. James Mooney thinks the
Chaskpe may possibly have been a minor clan of the Miami.)

(Gatschet writes of Tukabatchi, a town of the Upper Creeks, on the Tallapoosa
River, one and one-half miles below its falls, whose original inhabitants were of an alien
tribe, afterwards amalgamated with the Creeks: "The town anciently was known under
two other names: "Ispokogi" or "Italua Ispokogi", said to mean "town of survivors" or "sur-
viving town, remnant of a town", and "Italua Fatcha-sige". Milfort says (p. 265) that
nearly about the same time that the Alibamons were admitted into the Creek Con-
federacy, "an Indian tribe which had just been destroyed [scattered] by the Iroquois and
the Hurons came to ask protection of the Muskoquis, whom I shall now call Creeks.
The Creeks received them, and gave them lands in the center of the Nation. They
built a town which is at this day [1802] of some importance, and which is called "Tuket
Batchet", from the name of the tribe." Judge Force, in commenting on this passage
{Indians of Ohio), suggests that it is within possibility that the Tukaubatchies were a
surviving remnant of the Eries. The resemblance of "Ispokogi", one of the names of their
town, to "Kispogogi", the name of one of the Shawnee clans, suggests the probability that
the "Tuket Batchets" were Shawnees. [Italu/Etowah=Town; Ispokogi and Fatcha-sige unknown]
The Ouabans, or Wabans, were doubtless a band of Mohicans or Eastern Lenape,
whose generic name was Wabanaki (Wapaneu, easterly).

We have, therefore, set down on Franquelin's Map of 1684, from
information furnished largely by La Salle himself, the exact localities
from which the 200 Shawnee warriors and their families removed in 1683
to join La Salle at Fort St. Louis. That is to say, this map shows that
in 1682 the Shawnees lived north of the Cumberland River, within the
limits of what is now the State of Kentucky.

The next tributary shown on Franquelin's map as entering the
Casquinampogamou River west of the Skipakicipi, is the "OHIO, ALIAS
MOSOPELEA-CIPI [MOSOPALAWA RIVER], ALIAS OLIGHIN". THESE WERE THE
THREE NAMES GIVEN TO THE TRUE OHIO RIVER BY THE IROQUOIS; BY THE ILLINOIS,
MIAMIS, AND PROBABLY THE SHAWNEES; AND BY THE OTTAWAS. ITS SOURCE IS GIVEN
AS SOUTHEAST OF THE ONEIDA VILLAGE, IN THE COUNTRY OF THE IROQUOIS, AND NOT
FAR FROM THE SOURCE OF THE DELAWARE RIVER. It flows south of the Onondaga, Cayuga,
and Seneca villages, receiving affluents from the direction of the Oneidas and
Onondagas. It runs from east to west, parallel with the eastern half
of the south shore of Lake Erie, and then turns to the southwest, continuing
the latter course until it enters the Casquinampogamou some
three degrees above the mouth of the Wabash.

On the north bank of the Ohio [River], south of Lake Erie, Franquelin
locates a number of village sites, which are all marked as having been
destroyed. Directly south of the eastern shore of the lake is the first
of these settlements, "Kentaienton-ga" ("ga" from "haga" Mohawk for
"people"?; or the locative for "place"?) 19 v[illages] detruits." The names of
two of the villages of the Erie tribe, which was driven from the southern
shore of Lake Erie by the Iroquois in 1656, were "Rique" (or Rigue') and
"Gentaienton". ^ The "Kentaienton-ga" of Franquelin's map is therefore
the same as the "Gentaienton" of the Jesuit chroniclers. "Kentaienton" is an
Iroquois term, meaning "many fields," or "prairies."

West of the "Kentaientonga" village sites, and south of what may be
intended for the present Cuyahoga Bay, Franquelin locates the "Onias-
sont-ke" ("ke", the Iroquois locative "at", Mohawk, "ge") 2 v[illages] detruits."
On most other early maps which have come under the notice of the
writer, the "Oniasontke" people are located south of the Ohio River.
This tribe will be considered in the next chapter.

Some distance below the "Oniassontke", and beyond the southwest
bend of the river, Franquelin shows, on the north bank, "Casa, 1 v[illage]
detruit." "Casa" was an early Mohawk word for "mouth." It may be
intended for the name of an Indian tribe; or, it may mean only,
"cabins destroyed."

