The Creeks and Cherokees were thus by their position the barrier tribes
of the South, who had to stand the brunt of our advance, and who acted
as a buffer between us and the French and Spaniards of the Gulf and the
lower Mississippi. Their fate once decided, that of the Chickasaws and
Chocktaws inevitably followed.

The customs and the political and social systems of these two tribes
were very similar; and those of their two western neighbors were
merely ruder copies thereof. They were very much further advanced than
were the Algonquin nations of the north.

Unlike most mountaineers the Cherokees were not held to be very
formidable fighters, when compared with their fellows of the
lowlands.[8] In 1760 and 1761 they had waged a fierce war with the
whites, had ravaged the Carolina borders, had captured British forts,
and successfully withstood British armies; but though they had held
their own in the field, it had been at the cost of ruinous losses. Since
that period they had been engaged in long wars with the Chickasaws and
Creeks, and had been worsted by both. Moreover, they had been much
harassed by the northern Indians. So they were steadily declining in
power and numbers.[9]

Though divided linguistically into two races, speaking different
dialects, the Otari and Erati, the political divisions did not follow
the lines of language. There were three groups of towns, the Upper,
Lower, and Middle; and these groups often acted independently of one
another. The Upper towns lay for the most part on the Western Waters, as
they were called by the Americans,--the streams running into the
Tennessee. Their inhabitants were known as Overhill Cherokees and were
chiefly Otari; but the towns were none of them permanent, and sometimes