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What became of the Tama
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
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The enumeration of 1750 places [Tama] between the Hitchiti and the Oconee.4 Hawkins enumerates them as one of those tribes out of which the Seminole Nation had been formed.8 Since all of the others mentioned by him were still represented among the Lower Creeks it is probable that this tribe had emigrated in its entirety. It is wanting in the lists of Bartram and Swan, and from the census of 1832, but appears in that contained in Morse's Report to the Secretary of War (1822), and also in the diary of Manuel Garcia (1800), where it is given as a Lower Creek town. It was then on the Apalachicola River, 7 miles above the Ocheese.7 It so appears on the Melish map of 1818-19, where it is called " Tomathlee-Seminole " (pl. 8). These are the last references to it, and it was probably swallowed up in the Mikasuki band of Seminole. It should be observed that the name of this tribe, or a name very similar, appears twice far to the north in the Cherokee country. One town bearing it was "on Valley River, a few miles above Murphy, about the present Tomatola, in Cherokee County, North Carolina." The other was "on Little Tennessee River, about Tomotley ford, a few miles above Tellico River, in Monroe County, Tennessee." Mooney, from whom these quotations are made, adds that the name does not appear to be Cherokee.8 This fact should be considered in connection with a similar north and south division of the Tuskegee, Koasati, and Yuchi. Gatschet states definitely that one of these Cherokee towns was settled by Creek Tamali Indians,5 but this appears to have been merely a guess on his part. The name Tamali suggests the Hitchiti form of the name of a Creek clan, the Tamalgi, Hitchiti Tamali, and it is possible that there is historical meaning in this resemblance, but there is just enough difference between the pronunciations of the two to render it doubtful. (Swanton)
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