Description
The Chisca were a tribe of Native Americans living in present-day eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia in the 16th century, and in present-day Alabama, Georgia, and Florida in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, by which time they were known as Yuchi. By early in the 17th century, Chisca people were present in several parts of Spanish Florida, engaged at various times and places in alternately friendly or hostile relations with the Spanish and the peoples of the Spanish mission system. After the capture of a fortified Chisca town by the Spanish and Apalachee in 1677, some Chisca took refuge in northern Tennessee, where they were absorbed into the Shawnee, and in Muscogee towns in Alabama. Around the turn of the 18th century some Chisca, by then generally called Yuchi, joined the Apalachicola Province towns that resettled around Ochisi Creek in central Georgia, thus becoming part of the "Lower Towns of the Muscogee Confederacy". A few Chiscas remained in western Florida into the middle of the 18th century.
Language
The Chisca and West peoples may have spoken related languages, but not all authorities agree.
Culture
They did not build mounds or live in formally planned towns like the Muskogeans. Most of their houses were man-made caves in the sides of hills and mountains. Very few, if any, Chisca villages have been discovered because they were burrowed into the natural landscape. In about 1791, William Bartram, a botanist, visited that area in search of botanical specimens. He described the town as the largest, most compact and best situated Indian town he had ever seen. “The houses had wooden frames, lathed and plastered inside and out with a reddish, well-tempered clay, or mortar, that looked like red brick walls. They were neatly covered with cypress bark and shingles.” Whether this means they had earlier been influenced by the habits of European explorers is a matter for speculation. A United States Commissioner to the Creeks saw something similar in 1785 and said: “These people are more civilized and orderly than their neighbors. Their women are more chaste, and the men are better hunters.