Having determined to give up his base at Tampa Bay and march inland, De Soto now sent back 30 horsemen almost immediately with orders to Calderón to rejoin his army. These men were placed under the command of Juan de Añasco, who returned himself in the smaller boats to the Apalachee port near Shell Bay, the larger vessels having already been returned to Havana. Añasco arrived November 29 and Calderón at about the same time. Almost immediately De Soto sent another of his captains, Francisco Maldonado, westward in the pinnaces to locate a second port at which provisions and reinforcements could be delivered to his army at the end of another summer's exploration. Maldonado spent 2 months on this expedition and returned to the Apalachee port in February to announce that he had found a suitable inlet in a province called Achuse. Undoubtedly the Spaniards applied this name in later years to both Mobile Bay and Pensacola Bay, but I am inclined to favor Pensacola Bay in this instance, and it was Pensacola to which the name became ultimately affixed.

Almost immediately after his return from this mission, on February 26, 1540, to be exact, Maldonado was sent back to Havana with the pinnaces and with instructions to meet the army with supplies that fall at the port he had located.

During his fight at the Two Lakes, De Soto had captured an Indian belonging to a province in the interior of the Gulf region, probably occupied by Muskogee Indians. He is called by the chroniclers Pedro from the baptismal name afterward bestowed upon him, or by the diminutive form of it, Perico. This Indian had been telling his captors that he belonged to a great and rich province toward the northeast called Yupaha, and the Spaniards understood from him that gold was mined in that country. "He showed how the metal was taken from the earth, melted, and refined, exactly as though he had seen it all done, or else the Devil had taught him how it was," and it did not require the efforts of an expert at deception to fire the enthusiasm of the entire army to advance forthwith upon that wonderful land. On March 3, therefore, De Soto broke up his camp in the midst of the brave and persistently hostile Apalachee and set out toward the north.

Instead of moving directly northeast, however, De Soto directed his course slightly west of north to the nearest occupied territory, a province called Capachequi lying a short distance west of Flint River. During this entire expedition, but particularly after leaving Iniahica, the Spaniards were dependent upon the granaries of the unfortunate natives and consistently directed their march through the more thickly settled parts of the country. Crossing the Guacuca (Ochlockonee) River, in 3 days they came to the River of Capachequi

(the Flint). The river was high and the current swift and they were obliged to construct a barge fastened at each end by a cable, in which men and equipment could be drawn across. All did not effect the passage until March 10. Next day they reached the main settlements of Capachequi, where they spent 5 days although the inhabitants were unfriendly. This province probably lay about the point where the Georgia counties Miller, Early, and Baker come together.

They left Capachequi on March 17 and spent the night at a very beautiful spring they called White Spring, probably at the head of Alligator Creek. Next day they reached the River Toa (the Ichawaynochaway), which they also found high and running with a swift current, so that two attempts at bridge building failed until a device suggested by Nuño de Tobar was tried, after which the bridge held and by March 22 all were across. Early on the 23d they arrived at a large village called Toa, which is plausibly identified with a site around two Indian mounds on what is called Pine Island in Dougherty County, Ga.

About midnight of the same day, De Soto set forward with 40 horsemen and a large body of foot soldiers to reconnoitre a tribe farther on called Chisi or Ichisi. There is reason to think that the Toa Indians were connected with the Hitchiti, but the name of the Ichisi is similar to the word by which true Muskogee were known to the Hitchiti, and it is probable that this tribe, which they found peacefully inclined, unlike those they had been among, was related to the Muskogee or Creeks proper. De Soto first came upon a village on an island and then to other villages, to a bad passage in another stream or swamp, where a Portuguese, Benito Fernandez, was drowned, and to a town beyond that where they were met by messengers from the tribal chief. Two days more brought them to the place of residence of this chief on the opposite side of a river which they call Rió Grande. This Rió Grande can only have been the Flint, and it is surmised that the island town which they first reached was in the Kincha foonee and that the "bad passage" was the crossing of the Muckalee.

Because this was the first chief "who came to them in peace," they "borrowed" only a few carriers from him, and they set up a wooden cross on the mound of his village. This was on April 1, and the next day they set out again, arriving on the 3d at a river which had its course eastward instead of south. There dwelt the Altamaha Indians (part of the Yamasee), who were also friendly. The chief directed them first to a town where they could obtain food and next day sent canoes to take them to his own side of the river, where they remained from April 4 until the 8th. On the 7th they set up a

cross in his village also. The river turning eastward was evidently the Ocmulgee and the location of the Altamaha Indians was in Telfair County. The place where our explorers came upon this river was evidently not much if any above Abbeville, where the eastward trend of the river becomes first noticeable. Here they were met by the chief of a town higher up the river called Ocute, identified with the main settlement of the Hitchiti, and they accompanied him to his home, which was not far from the present Hawkinsville, Ga. Erecting another cross at Ocute, they passed on to two neighbor towns called Cofaqui and Patofa, 1 day's march beyond, and therefore probably near the present Westlake, or possibly as high up as the Indian site at Bullard.

