YUCHI

The language of the Yuchi is thought to have elements in common with dialects of the Siouan language family. Their ancestors perhaps long ago split off from other Siouan-speaking peoples. Their name, also spelled Euchee and pronounced YOO-chee, means “those far away.”

The tribe’s earliest known location was in present-day eastern Tennessee. But the Yuchi came to live in territory now part of many different states, including Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Scholars classify the Yuchi as SOUTHEAST INDIANS. Typical to the region, they placed their villages and planted crops along river valleys and lived by farming, hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plant foods.

Spanish explorers recorded the earliest known history of the Yuchi. Hernando de Soto’s expedition of 1539—43 encountered them. Other Spaniards mention various bands of Yuchi under different names in their historical accounts. Boyano, a member of Juan Pardo’s expedition, claimed to have battled and killed many Yuchi on two different occasions in the mountains of either North Carolina or Tennessee. Because the explorers’ maps were inexact, it is difficult to pinpoint the locations.

In the 1630s, various Yuchi bands swept south out of the Appalachian highlands to raid Spanish settlements and missions in Florida. Some of these Yuchi settled in APALACHEE country.

In the 1670s, various Englishmen, exploring southwest-ward out of Virginia and the Carolinas, made contact with Yuchi still in Tennessee and North Carolina. In the following years, many Yuchi bands, probably because of pressure

Yuchi Feather Dance wand

From hostile SHAWNEE, migrated out of the highlands, following the Savannah River toward the coastal country in Georgia. Some among those who previously had gone to Florida also migrated to Georgia. Both groups of Yuchi became allies of the English colonists and helped them in slave raids on mission Indians of Spanish Florida, including the Apalachee, CALUSA, and TIMUCUA.

By the mid-1700s, the Spanish military and mission systems in Florida were weakened. From that period into the 1800s, many Yuchi migrated southward and settled on lands formerly held by other tribes.

The Yuchi who stayed in Tennessee and North Carolina merged with the CHEROKEE; those who settled in Georgia joined the CREEK; and those who migrated to Florida united with the SEMINOLE.

The Yuchi among the Creek relocated to the Indian Territory with them in 1832. Although part of the Creek Nation legally, Yuchi descendants have maintained many of their own customs and presently hold ceremonies at three sacred sites in Creek County, Oklahoma: Polecat (the “mother ground”), Duck Creek, and Sand Creek. During the 1990s, the Yuchi Tribal organization sought federal acknowledgement but was turned down in 1999.