NATIVE AMERICANS
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PINEY WOODS HISTORY
The history of Native Americans in Northwest Florida is complex, and I
have not delved into it very far. It may well be that some of the families
named in this website have blood ties to the tribes or people named in the
excerpts and paraphrase below, which mention some of Chief Sam Story's
descendants described in the unpublished FWP typescript #1, found on the
Documents tab, but I have no certain knowledge at this time. Much more
research is needed here.
the Holmes-Walton-Washington area shared Euchee Indian ancestry. Here is
one rather romantic story that can be pieced together from the FWP typescripts
as well as from some more reliable published sources (6 and 13) named in the
excerpts that follow.
Before the Euchees decided to leave Walton County, an "Indian prince" named
Jim Crow (no connection with the segregation laws called by that name), "a tall,
agile, stately, manly fellow," eldest son of Chief Sam Story of the local Euchee
Indians, fell deeply in love with Harriet, a beautiful, blue-eyed "house servant,"
"more than two-thirds white," who came to Walton County in 1826 from North
Carolina with a white family, the McKinnons. After gaining the consent of
Harriet's owners, they "jumped a broom" in the chief's great tent and were
married "according to the Euchee custom." Jim Crow and Harriet (who
remained a slave) took up residence near the McKinnon house in a cottage
built for them "at the end of the row of the Negro quarters," where they lived
happily and produced a daughter, Eliza.
When the Euchees migrated to southern Florida in 1832, shortly after Sam
Story's death, Harriet refused to go with her husband, who had succeeded his
father as chief of the tribe, so she and Eliza stayed behind with the McKinnons.
When Eliza grew up, she married a "yellow boy" (mulatto) named Jim Harris,
son of a "servant" who came from South Carolina with another white family, the
McLains. Their daughter, Lovey, married another "yellow boy" named Walton
Potter about 1875; together, they had a large family of good-looking children
who "married into another half-breed family," not named. It is also said that
other Euchees besides Jim Crow left many descendants, some "of Yuchi
aristocracy," in the area. (Source 13)
In 2001, a controversy arose when some residents objected to naming the new
South Walton High School after Chief Sam Story, whose given name was
Timpoochee Kinnard. A Fort Walton Beach newspaper story (Source 12)
about the controversy contains this intriguing but unsourced statement: "A
Euchee Indian, Kinnard’s son, Jim Crow, married Harriet McKinnon, the
daughter of Scottish Col. Neill [sic] McKinnon. Col. McKinnon was one of the
original settlers of Walton County." Thus it may well be that Harriet’s
descendants share some Scottish ancestry with the prominent McKinnon line,
and could also help explain why Harriet chose to stay behind, even in slavery,
when her husband led the tribe to new territory.
The following excerpts were written by E. W. Carswell, a Holmes County
native, local historian, and longtime staff writer for the Pensacola News-
Journal, and are taken from his books Holmesteading: The History of
Holmes County, Florida (1986) and Washington: Florida’s Twelfth County
(1991), both published at Chipley, Florida, by the author.
Washington, pp. 6-7, 9: The Choctawhatchee Basin . . . was a favored
hunting ground for Indians thousands of years before the first European
explorer reported having reached the region. . . . The abundance and
distribution of the artifacts indicate that the region may have been inhabited by
Indians for 7,000 to 10,000 years . . . . Names of most southeastern U. S.
Indians prior to DeSoto’s time remain unknown . . . .
Virtually wiped out by the appearance of the Europeans, these Indians gave
way to other bands who filled the vacuum left by their demise. Among those
sometimes identified with the Alabama-West Florida-South Georgia area were
the Chatots, Yuchis (Euchees, Uchees), Okchais, Tawasas, Pawoktis,
Apalachees, Yamasees (Emussees), Apalachicolas, Amacanos, Muklasas,
Muskogees, Hitchitis, Sawoklis (Sabacolas), Chiahas (Chehaws), Eufalas,
Koasatis (Coosadas, Choushattas, Shatis), Pensacolas, Mobiles, Pakanas,
Tukabachees, and Seminoles.
Many of those named were members of or associated with the Creek
Confederation, which was built around several dominant tribes of Muskogee
Indians with whom most of the smaller tribes were affiliated. The Muskogees
were better known as the “Creeks.” Their numbers were estimated at from
20,000 to 25,000 in 1840, soon after they had been moved west of the
Mississippi River. In earlier years the population was undoubtedly much larger.
. . .
The Yuchi (Euchee) Indians may be best remembered because of their
identification with Alabama, Georgia and Florida communities into the 1830’s.
They were geographically situated in a manner suggesting constant passage
over the entire Choctawhatchee-Pea River Basin for many decades, if not
centuries. Chroniclers of the DeSoto expedition listed the Yuchi under the name
Chisca after finding them established in what is now eastern Tennessee. They
were one of the few tribes in eastern North America of independent linguistic
stock. Their language was not related to Muskogee and was difficult for other
people to understand.
