I have seen them in these storms, fire off their guns, pointed toward the sky; some in contempt of heaven, and others through religion—the former, to shew that they were warriors, and not afraid to die in any shape; much less afraid of that threatening troublesome noise: and the latter, because their hearts directed them to assist _Ishtohoollo Eloha_[XVI]. May not this {65} proceed from an oral tradition of the war which the rebellious angels waged against the great Creator; and which the ancient heathens called the war of the giants? Nothing sounds bolder, or is more expressive, than the Cheerake name of thunder, _Eentaquàróske_. It points at the effects and report of the battles, which they imagine the holy people are fighting above. The small-pox, a foreign disease, no way connatural to their healthy climate, they call _Oonatàquára_, imagining it to proceed from the invisible darts of angry fate, pointed against them, for their young people’s vicious conduct. When they say, “I shall shoot,” their term is, _Ake-rooka_. The radix of this word is in the two last syllables; the two first are expressive only of the first person singular; as _Akeeohoosa_, “I am dead, or lost;” and _Akeeohooséra_, “I have lost.” _Rooka_ seems to have a reference to the Hebrew name for the holy Spirit. Footnote XVI: The first lunar eclipse I saw, after I lived with the Indians, was among the Cheerake, An. 1736: and during the continuance of it, their conduct appeared very surprizing to one who had not seen the like before; they all ran wild, this way and that way, like lunatics, firing their guns, whooping and hallooing, beating of kettles, ringing horse-bells, and making the most horrid noises that human beings possibly could. This was the effect of their natural philosophy, and done to assist the suffering moon. And it is an opinion of some of the East-Indians, that eclipses are occasioned by a great monster resembling a bull-frog, which now and then gnaws one edge of the sun and moon, and would totally destroy them, only that they frighten it away, and by that means preserve them and their light. (A). Mooney says that the belief that the eclipse monster can be so frightened away was universal among primitives. (W) The most southern old town, which the Chikkasah first settled, after the Chokchoomah,[27], Choktah, and they, separated on our side of the Missisippi, into three different tribes, they called _Yanèka_, thereby inverting _Yahkàne_, the name of the earth; as their former brotherhood was then turned into enmity[XVII]. The bold Creeks on the opposite, or north side of them, they named _Yahnàbe_, “killing to God,” or devoting to death; for the mid consonant expresses the present time. And their proper names of persons, and places, are always expressive of certain circumstances, or things, drawn from roots, that convey a fixed determinate meaning. Footnote XVII: