The Spanish recorded the name of the town as "Achito", "Ahachito", "Euchitto", and, possibly, "Ayfitichi", while it was known to the English as "Echete", "Echeetes", and "Hitchiti".
Other Hitchiti-speaking towns included Apalachicola, Oconee, Osuchi, and Ocmulque, and possibly Chiacahuti, Talipaste, Ylapi, Tacusa, and Sabacola.
[3] The tribal town of Hitchiti first appeared in Spanish reports (as Ahachito) in 1675 as part of the Apalachicola Province along the Chattahoochee River.
The de Soto expedition in the 1540s did not enter the Chattahoochee Valley, but appears to have caused many deaths there due to epidemics of European and African diseases introduced by the Spaniards.
Some archaeologists state that only two population centers survived along the Chattahoochee in the late 16th century, situated on opposite sides of the river south of the falls at Columbus.
[5] Muscogee language-speaking people from the Coosa and Tallapoosa areas in Alabama may have moved into the Chattahoochee valley during the middle part of the 17th century.
Two leaders from the town of Hitchiti were among the Muscogee Confederacy chiefs who met Georgia Governor James Oglethorpe in Savannah in 1733.
[10][11] Benjamin Hawkins, United States Indian agent assigned to the Muscogee (Creek) Confederacy, visited the Hitchiti in 1799.
Hawkins noted that the town of Hitchiti possessed "a narrow strip of good land" bordering on the river approximately four miles south of Chiaha (Chehaw).
It is "an extensive village midden" on the east side of the Chattahoochee near the mouth of Hitchitee Creek, which has been identified as the site of Hitchiti in the later 18th century.
Tuttallosee, with a population of about 50 circa 1800, had recently built its own square ground, possibly indicating that it was becoming a tribal town separate from Hitchiti.
[17] In 1937, the tribal town of "Hichiti", located northeast of Henryetta, Oklahoma was reported to no longer be maintaining a sacred fire.