صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[ocr errors]

Thus his testimony may be confidently accepted. It is from Castro's report and after several enquiries into this seizure that we have learned that the women brought from that region wear lions' skins and the men wear skins of all other wild beasts. He says these people are white and larger than the generality of men. When they were landed some of them searched among the rubbish heaps along the town ditches for decaying bodies of dogs and asses with which to satisfy their hunger. Most of them died of misery, while those who survived were divided among the colonists of Hispaniola, who disposed of them as they pleased, either in their houses, the gold-mines, or their fields.

Farther on Peter Martyr gives Ayllon, "one of those at whose expense the two ships had been equipped," and his Indian servant, Francisco of Chicora, as additional informants, and states that he had sometimes invited them to his table.

In 1523 Ayllon obtained a royal cédula securing to him exclusive right of settlement within the limits of a strip of coast on either side of the place where his subordinate had come to land. In 1525, being unable to visit the new land himself, in order to secure his rights he sent two caravels to explore his territory under Pedro de Quexos. "They regained the good will of the natives," says Shea, "and explored the coast for 250 leagues, setting up stone crosses with the name of Charles V and the date of the act of taking possession. They returned to Santo Domingo in July, 1525, bringing one or two Indians from each province, who might be trained to act as interpreters." 1 After considerable delay Ayllon himself sailed for his new government early in June, 1526, with three large vessels, 600 persons of both sexes, including priests and physicians, and 100 horses. They reached the North American coast at the mouth of a river calculated by them to be in north latitude 33° 40', and they called it the Jordan-from the name of one of Ayllon's captains, it is said. Here, however, Ayllon lost one of his vessels, and his interpreters, including Francisco of Chicora, deserted him. Dissatisfied with the region in which he had landed and obtaining news of one better from a party he had sent along the shore, Ayllon determined to remove, and he seems to have followed the coast. The explorers are said to have continued for 40 or 45 leagues until they came to a river called Gualdape, where they began a settlement, which was called San Miguel de Gualdape. The land hereabout was flat and full of marshes. The river was large and well stocked with fish, but the entrance was shallow and passable only at high tide. The colony did not prosper, the weather became severe, many sickened and died, and on October 18, 1526, Ayllon died also. Trouble soon broke out among the surviving colonists and finally, in the middle of a severe winter, those that were left sailed back to Hispaniola.?

[blocks in formation]

Such are the principal facts concerning the first Spanish explorations and attempts at colonization upon the coast of the Carolinas. Before giving the information obtained through them regarding the aborigines of the country and their customs it will be necessary to determine as nearly as possible the location of the three rivers mentioned in the relations, the River of St. John the Baptist, the River Jordan, and the River Gualdape, an undertaking which has been attempted already in the most painstaking manner, by the historians Harrisse, Shea, and Lowery.1

So far as the River Jordan is concerned, there is scarcely the shadow of a doubt that it was the Santee. The identification is indicated by evidence drawn from a great many early writers, and practically demonstrated by the statements of two or three of the more careful navigators. Ecija, for instance, places its mouth in N. lat. 33° 11', which is almost exactly correct. A very careful pilot's description appended to the account of his second voyage puts it only a little higher. Furthermore, tribes that can be identified readily as the Sewee and Santee are mentioned by him and they are on this river in the positions they later occupied. He states also, on the authority of the Indians, that a trail led from the mouth of it to a town near the mountains called Xoada, which is readily recognizable as the Siouan Cheraw tribe. Now, as Mr. Mooney has shown, and as all evidence indicates, the Cheraw were at this time at the head of Broad River. The Pedee or the Cape Fear would have carried travelers to the Cheraw miles out of their way. Finally it must be remembered that the name Jordan was applied to a certain river during the entire Spanish period in the Southeast. It had a definite meaning, and when the English settled the country Spanish cartographers were at no loss to identify their Jordan under its new English name, so that Navarrete says that "on some ancient maps there is a river at thirty-three degrees North, which they name Jordan or Santée." 4 One of the reasons for uncertainty regarding it is the fact that the ancient Cape San Roman, from which the Jordan is frequently located, is not the present Cape Romain, but apparently Cape Fear, and is thus universally represented as north of the Jordan instead of south of it. The argument could be elaborated at length, but it is unnecessary. The burden of proof is rather on him who would deny the identification.

With regard to the other two rivers we have no such certain evidence, and their exact positions will probably always remain in doubt.

1 Op. cit.

Lowery, MSS., Lib. Cong.

Bull. 22, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 57.
Navarrete, Col., I, p. 70.

[ocr errors]

The cédula issued to Ayllon places the newly discovered land in which was the River of St. John the Baptist in N. lat. 35°-37°, but for anything like an exact statement we must depend entirely on the testimony of the pilot Quexos, who estimated that it lay considerably farther south, in N. lat. 33° 30'. It would therefore be somewhere in the immediate neighborhood of the Jordan, possibly that very stream. However, immediately after the statement of Navarrete quoted above, he adds, "to the northeast of that which they name Santee, at a distance of 48 miles, there is another river, which they call Chico." This would at once suggest an identification of that stream with the Pedee, or with Winyah Bay, though of course where they enter the ocean the Santee and Pedee are much nearer together than 48 miles. I am, however, inclined to suspect that "the river Chico" represented simply some cartographer's guess as to the location of Chicora, and was not, as Navarrete seems to assume farther on, itself the original of the term Chicora.

