Apalachee

APALACHEE (apparently a Choctaw name, = "people on the other side "), a tribe of North American Indians of Muskhogean stock. They have been known since the i6th century, and formerly ranged the country around Apalachee Bay, Florida. About 1600 the Spanish Franciscans founded a successful mission among them, but early in the i8th century the tribe suffered defeat at the hands of the British, the mission churches were burnt, the priests killed, and the tribe practically annihilated, more than one thousand of them being sold as slaves. See Handbook of American Indians, ed. F. W. Hodge (Washington, 1907).