died a
profession, I determined to write a History. I thought it
would serve to amuse my leisure hours; but it has been the
hardest work of my life. While exhausted by the labor of
reconciling the statements of old authors, toiling over old
French and Spanish manuscripts, travelling through Florida,
Alabama and Mississippi, for information, and corresponding
with persons in Europe and elsewhere, for facts, I have
sometimes almost resolved to abandon the attempt to prepare
a History of my State.

"In reference to that portion of the work which relates to
the Indians, I will state, that my father removed from Anson
county, North-Carolina, and carried me to the wilds of the
'Alabama Territory,' in 1818, when I was a boy but eight
years of age. He established a trading house, in connection
with his plantation, in the present county of Autauga.
During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with
the Creek Indians--hundreds of whom came almost daily to the
trading house. For twenty years I frequently visited the
Creek nation. Their green-corn dances, ball-plays, war
ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all fresh in my
recollection. In my intercourse with them, I was thrown into
the company of many old white men, called 'Indian
countrymen,' who had for years conducted a commerce with
them. Some of these men had come to the Creek nation before
the revolutionary war, and others, being tories, had fled to
it during the war, and after it, to escape from whig
persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most
interesting men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of
Scotch descent, many of them were men of some education. All
of them were married to Indian wives, and some of them had
intelligent and handsome children. From these Indian
countrymen I learned much concerning the manners and customs
of the Creeks, with whom they had been so long associated,
and more particularly with regard to the commerce which they
carried on with them. In addition to this, I often conversed
with the Chiefs while they were seated in the shades of the
spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the
beautiful Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes,
some of them related to me the traditions of their country.
I occasiona