Note 106 — AN ACCOUNT OF THE KATAHBA, CHEERAKE, MUSKOHGE, CHOKTAH, AND CHIKKASAH NATIONS:

One of several attempts of the governments of South Carolina and Georgia to persuade the Chickasaws, hard pressed by the French and their Choctaw allies, to leave their own country and settle on the Savannah River. In 1742 Gov. Bull, of South Carolina, warned Lord Wilmington that French policy looked to the extirpation of the Chickasaws. The effort to use Adair’s influence on his friends, the Chickasaws, must have been about 1748, when Vaudreuil was concerting plans to attack them, as he did in 1752. The Chickasaws were, indeed, sorely pressed, and their plea went to the “King of Carolina” for the return to the nation of the Eastern Chickasaws then living on the Savannah, in order “to enable us to keep our land. ... We hope you will think of us in our poverty, as we have not had the liberty of hunting for three years. We have had enough to do to defend our lands and prevent our women and children being made slaves of the French.” S. C. Archives (1756) 5 Indian Book, 123. Two years before (1754) the Cherokees, induced by the English of South Carolina, actually sent a delegation to the Chickasaws “in order to escort the remains of that brave people into the Cherokee nation.” All persuasion was resisted, and the Chickasaws held their beloved land.