Maskokálgi, the Creek community, the Creek people, the Creek Indians. English authors write this name Muscogee, Muskhogee, and its plural Muscogulgee. The first syllable, as pronounced by the Creek Indians, contains a clear short a. ... The accent is usually laid on the middle syllable: Maskóki, Maskógi. None of the tribes are able to explain the name from their own language. ... Why did the English colonists call them Creek Indians? Because, when the English traders entered the Maskoki country from Charleston or Savannah, they had to cross a number of streams or creeks, especially between the Chatahuchi and Savannah rivers. Gallatin thought it probable that the inhabitants of the country adjacent to Savannah river were called Creeks from an early time. ... In the southern part of the Cha'hta territory several tribes, represented to be of Cha'hta lineage, appear as distinct from the main body, and are always mentioned separately. The French colonists, in whose annals they figure extensively, call them Mobilians, Tohomes, Pascogoulas, Biloxis, Mougoulachas, Bayogoulas and Humas (Oumas). They have all disappeared in our epoch, with the exception of the Biloxi [Major Powell, in the Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, places the Biloxi in the Siouan Family], [See Note, Appendix E.] of whom scattered remnants live in the forests of Louisiana, south of the Red River." _A. S. Gatschet, A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians, volume 1, part 1._ "The Uchees and the Natches, who are both incorporated in the [Muskhogee or Creek] confederacy, speak two distinct languages altogether different from the Muskhogee. The Natches, a residue of the well-known nation of that name, came from the banks of the Mississippi, and joined the Creeks less than one hundred years ago. The original seats of the Uchees were east of the Coosa and probably of the Chatahoochee; and they consider themselves as the most ancient inhabitants of the country. They may have been the same nation which is called Apalaches in the accounts of De Soto's expedition. ... The four great Southern nations, according to the estimates of the War Department ... consist now [1836] of 67,000 souls, viz.: The Cherokees, 15,000; the Choctaws (18,500), the Chicasas (5,500), 24,000; the Muskhogees, Seminoles, and Hitchittees, 26,000; the Uchees, Alibamons, Coosadas, and Natches, 2,000. The territory west of the Mississippi, given or offered to them by the United States in exchange for their lands east of that river, contains 40,000,000 acres, exclusively of what may be allotted to the Chicasas." _A. Gallatin, Synopsis of the Indian Tribes (Archæologia Americana, volume 2), section 3._ See below: SEMINOLES. AMERICAN ABORIGINES: Musquito, or Mosquito Indians.