Holmesteading, pp. 26-28: During the 1600’s and early 1700’s, the tribe
moved southward and various bands settled temporarily in several different
areas [including western Florida and along the Savannah river in Georgia]. . . .
These Yuchis continued to live in the area known today as the Euchee Valley
and environs until sometime before 1761, when they settled with the Upper
Creeks near the Tukabachee. . . . A band of Yuchis apparently returned to
their old tribal grounds in West Florida, possibly after the territory was acquired
by the United States [in 1819]. They were under the leadership of Timpoochee
Kinnard, otherwise known as Sam Story. [p. 76: Chief Sam Story . . . the son
of a Scotsman, Timothy Kinnard, and a Yuchi woman.] They climbed aboard
their canoes at Story’s Landing, on the Choctawhatchee southeast of today’s
Red Bay, in 1832 and headed southward. It is assumed that those surviving the
long journey to an unspecified coastal destination either joined the Seminoles or
were transported to Oklahoma for resettlement.
John Love McKinnon [a local historian and son of Colonel John L.
McKinnon], in his History of Walton County [1911], gives a sorrowful
account of their departure and of the death of Chief Sam Story as the journey
was about to begin. Story’s grave is near their riverside departure point. Judge
Ira A. Hutchinson, in his book Some Passed This Way [1965], elaborates on
the story by recalling that Chief Story had three sons, Jim Crow, Swift Hunter
and Sleeping Fire, and three daughters, Leaping Water, Quiet Water and
Round Water. He tells of the courtship and marriage of Jim Crow, the Indian
prince and heir to the chieftain’s title, to Harriet, a mulatto slave girl [owned by
Colonel McKinnon] . . . .
Jim Crow and Harriet had a daughter, Eliza, who married Jim Harris, a mulatto,
and their daughter, Lovey, married Walton Potter, and they “raised a large
family of boys and girls."
The younger McKinnon, whose book was published in 1912, wrote that “the
girls are handsome, with long straight black hair and prominent cheek bones,
showing more of the Sam Story race than the mother. . . The old chief is not left
without a representative in the land he loved so well.” . . . That land, for
purposes of this historical record, included all that adjoined the
Choctawhatchee River and extended many miles mostly west of the river.
Other representatives of the tribe descended from Yuchis other than Jim Crow
are said on respected oral authority to be citizens of Walton, Holmes,
Washington and other nearby counties. The descendants of Jim Crow and
Harriet, at any rate, have a heritage of Yuchi aristocracy.
Washington, p. 9: Most of the Walton County Euchees were transported,
along with several other small West Florida bands, west of the Mississippi
River by U. S. troops. A few, however, may have joined the Seminoles in
Central and South Florida.
Their Kin, Volume I: Gilli(e)s, Padgett, Arrant, McQuagge, McLennan,
published by the author at Enterprise, Alabama, 1984, pp. 1-5:
In the spring of 1820, Neill McLennan and brother-in-law Daniel Campbell
moved their families from Richmond County, North Carolina, to Walton
County, Florida, where they were invited by Chief Sam Story to settle on lands
adjoining his on Bruce Creek in the Euchee Valley. These Scots from North
Carolina first camped near Pensacola and met the Chief in town when he was
there trading for supplies. After becoming the first white settlers in Walton
County, they were soon joined by other relatives and friends, and were
delighted to make their homes in the unspoiled wilderness.
However, by 1832, other white people had moved into the area and were
wantonly destroying the wildlife as well as starting forest fires. Both the
McLennans and old Chief Story decided to depart for better places; the Chief
sent his sons to scout for lands to the east, while many of the McLennans and
their kin decided to move to Texas, where they were early settlers of what later
was named McLennan County.
Chief Sam Story died just before his tribe moved, and is buried south of the
fork of Bruce Creek and the Choctawhatchee River. After three weeks of
mourning, about 500 Euchees went southward to the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico, then traveled eastward, both by land and by water. Nothing further
was heard of them.
have not delved into it very far. It may well be that some of the families
named in this website have blood ties to the tribes or people named in the
excerpts and paraphrase below, which mention some of Chief Sam Story's
descendants described in the unpublished FWP typescript #1, found on the
Documents tab, but I have no certain knowledge at this time. Much more
research is needed here.
- “DESCENDANTS OF YUCHI ARISTOCRACY”
the Holmes-Walton-Washington area shared Euchee Indian ancestry. Here is
one rather romantic story that can be pieced together from the FWP typescripts
as well as from some more reliable published sources (6 and 13) named in the
excerpts that follow.
