were merely a southern offshoot of the Creeks or Muscogees. They were
far more numerous than the northwestern Indians, were less nomadic,
and in consequence had more definite possession of particular
localities; so that their lands were more densely peopled.

In all they amounted to perhaps seventy thousand souls.[1] It is more
difficult to tell the numbers of the different tribes; for the division
lines between them were very ill defined, and were subject to wide
fluctuations. Thus the Creeks, the most formidable of all, were made up
of many bands, differing from each other both in race and speech. The
languages of the Chickasaws and Choctaws did not differ more from the
tongue of the Cherokees, than the two divisions of the latter did from
each other. The Cherokees of the hills, the Otari, spoke a dialect that
could not be understood by the Cherokees of the lowlands, or Erati.
Towns or bands continually broke up and split off from their former
associations, while ambitious and warlike chiefs kept forming new
settlements, and if successful drew large numbers of young warriors from
the older communities. Thus the boundary lines between the confederacies
were ever shifting.[2] Judging from a careful comparison of the
different authorities, the following estimate of the numbers of the
southern tribes at the outbreak of the Revolution may be considered as
probably approximately correct.

The Cherokees, some twelve thousand strong,[3] were the mountaineers of
their race. They dwelt among the blue-topped ridges and lofty peaks of
the southern Alleghanies,[4] in the wild and picturesque region where
the present States of Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas
join one another.

To the west of the Cherokees, on the banks of the Mississippi, were