Eskippakithiki, The Last Indian Town in Kentucky - The Filson ...

362 The Fdson Club History Quarterly [ Vol. 6
of 1720 (but'made from data probably gathered four or five years
previously) shows a Shawnee town there, which must have been a
transient town, as it does not occur on other maps, before nor
after. Because there is no record of southern Shawnees settling
anywhere else save in the Delaware country of Pennsylvania, and
because this is the only group of Shawnces which the Cherokees
kept away from the roads of eastern Tennessee and southwestern
Virginia, which led to the Delaware country, these must have
been the founders of the new Eskippakithiki in Kentucky. All
other Shawnee movements from the South about this time seem to
be accounted for by their going to the Delawares in Pennsylvania ,
or to the Creeks.
On De Lisle's map of 1718 there is a "Tongoria" town in northeastern
Kentucky. This word is thought to be a variant of "Taogria"--!ndians
whom the French missionary, Father Gravier, in
his Relation of 1700, says "spoke the Chaouanon tongue." The
location of this town is not just where Eskippakithiki would be,
but, of a map made up from verbal reports of Indians and ignorant
traders, too much exactness must not be demanded. As we
find no evidence of any other Indian town in Kentucky, at that
time nor subsequently, we may safely begin to date the history of
Estdppakithiki from a year or so before 1718, the date of this map.
The late Dr. Cyrus Thomas, of the national Bureau of Ethnology,
thought it was established about 1724--but upon what
authority is unknown. Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, one of our greatest
authorities on the eastern Indians, thought it was founded by
those Shawnees who went from Carolina in 1731., But the report
of James LeTort, the Pennsylvania Indian agent, shows that they
came directly to the Potomac and thence to Pennsylvania.,° Besides,
the Pennsylvania Shawnees were of the Hathawekela
branch of the Shawnecs, while the Eskippakithikians were of the
Pict branch, for which reason the traders always called it The
Little Pict Town, to distinguish it from the larger Pict town near
present Piqua, Ohio.
Colonel John Johnston says that Black Hoof was born in 1731 ;
and Black Hoof, while visiting the people of Indian 01d Fields in
1816, told them that he was born there. Colonel Johnston also
says that Black Hoof told him he was born in the South and remembered
bathing in the sea when he was a boy. If he was born
at Eskippakithild in 1731 and his family joined Chartier--of