Before the Euchees decided to leave Walton County, an "Indian prince" named
Jim Crow (no connection with the segregation laws called by that name), "a tall,
agile, stately, manly fellow," eldest son of Chief Sam Story of the local Euchee
Indians, fell deeply in love with Harriet, a beautiful, blue-eyed "house servant,"
"more than two-thirds white," who came to Walton County in 1826 from North
Carolina with a white family, the McKinnons. After gaining the consent of
Harriet's owners, they "jumped a broom" in the chief's great tent and were
married "according to the Euchee custom." Jim Crow and Harriet (who
remained a slave) took up residence near the McKinnon house in a cottage
built for them "at the end of the row of the Negro quarters," where they lived
happily and produced a daughter, Eliza.
When the Euchees migrated to southern Florida in 1832, shortly after Sam
Story's death, Harriet refused to go with her husband, who had succeeded his
father as chief of the tribe, so she and Eliza stayed behind with the McKinnons.
When Eliza grew up, she married a "yellow boy" (mulatto) named Jim Harris,
son of a "servant" who came from South Carolina with another white family, the
McLains. Their daughter, Lovey, married another "yellow boy" named Walton
Potter about 1875; together, they had a large family of good-looking children
who "married into another half-breed family," not named. It is also said that
other Euchees besides Jim Crow left many descendants, some "of Yuchi
aristocracy," in the area. (Source 13)
In 2001, a controversy arose when some residents objected to naming the new
South Walton High School after Chief Sam Story, whose given name was
Timpoochee Kinnard. A Fort Walton Beach newspaper story (Source 12)
about the controversy contains this intriguing but unsourced statement: "A
Euchee Indian, Kinnard’s son, Jim Crow, married Harriet McKinnon, the
daughter of Scottish Col. Neill [sic] McKinnon. Col. McKinnon was one of the
original settlers of Walton County." Thus it may well be that Harriet’s
descendants share some Scottish ancestry with the prominent McKinnon line,
and could also help explain why Harriet chose to stay behind, even in slavery,
when her husband led the tribe to new territory.
- * * * * *
- INDIAN PEOPLES IN THE CHOCTAWHATCHEE BASIN
The following excerpts were written by E. W. Carswell, a Holmes County
native, local historian, and longtime staff writer for the Pensacola News-
Journal, and are taken from his books Holmesteading: The History of
Holmes County, Florida (1986) and Washington: Florida’s Twelfth County
(1991), both published at Chipley, Florida, by the author.
Washington, pp. 6-7, 9: The Choctawhatchee Basin . . . was a favored
hunting ground for Indians thousands of years before the first European
explorer reported having reached the region. . . . The abundance and
distribution of the artifacts indicate that the region may have been inhabited by
Indians for 7,000 to 10,000 years . . . . Names of most southeastern U. S.
Indians prior to DeSoto’s time remain unknown . . . .
Virtually wiped out by the appearance of the Europeans, these Indians gave
way to other bands who filled the vacuum left by their demise. Among those
sometimes identified with the Alabama-West Florida-South Georgia area were
the Chatots, Yuchis (Euchees, Uchees), Okchais, Tawasas, Pawoktis,
Apalachees, Yamasees (Emussees), Apalachicolas, Amacanos, Muklasas,
Muskogees, Hitchitis, Sawoklis (Sabacolas), Chiahas (Chehaws), Eufalas,
Koasatis (Coosadas, Choushattas, Shatis), Pensacolas, Mobiles, Pakanas,
Tukabachees, and Seminoles.
Many of those named were members of or associated with the Creek
Confederation, which was built around several dominant tribes of Muskogee
Indians with whom most of the smaller tribes were affiliated. The Muskogees
were better known as the “Creeks.” Their numbers were estimated at from
20,000 to 25,000 in 1840, soon after they had been moved west of the
Mississippi River. In earlier years the population was undoubtedly much larger.
. . .
The Yuchi (Euchee) Indians may be best remembered because of their
identification with Alabama, Georgia and Florida communities into the 1830’s.
They were geographically situated in a manner suggesting constant passage
over the entire Choctawhatchee-Pea River Basin for many decades, if not
centuries. Chroniclers of the DeSoto expedition listed the Yuchi under the name
Chisca after finding them established in what is now eastern Tennessee. They
were one of the few tribes in eastern North America of independent linguistic
stock. Their language was not related to Muskogee and was difficult for other
people to understand.
Holmesteading, pp. 26-28: During the 1600’s and early 1700’s, the tribe
moved southward and various bands settled temporarily in several different
areas [including western Florida and along the Savannah river in Georgia]. . . .