(Jesuit Relations, xlii., 187., xlii., 197; Iviii., 75; Ixi., 195, 270.)

When Father Gravier descended the Mississippi in 1700, he wrote that on the
15th of October his party reached the mouth of the Ouabachi (the name then
generally applied to the Ohio River below the mouth of the Wabash River proper).
"We camped in sight of this river, which comes from the South, and empties into the
Mississippi. At its mouth it makes a great basin, two arpents from its discharge.
It is called by the Illinois and by the Ou/Miamis the River of the AKANSEA,
BECAUSE THE AKANSEA FORMERLY DWELT ON IT. THREE BRANCHES ARE ASSIGNED
TO IT; ONE THAT COMES FROM THE NORTHWEST, PASSING BEHIND THE COUNTRY
OF THE OU/MIAMIS, CALLED THE RIVER ST. JOSEPH, WHICH THE INDIANS CALL
PROPERLY, OUABACHI; THE SECOND COMES FROM THE IROQUOIS, AND IT IS THAT
CALLED BY THEM OHIO; AND THE THIRD FROM THE S.S.W., ON WHICH ARE THE
CHAOUANOUA; AND ALL THREE UNITING TO EMPTY INTO THE MISSISSIPPI, IT IS
COMMONLY CALLED OUABACHI; BUT THE ILLINOIS AND THE OTHER INDIANS CALL
IT THE RIVER OF THE AKANSEA."'

[AKANSEA= DeSoto's Aquixo]

[THE THIRD RIVER IS EITHER THE CUMBERLAND OR TENNESSEE; MOST LIKELY THE CUMBERLAND AT THIS TIME]

The Ohio is shown as the Akansea River on Van Keulen's map of
1720, reproduced on the opposite page.

THE OHIO VALLEY BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME

FRANQUELIN'S map of 1688, of which an incomplete copy is printed
by Winsor, shows many variations from his map of 1684. A later
edition, bearing the date of 1708, is printed in Marcel's Reproductions.
On this map the "Ohio, ou La Belle Riviere," takes the place of the
"River St. Louis" or "Casquinampogamou". Its source is given, however,
as in the Tchalaque (Cherokee) country, directly east of its mouth. It
appears to be formed by the junction of the "R. des Tchalaque" and
another stream, not named. A short distance below this junction, is
shown an island in the river, called "I[sle] des Tchalaque, ou des
Casquinampo" (Muscle Shoals?) [LONG ISLAND AT KINGSPORT?].

Three tributaries flow into the Ohio River from the north: the "Ouabache"
so named throughout its course, rising near the western extremity of Lake Erie;
the "Riviere des Iroquois "; and the "Riviere Tsonnontouans " (Senecas). Three
tributaries also of the Wabash are named, all rising south of Lake Erie. These are
given on the map, from north to south, as the "Riviere aux Raisins [grapes]
ou des Vignes" [grape-vines]: "R. Teiocarontiong" ou de la Nation du Chat";
and "Riviere des Chatagniers" [chestnut-trees]. North of the Tchalaque River
are indicated the countries of the "Catoughi, Thahgi, et Tchelaque," which
appear under similar names on Franquelin's map of 1684.

(In the anonymous French map of 1682-90 (No. 3 of the Parkman collection)
reproduced by Winsor and by him called the map of the Basin of the Great Lakes
(also printed in Beauchamp's New York Iroquois, and erroneously labelled Coronelli's
map of 1688), Lake Erie is called " Lake Teiocharontiong, or Erie." Sagard gives the
Huron name for the " cat" (raccoon) from which the Eries took their tribal name, as
"tiron".)

La Salle's own description of the Ohio Valley, written in 1683 or
1684, has been preserved to us in a "leaf detached, without beginning or
end in the handwriting of La Salle," which Margry prints under this
sub-title in his Collections. It may be observed that La Salle himself
did not in 1682, call the Ohio the Casquinampo, as it is named on Franquelin's
map of 1684. In his proces-verbal dated 13th and 14th March,
1682, at the time he took possession in the King's name of the country
of the Arkansas, La Salle speaks of the "mouth of the River Saint
Louis, called Ohio, Olighinsipou, and Chukagoua"; and in his proces-
verbal dated 9 April 1682, at the mouth of the Mississippi he refers to
"the mouth of the grand River Saint Louis, from the coasts of the east...