Cherokee--This name occurs in fully fifty different spellings. In the standard recognized form, which dates back at least to 1708, it has given name to counties in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, within the ancient territory of the tribe, and to as many as twenty other geographic locations within the United States. In the Eastern or Lower dialect, with which the English settlers first became familiar, the form is Tsa'ragi', whence we get Cherokee. In the other dialects the form is Tsa'lagi'. It is evidently foreign to the tribe, as is frequently the case in tribal names, and in all probability is of Choctaw origin, having come up from the south through the medium of the Mobilian trade jargon. It will be noted that De Soto, whose chroniclers first use the word, in the form Chalaque, obtained his interpreters from the Gulf coast of Florida. Fontanedo, writing about the year 1575, mentions other inland tribes known to the natives of Florida under names which seem to be of Choctaw origin; for instance, the Canogacole, interpreted "wicked people," the final part being apparently the Choctaw word okla or ogula, "people", which appears also in Pascagoula, Bayou Goula, and Pensacola. Shetimasha, Atakapa, and probably Biloxi, are also Choctaw names, although the tribes themselves are of other origins. As the Choctaw held much of the Gulf coast and were the principal traders of that region, it was natural that explorers landing among them should adopt their names for the more remote tribes. The name seems to refer to the fact that the tribe occupied a cave country. In the "Choctaw Leksikon" of Allen Wright, 1880, page 87, we find choluk, a noun, signifying a hole, cavity, pit, chasm, etc., and as an adjective signifying hollow. In the manuscript Choctaw dictionary of Cyrus Byington, in the library of the Bureau of American Ethnology, we find chiluk, noun, a hole, cavity, hollow, pit, etc., with a statement that in its usual application it means a cavity or hollow, and not a hole through anything. As an adjective, the same form is given as signifying hollow, having a hole, as iti chiluk, a hollow tree; aboha chiluk, an empty house; chiluk chukoa, to enter a hole. Other noun forms given are chuluk and achiluk in the singular and chilukoa in the plural, all signifying hole, pit, or cavity. Verbal forms are chilukikbi, to make a hole, and chilukba, to open and form a fissure.