Note 1 — A HISTORY OF THE NORTH-AMERICAN INDIANS, THEIR CUSTOMS, &c.
Reading edition
The earliest home of the Shawnee Indians in historic times was on the Cumberland River, in Tennessee, which for a long period was called by the French, and so named on their maps, Chaouanon (Shawnee) Riviere. A branch of the tribe moved from there southward across the Tennessee where the Savannah River took their name. Shortly before 1715 the Chickasaw and Cherokee Indians combined and drove the Shawnees from their long-established settlements on the Cumberland. Haywood says that a part of the tribe returned to the region (about 1745) to be again expelled, going to the Creeks.
The true date seems to be 1749. In a letter of May 4th of that year, Comte de Jony wrote that the “Chaouanons, because of the antipathy of most of the other nations to them, had decided to separate into two bands.... The latter band, after ascending a part of the river of the Cherokis [Tennessee] decided to go and join the Creeks.” Wis. His. Col. XVIII. It is to this band that Adair refers, probably.
The Shawnees, after a stay in Pennsylvania, had settlements on Scioto River in the Ohio Country. They were known as “gypsies of the forest,” and a wandering band is referred to by Adair. Prior to 1700 the Chickasaws and the Shawnees had as allies fought the Illinois Indians. Shea, Early Mississippi Voyages, 60, 66, 120. Lawson (1709) describes them as formerly living on the waters of the Mississippi, “and removed thence to the head of one of the rivers of South Carolina” (the Savannah). History of North Carolina, 100.
For generations, from their stronghold on the Scioto, they made war on the Overhill Cherokees, with only brief intervals of peace. On the Shawnees, see: Haywood, History of Tennessee, 426; Hanna, The Wilderness Trail, II, 240; Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, XL, 145; Margry, Decouvertes, III, 589; Schoolcraft, Historical Information ... Indian Tribes, IV, 256; Swanton, Early History of the Creeks, 317, 415; Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren Among the Indians, pt. ch. 10, and Mooney’s Myths of the Cherokees, 494.