Occoneechee: The Maid of the Mystic Lake

This history has been gleaned from the works of Ethnology by James Mooney and from word of mouth, as related to the author during the past thirty years. In the beginning of historical events, we hear of man in his paradisaical home, located somewhere within the boundaries known as ancient Egypt or Chaldea. His home was far away and his former history shrouded in the darkness of countless centuries of the past, and when we contemplate the remoteness of his ancestry, we become lost in the midst of our own research. When historical light began to flash from the Orient, we find man emerging with some degree of civilization from a barbaric state into the advanced degrees of civilized and enlightened tribes. When the maritime navigator, full of visions and dreams, dared to sail for those hitherto undiscovered shores, now known as America, there lived within the realm a wandering, happy, yet untutored, race of men whom we afterwards called Indians, who dwelt in great numbers along the whole distance from Penobscot Bay south to the everglades of Florida.