The oldest name of the
Alleghany Mountains is Paemotinck or Pemolnick, an Algonkin word, the
meaning of which is said to be "the origin of the Indians."[224-3]
The Witchitas, who dwelt on the Red River among the mountains named
after them, have a tradition that their progenitors issued from the
rocks about their homes,[225-1] and many other tribes the Tahkalis,
Navajos, Coyoteras, and the Haitians, for instance, set up this claim to
be autochthones. Most writers have interpreted this simply to mean that
they knew nothing at all about their origin, or that they coined these
fables merely to strengthen the title to the territory they inhabited
when they saw the whites eagerly snatching it away on every pretext. No
doubt there is some truth in this, but if they be carefully sifted,
there is sometimes a deep historical significance in these myths, which
has hitherto escaped the observation of students. An instance presents
itself in our own country.
All those tribes, the Creeks, Seminoles, Choctaws, Chicasaws, and
Natchez, who, according to tradition, were in remote times banded into
one common confederacy under the headship of the last mentioned,
unanimously located their earliest ancestry near an artificial eminence
in the valley of the Big Black River, in the Natchez country, whence
they pretended to have emerged.
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