the British gov-
ernment. A short time before' Wayne's victory a part of the Shawano
and Delawares, worn out by nearly twenty years of battle with the
Americans, crossed the Mississippi and settled, by permission of the
Spanish government, upon lands in the vicinity of Cape Girardeau, in
what is now southeastern Missouri, for which they obtained a regular
deed from that government in 1793. 3 Driven out by the Americans
some twenty years later, they removed to Kansas and thence to Indian
territory, where they are now incorporated with their old friends, the
Cherokee.
When the first Cherokee crossed the Mississippi it is impossible to
say, but there was probably never a time in the history of the tribe
when their warriors and hunters were not accustomed to make excur-
sions beyond the great river. According to an old tradition,the
earliest emigration took place soon after the first treaty with Carolina,
when a portion of the tribe, under the leadership of Yunwi-usga'se'ti,
••Dangerous-man," forseeing the inevitable end of yielding to the
demands of tin 3 colonists, refused to have any relations with the white
man, and took up their long march for the unknown West. Commu-
nication was kept up with the home body until after crossing the
Mississippi, when they were lost sight of and forgotten. Long years
'■Claiborne, letter to Jefferson, November 5, 1808, American State Papers, i, p. 755, 1832; Gatschet,
Creek Migration Legend, i, p. 88, 1884.
- Hawkins, 1799. quoted in Gatschet, op. cit., p. 89.
3 See Treaty of St Louis, 1S25, and of Castor hill, 1S52, in Indian Treaties, pp. 388, 539, 1837.
100 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE
afterward a rumor came from