The general position is, however, indicated by another line of evidence. It will be remembered that among the Indians carried off by Gordillo and Quexos from the River of St. John the Baptist in 1521 was one who received the name Francisco of Chicora, who related such wonderful tales of the new country that many Spaniards, including the historian Oviedo, believed that no confidence could be reposed in him. His remarkable story of tailed men, however, Mr. Mooney and the writer have been able to establish as an element in the mythology of the southern Indians, and enough of the "provinces" which he mentioned are identifiable to show that the names are not the pure fabrication which Oviedo supposed.

So far as I am aware there are but three original sources for the complete list of provinces-two in the Documentos Ineditos5 and the third in Oviedo." An equally ancient authority for part of them, however, is Peter Martyr.' I give these in the following comparative table, and in addition the lists from Navarrete, and Barcia," who had access to the original documents.

'Navarrete, Col., I, p. 153; Doc. Ined., XXII, p. 79.
Shea in Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist., II, p. 239.

Navarrete, Col., III, p. 70.

Oviedo, Hist. Gen., p. 628.

Vols. XIV, p. 506, and XXII, p. 82.

6 Hist. Gen., III, 628.

7 Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo, пI, pp. 259–261.

8 Navarrete, Col., I, p. 154.

Barcia, La Florida, pp. 4-5.

8

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

The variants of these names enable us, by comparing them with one another, to determine the originals with considerable certainty in most cases, though some still remain in question. As reconstructed, the list would be something like this: Duhare or Duache, Chicora, Xapira or Xapida, Yta or Hitha, Tancal or Tancac, Anica, Tiye or Tihe, Cocayo, Quohathe, Guacaya, Xoxi, Sona, Pasqui, Arambe, Xamunambe, Huaque, Tanzaca, Yenyohol, Pahoc or Paor, Yamiscaron, Orixa, Insiguanin or Inziguanin, Anoxa.

Yamiscaron without doubt refers to the Yamasee Indians, the ending probably being a Siouan suffix, and the whole possibly the original of the name Yamacraw applied at a much later date to a body of Indians at the mouth of the Savannah. There can be little question also that Orixa is the later Spanish Orista, and English Edisto, Coçayo the Coosa Indians of the upper courses of the rivers of lower South Carolina, or perhaps the town of "Coçapoy"

1 See p. 58.

and Xapira, or rather Xapida, Sampit. Pasqui is evidently the Pasque of Ecija, which seems to have been inland near the Waxaw Indians. The remaining names can not be identified with such probability, but plausible suggestions may be made regarding some of them. Thus Yta is perhaps the later Etiwaw or Itwan, Sona may be Stono, which sometimes appears in the form "Stonah," and Guacaya is perhaps Waccamaw, gua in Spanish being frequently employed for the English syllable wa. If Pahoc is the correct form of the name of province 19 it may contain an explanation of the "Backbooks" mentioned by Lawson,' supposing the form of the latter which Rivers gives, "Back Hooks," is the correct one.2

Two facts regarding this list have particular importance for us in this investigation, first, the appearance of the phonetic r (in Duhare, Chicora, Xapira, Arambe, Yamiscaron, Orixa), and, second, that all of the provinces identified, all in fact for which an identification is even suggested, are in the Cusabo country or the regions in close contact with it. The first of these points indicates that Francisco came from one of the eastern Siouan tribes, while the second would show that he had considerable knowledge of the tribes south of them, and thus points to some Siouan area not far removed. Since this was also on the coast, the mouths of the Santee and Pedee are the nearest points satisfying the requirements. It is true that there is no l in Catawba, while two words ending in 7-Tancal and Yenyoholoccur in the list; but these may have been taken over intact from Cusabo, or they may have been incorrectly copied, since Oviedo has Tancac for the first of them. Winyah Bay or the Pedee River would be indicated more definitely if Daxe, a town which the Indians told Ecija was four days journey north, or rather northeast, of the Santee, were identical with the Duache of the Ayllon colonists. But, however interesting it might be to establish the location of the river of John the Baptist with precision, it makes no practical difference in the present investigation whether it was the Santee or one of those streams flowing into Winyah Bay. That it was one of them can hardly be doubted..

The third river to be identified, Gualdape, is the most difficult of all. This is due in the first place to an uncertainty as to which way the settlers moved when they left the River Jordan. Oviedo, who is our only authority on this point, says: "Despues que estovieron allí algunos dias, descontentos de la tierra é ydas las lenguas ó guias. que llevaron, acordaron de yrse á poblar la costa adelante háçia la costa occidental, é fueron á un grand rio (quarenta ó quarenta é çinco leguas de allí, pocas más ó menos) que se diçe Gualdape; é allí

'Lawson, Hist. Carolina, p. 45.

Rivers, Hist. S. Car., p. 35.

« السابقةمتابعة »