are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma, though their original homeland was in the southeastern United States.

In the 16th century, the Yuchi lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley. By the late 17th century, they had migrated south to Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina, settling near the Muscogee (Creek). Some also migrated to the Florida panhandle. After suffering heavy losses from epidemic diseases and warfare in the 18th century, the remaining Yuchi bands were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory in the 1830s, alongside their allies, the Muscogee.

History

At the time of first European contact, the Yuchi people lived in what is now eastern Tennessee.

thumb|left|250px|"Youchine" (Yuchi) on an annotated copy of a [[Catawba people|Catawba deerhide map of the tribes between Charleston (left) and Virginia (right) following the displacements of a century of disease, enslavement, and the 1715–17 Yamasee War]]

Yuchi towns were later documented in western South Carolina and northern Georgia, where the tribe had migrated to escape pressure from the Cherokee. "Mount Pleasant" was noted as being on the Savannah River in present-day Effingham County, Georgia, from about 1722 to about 1750. To take advantage of trade, the British established a trading post and small military garrison there, which they called Mount Pleasant.

"Euchee Town" (also called Uche Town), a large settlement on the Chattahoochee River, was documented from the middle to late 18th century. It was located near Euchee (or Uche) Creek, about ten miles downriver from the Muscogee settlement of Coweta Old Town. The naturalist William Bartram visited Euchee Town in 1778. In his letters he ranked it as the largest and most compact Indian town he had ever encountered, with large, well-built houses. US Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins also visited the town and described the Yuchi as "more orderly and industrious" than the other tribes of the Creek Confederacy. The Yuchi began to move on, some into the Florida panhandle.

250px|thumb|Yuchi Town, painting by Martin Pate (1990) of an 18th-century village, based on archaeological data. The site of Yuchi Town is within the area of present-day [[Fort Benning, Georgia.]]

In the late 18th century, English colonists noted Patsiliga, a settlement on the Flint River. Other Yuchi settlements may have been those villages noted on the Oconee River near Uchee Creek in Wilkinson County, Georgia, and on Brier Creek in Burke or Screven counties, also in Georgia. A Yuchi town was known to exist from 1746 to 1751 at the site of present-day Silver Bluff in Aiken County, South Carolina, which developed in the later 18th century.

During the Creek War of 1813–1814, which overlapped the War of 1812, many Yuchi joined the Red Sticks party, traditionalists opposed to the Muscogee people of the Lower Towns, who had adopted aspects of European-American culture. Euchee Town decayed. The Yuchi tribe became one of the poorest of the Muscogee communities, at the same time gaining a bad reputation. The two leaders were imprisoned for years in Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida.

From 1890 to 1895, the Dawes Commission considered the Yuchi in Indian Territory to be an autonomous tribe. It registered tribal members preparatory to allotment of communal tribal lands in Indian Territory to individual households of members. Some 1,200 tribal members were registered in those years. The Dawes Commission later decided to legally classify the Yuchi as part of the Muscogee Nation, in an effort to simplify the process of land allotment. But this decision interrupted the autonomy of the people and their record of historical continuity as a recognized tribe.

Current status

thumb|340px|A Yuchi flute

The Yuchi people are enrolled in federally recognized tribes, particularly the Muscogee Nation, who host the Euchee Language Program.

In the 1990s, the Yuchi Tribal Organization based in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, petitioned the US federal government to gain federal recognition as an independent tribe. In 2000, the Bureau of Indian Affairs denied the petition.

As of 1997, the Yuchi tribe had a formal enrollment of 249 members. Other Yuchi descendants are already enrolled in other tribes, such as the Muscogee. Most Yuchi are of multi-tribal descent; some are citizens of other tribes, such as the Shawnee.

The Euchee Tribe of Indians, while not federally recognized, has their headquarters in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Their tribal chairmen are co-chairs Felix Brown Jr. and Clinton Sago.

James Anaya, United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, visited the Yuchi community. Tracie Revis (Yuchi) gave a speech defining the importance of federal recognition. He acknowledged the declaration by the UN on the Rights of Indigenous People that states "that we have the right of self-determination and by virtue of that right- we may freely determine our political status and freely pursue our economic, social and cultural development."

An estimated 2,000 persons are ethnically Yuchi. They are descendants of some 1,100 persons recorded by the Indian Claims Commission in 1950, which was settling compensation claims dating from allotments.

The Yuchi continue their important ceremonies, such as the Green Corn Ceremony of late summer. They maintain three ceremonial grounds in Oklahoma. Some members belong to the Native American Church and Methodist congregations.

Yuchi language

thumb|right|Sisters Maxine Wildcat Barnett (left) and Josephine Wildcat Bigler; two among the elderly speakers of Yuchi, visiting their grandmother's grave in a cemetery behind Pickett Chapel in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. According to the sisters, their grandmother had insisted that Yuchi be their first language.

The Yuchi language is a linguistic isolate, not known to be related to any other language. According to a 2011 documentary on the Yuchi language, the number of first-language speakers had declined to five by 2011.

Young Yuchi people have learned the language in recent years and are continuing to do so. Yuchi language classes are being taught in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, in an effort led by Richard Grounds and the Euchee Language Project.

The Yuchi people and language are featured in a chapter in Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages (2003), a book on endangered languages.

Notable people

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  • Timpoochee Barnard, member of the Creek Nation Council
  • Uchee Billy (died 1837), warrior and chief
  • Sam Story, 19th-century chief
  • Richard Ray Whitman (born 1949), artist, poet, actor

See also

  • Indigenous peoples of the Southeastern Woodlands
  • Yuchi language

References

Citations

Bibliography

  • Jackson, Jason Baird. "Yuchi." Handbook of North American Indians: Southeast. Eds. William C. Sturtevant and Raymond D. Fogelson. Volume 14. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2004. .

Further reading

  • Mark Abley, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
  • Jason Jackson, Yuchi Ceremonial Life: Performance, Meaning, and Tradition in a Contemporary American Indian Community, University of Nebraska Press, 2003.
  • Jason Baird Jackson (ed.), Yuchi Indian Histories Before the Removal Era. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
  • Frank Speck, Ethnology of the Yuchi Indians (reprint), University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
  • Daniel Elliott, Ye Pleasant Mount: 1989&1990 Excavations. The LAMAR Institute, University of Georgia, 1991.
  • The Euchee Language Project
  • Memoirs of Jeremiah Curtin in the Indian Territory, pp.&nbsp;327, 333–335. 19th-century ethnographer's account of learning Yuchi language in 1883 in a Yuchi settlement 55 miles from Muskogee, Oklahoma. Electronic record maintained by Library of Congress, accessed January 15, 2007.
  • Uchee Path historical marker
  • Joseph Mahan Collection, Columbus State University Archives