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What became of Tamahita
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
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A little later Adair enumerates the "Ta-me-tah" among those tribes which the Muskogee had induced to incorporate with them.2 They appear among other Lower Creek towns in the enumeration of 1750, placed between the northern Sawokli town and the Kasihta." On one of the D'Anville maps of early date we find "Tamaita" laid down on the west bank of the Coosa not far above its junction with the Tallapoosa. The Koasati town was just below. In the list of Creek towns given in 1761 in connection with the assignment of traderships we find this entry: "27 Coosawtee including Tomhetaws." The hunters of the two numbered 125 and they were located "close to the French barracks" where was the Koasati town from very early times.4 Thus it appears that some at least of the Tamahita had moved over among the Upper Creeks sometime between 1733 and 1761 or perhaps earlier. Bernard Romans, on January 17, 1772, when descending the Tombigbee River, mentions passing the "Tomeehettee bluff, where formerly a tribe of that nation resided,"5 and Hamilton identifies this bluff with Mclntosh's Bluff, a former location of the Tohome tribe.6 It is probable that some Tamahita moved over to this river at the same time as the Koasati and Okchai, a little before Romans's time, and afterwards returned with them to the upper Alabama. Memory of them remained long among the Lower Creeks, since an aged informant of the writer, a Hitchiti Indian, born in the old country, claimed to be descended from them. According to him there was a tradition that the Tamahita burned a little trading post belonging to the English, whereupon the English called upon their Creek allies to punish the aggressors. The Tamahita were much more numerous than their opponents, but were not very warlike, and were driven south to the very point of Florida, where they escaped in boats to some islands. This tradition appears to be the result of an erroneous identification of the Tamahita with the Timucua. There is no evidence that the Creeks had a war with the former people. (Swanton)
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