This tradition is corroborated by a current report of the old Chikkasah Indians to our traders, “that about forty years since, there came from Mexico some of the old Chikkasah nation, (the Chichemicas, according to the Spanish accounts) in quest of their brethren, as far north as the Aquahpah nation, about 130 miles above the Nachee old towns, on the south side of the Missisippi; but through French policy, they were either killed, or sent back, so as to prevent their opening a brotherly intercourse, as they had proposed.” And it is worthy of notice, that the Muskohgeh cave, out of which one of their politicians persuaded them their ancestors formerly ascended to their present terrestrial abode, lies in the Nanne Hamgeh old town,[88] inhabited by the Missisippi-Nachee Indians, which is one of the most western parts of their old-inhabited country. I hope I shall be excused in reciting their ancient oral tradition, from father to son to the present time. They say, that one of their cunning old religious men finding that religion did not always thrive best, resolved with himself to impose on his friends credulity, and alter in some respects their old tradition; he accordingly pretended to have held for a long time a continual intercourse with their subterranean progenitors in a cave, above 600 miles to the westward of Charles-town in South-Carolina, adjoining to the old Chikkasah trading path; this people were then possest of every thing convenient for human life, and he promised them fully to supply their wants, {195} in a constant manner, without sweating in the field; the most troublesome of all things to manly brisk warriors. He insisted, that all who were desirous of so natural and beneficial a correspondence, should contribute large presents, to be delivered on the embassy, to their brethren—terræ filii,—to clear the old chain of friendship from the rust it had contracted, through the fault of cankering time. He accordingly received presents from most of the people, to deliver them to their beloved subterranean kindred: but it seems, they shut up the mouth of the cave, and detained him there in order to be purified.