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Mobile and Tohome occupied Louisiana when Iberville established it
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
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A bare notice of the Mobile occurs also in a letter of 1688. After this no more is heard of the Mobile tribes until Iberville established a post in Biloxi Bay which was to grow into the great French colony of Louisiana. There were then two principal tribes in the region, the Mobile and the Tohome or Thomez, the former on Mobile River, about 2 leagues below the junction of the Alabama and the Tombigbee, while the main settlement of the latter was about McIntosh's Bluff, on the west bank of the latter stream. Penicaut distinguishes a third tribe, already referred to, which he calls Naniaba and also People of the Forks. [Note: Halbert believed that Nanipaena was at Oees Bend on the Alabama River and was that town afterwards indicated as an old site of the Mobile Indians.] This last name was given to them because they lived at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, the former evidently because their settlement was on a bluff or hill. It is still retained in the form Nanna Hubba and in the same locality.1 Since Iberville does not mention this tribe and speaks of encountering the Tohome at the very same place,2 it is probable that they were sometimes considered a part of the latter. The Mobile are, of course, the identical tribe with which De Soto had such a sanguinary encounter. The meaning of the name, properly pronounced Mowil, is uncertain; Mr. Halbert suggests that it is from the Choctaw moeli, to skim, and also to paddle. Since DeSoto's time the tribe had moved much nearer the sea, probably in consequence of that encounter and as a result of later wars with the Alabama. On the French map of De Crenay there is a place marked "Vieux Mobiliens" on the south side of the Alabama, apparently close to Pine Barren Creek, between Wilcox and Dallas Counties, Alabama.3 This was probably a station occupied by the Mobile tribe between the time of De Soto and the period of Iberville. Nothing positive is known regarding the history of the Tohome before they appear in the French narratives. On the De Crenay map above alluded to, however, there is a short affluent of the Alabama below where Montgomery now stands called "Auke Thome," evidently identical with the creek now known as Catoma, the name of which is probably corrupted from Auke Thome. Auke is evidently oke, the Alabama word for "water" or "stream", and the Thome is the spelling for the Tohome tribe used on the same map. The natural conclusion is that the creek was named for the tribe and marked a site which they had formerly occupied.4 Thus they, like the Mobile, would appear to have come from the neighborhood of the Alabama country. Iberville says that Tohome means "Little Chief," but he is evidently mistaken.5 "Little Chief" would require an entirely distinct combination in Choctaw or any related language; the nearest Choctaw word is perhaps tomi, tommi, or tombi, which signifies "to shine," or "radiant," or "sunshine," but we really know nothing about the meaning of the tribal name. In April, 1700, Iberville ascended Pascagoula River to visit the tribes upon it, and there he learned that the village of the Mobile was three days' journey farther on toward the northeast and that they numbered 300 men. The Tohome were said to be one day's journey beyond on the same river of the Mobile and they also were said to have 300 men. On leaving Pascagoula, Iberville selected two of his men to go, with the chief of that nation and his brother, to the Choctaw, Tohome, and Mobile, sending the chief of each nation a present and inviting them to come and enter into relations of friendship with him.1 His people returned in May, having gone as far as the village of the Tohome, but they had turned back there on account of the high waters.2 In the winter of 1700-1701 Bienville sent to the Mobile Indians for corn.3 (Swanton)
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