At this point the army now turned directly east in search of the province of which Pedro had been telling them, between which and the settlements on the Ocmulgee lay a region at that time uninhabited. Two days' travel brought them to a river divided into two channels, which they forded with the greatest difficulty, several of their hogs being drowned in the passage. The river was, of course, the Oconee and the place where they crossed is identified by the description as Carr Shoals, 6 miles above Dublin, Ga. In 2 days more they reached the Ogeechee, but by that time they had wandered from the trail and it is impossible to know where on that stream they crossed, though it must have been not far from the present Louisville,

Another 2 days brought them to a third river, “a very large river and hard to cross which was divided into two streams." Elvas says

that it was "of a more violent current [than the others], and larger, which was got over with more difficulty, the horses swimming for a lance's length at the coming out, into a pine-grove." Garcilaso identifies this river with the one on which Cofitachequi, the Yupaha capital, was located; that is, as we shall see, the Savannah. The other narratives, however, show plainly that it was distinct, and there is no other answering to the description within a day's journey of the Savannah except Brier Creek. Ordinarily Brier Creek is a rather sluggish body of water, but sometimes it rises and develops considerable current, and we know that this was a wet spring because Ranjel says, speaking of this period of their journey, that they were "drenched with continual rain, the rivers always rising and narrowing the land."

After an attempt to continue beyond this stream, De Soto deemed it best to return to it at a place where were some Indian cabins. There they camped while sending scouting parties in all directions in search of settlements. At this time the utility of their herd of swine became apparent because for many days they were reduced to an almost complete dependence on their flesh. Finally, Añasco, who had been sent

down the river, returned with news of an Indian town and two Indians as guides, who took them thither. The town was named Hymahi or Aymay, and there they found more than 30 bushels of parched corn. At the abandoned camp they left a message for the other scouting parties indicating their whereabouts and all presently came in, but one of them, Juan Rodriguez Lobillo, was sent back to bring up two companions he had left behind. On April 30 De Soto himself went forward with an Indian woman as guide and reached "a large, deep river," the Savannah, where he camped for the night, Añasco being sent on in advance to secure interpreters and canoes in which to cross. Next morning De Soto joined him on the river bank opposite the town of Cofitachequi, and presently a kinswoman of the chieftainess came across to greet the Spanish commander, being followed shortly by the niece of that lady. This niece is the individual usually called "the Lady of Cofitachequi." She brought with her many presents and handed De Soto himself a necklace of pearls which she was wearing. Her people also provided canoes in which the entire army was ferried to her town, a part, however, being soon sent to another village called Ilapi where there was a plentiful supply of corn.

The traditional site of this town is Silver Bluff about 20 miles below Augusta, Ga., but on the South Carolina side of the river. This identification rests in part on an Indian tradition coming through the trader George Galphin, who owned the bluff in the early part of the eighteenth century, but it is supported by the narratives of the Pardo expedition. Juan Pardo was sent into the interior of what is now South Carolina by Pedro Menendez in 1566 and 1567. He set out from the Spanish post of Santa Elena near modern Beaufort, and estimated that Cofitachequi was half way to the Appalachian Mountains. He states also that it was the last Indian settlement with swamps in the neighborhood and that the day after leaving it on his journey toward the north they passed entirely out of the swamp country.

The chieftainess of Cofitachequi, aunt, as supposed, of the "Lady," was not seen by her European guests although they made two efforts to discover her whereabouts, and on May 13, less than 2 weeks after their arrival, they set out northward in quest of another town of which they had had previous intimation, a town called Coça.

About a league from Cofitachequi was an abandoned village called Talomeco and in it a temple or ossuary of which Garcilaso de la Vega gives an elaborate description, and where, as well as in the ossuary of Cofitachequi itself, were quantities of pearls. In the latter they also found several articles of Spanish origin which they believed, probably correctly, to have been brought by the colonists of Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon in 1526. The presence of an ƒ in the name of Cofitachequi, the

name of Talimeco itself, and the probable identity of the town Ilapi with the later Hilibi, all point to an identification of this province with part of the Muskogee, probably the main part of the Lower Creeks.

On leaving Cofitachequi, the Spaniards took with them many pounds of pearls from the ossuary of Cofitachequi, "presented" by the "Lady," and they carried along the "Lady" also, as was their wont in similar cases to secure subordination and service from the Indians under her influence. The Pardo narratives help us to the conclusion that the Spaniards now kept northeast of the Savannah on a wellmarked trail between that river and the Saluda. There is no reference to a repassage of the Savannah, as some writers have assumed, and on the sixth day of their march they came to a town called Guaquili, evidently identical with the Aguaquiri of Pardo, which was clearly northeast of the Savannah. Before reaching Guaquili, on the second day after his departure from Cofitachequi, De Soto came to a province called Chalaque. Most writers have assumed too hastily from this reference, from an error as to distance by Elvas, and from a somewhat confusing note farther along in Ranjel's narrative, that this referred to the Cherokee country. The location is, however, very far south of any site occupied by Cherokee in historic or traditionary times. The name is probably nothing more than a form of the Muskogee word "Chilokee," which signifies "people of a different language" and which very likely became permanently affixed to the Cherokee at a later period. As used by the De Soto chroniclers, however, it was most likely applied to people speaking an eastern Siouan language, which would equally have been "a different speech."

On May 21 De Soto reached Xuala near the foot of the Appalachian Mountains, and there he was joined next day by Gallegos with the remainder of the army. As Mooney pointed out many years ago, Xuala, which would be Shuala in English, was evidently a Muskogee attempt at Cheraw or Saraw, there being no r in the Muskogee tongue. This town I believe to have been located on a knoll known locally as Towns Hill between Knox and Crane Creeks. This not only corresponds to the position given by the narratives of the expedition, but is indicated by requirements laid down in the subsequent narratives. Thus, after leaving Xuala they went over "a very high range" and in 2 days came to and "crossed the river, wading up to their shins, by which later they were to depart in the brigantines." This can only have been one of the head streams of the Tennessee, for no other waters in this section flow into the Mississippi, the river "by which they were to depart" from the country. It has been sometimes identified with the Coosa, but this is disproved by the testimony of the De Soto map and by the fact that they recognized the Coosa