These Yuchis continued to live in the area known today as the Euchee Valley
and environs until sometime before 1761, when they settled with the Upper
Creeks near the Tukabachee. . . . A band of Yuchis apparently returned to
their old tribal grounds in West Florida, possibly after the territory was acquired
by the United States [in 1819]. They were under the leadership of Timpoochee
Kinnard, otherwise known as Sam Story. [p. 76: Chief Sam Story . . . the son
of a Scotsman, Timothy Kinnard, and a Yuchi woman.] They climbed aboard
their canoes at Story’s Landing, on the Choctawhatchee southeast of today’s
Red Bay, in 1832 and headed southward. It is assumed that those surviving the
long journey to an unspecified coastal destination either joined the Seminoles or
were transported to Oklahoma for resettlement.
John Love McKinnon [a local historian and son of Colonel John L.
McKinnon], in his History of Walton County [1911], gives a sorrowful
account of their departure and of the death of Chief Sam Story as the journey
was about to begin. Story’s grave is near their riverside departure point. Judge
Ira A. Hutchinson, in his book Some Passed This Way [1965], elaborates on
the story by recalling that Chief Story had three sons, Jim Crow, Swift Hunter
and Sleeping Fire, and three daughters, Leaping Water, Quiet Water and
Round Water. He tells of the courtship and marriage of Jim Crow, the Indian
prince and heir to the chieftain’s title, to Harriet, a mulatto slave girl [owned by
Colonel McKinnon] . . . .
Jim Crow and Harriet had a daughter, Eliza, who married Jim Harris, a mulatto,
and their daughter, Lovey, married Walton Potter, and they “raised a large
family of boys and girls."
The younger McKinnon, whose book was published in 1912, wrote that “the
girls are handsome, with long straight black hair and prominent cheek bones,
showing more of the Sam Story race than the mother. . . The old chief is not left
without a representative in the land he loved so well.” . . . That land, for
purposes of this historical record, included all that adjoined the
Choctawhatchee River and extended many miles mostly west of the river.
Other representatives of the tribe descended from Yuchis other than Jim Crow
are said on respected oral authority to be citizens of Walton, Holmes,
Washington and other nearby counties. The descendants of Jim Crow and
Harriet, at any rate, have a heritage of Yuchi aristocracy.
Washington, p. 9: Most of the Walton County Euchees were transported,
along with several other small West Florida bands, west of the Mississippi
River by U. S. troops. A few, however, may have joined the Seminoles in
Central and South Florida.
- DEPARTURE OF THE EUCHEES
Their Kin, Volume I: Gilli(e)s, Padgett, Arrant, McQuagge, McLennan,
published by the author at Enterprise, Alabama, 1984, pp. 1-5:
In the spring of 1820, Neill McLennan and brother-in-law Daniel Campbell
moved their families from Richmond County, North Carolina, to Walton
County, Florida, where they were invited by Chief Sam Story to settle on lands
adjoining his on Bruce Creek in the Euchee Valley. These Scots from North
Carolina first camped near Pensacola and met the Chief in town when he was
there trading for supplies. After becoming the first white settlers in Walton
County, they were soon joined by other relatives and friends, and were
delighted to make their homes in the unspoiled wilderness.
However, by 1832, other white people had moved into the area and were
wantonly destroying the wildlife as well as starting forest fires. Both the
McLennans and old Chief Story decided to depart for better places; the Chief
sent his sons to scout for lands to the east, while many of the McLennans and
their kin decided to move to Texas, where they were early settlers of what later
was named McLennan County.
Chief Sam Story died just before his tribe moved, and is buried south of the
fork of Bruce Creek and the Choctawhatchee River. After three weeks of
mourning, about 500 Euchees went southward to the coast of the Gulf of
Mexico, then traveled eastward, both by land and by water. Nothing further
was heard of them.
| THE STORY OF THE EUCHEE (YUCHI) INDIANS IN WALTON COUNTY, FLORIDA |
| by William C. Hood, 2006 This article may be reproduced freely for personal and educational use only, with a citation and link to this page. All commercial use is prohibited. |
Suggested citation (MLA format):
Hood, William C. "The Story of the
Euchee (Yuchi) Indians in Walton
County, Florida." Piney Woods
History 2006. Your access date goes
here. <www.pineywoodshistory.
com/native.html>.
Hood, William C. "The Story of the
Euchee (Yuchi) Indians in Walton
County, Florida." Piney Woods
History 2006. Your access date goes
here. <www.pineywoodshistory.
com/native.html>.
"Timpoochee Barnard, an Uchee Indian,"
lithograph, 1838, showing Euchee Indian
dress of the period.
lithograph, 1838, showing Euchee Indian
dress of the period.
"Head of a Mulatto Woman (Mrs. Eaton)" by
Joanna Boyce Wells, English painter, 1861.
Joanna Boyce Wells, English painter, 1861.
| All contents of this website (excepting items in the public domain) copyright by William C. Hood, 2006 Articles may be reproduced freely for personal and educational use only, with a citation and link to this website. All commercial use is prohibited. |