Page:Archæologia Americana—volume 2, 1836.djvu/138

 10"2 A SYNOPSIS OF THE INDIAN TRIBES. [iNTROD. nrav be allotted to the Cbicasas. Government defrays the exposes of the removal, pays the value of their improvements, and allows them considerable annuities. Our knowledge of those nations, derived from English and French writers, does not ascend higher than the end of the seventeenth century ; and doubts have been entertained re- specting their population in former times, and the date both of their first settlement west of the Mississippi, and of the subse- quent progress of the Muskhogees towards the Atlantic. We have attempted to discover, amongst the Indian names of places or persons mentioned in the relations of De Soto's Expedition, some traces of the tribes, which at that time inhabited the country along his line of march. The first of those relations was published in 1557, # by a Portu- guese volunteer (of Elvas), an eyewitness, who has not given his name ; the other in 1603, by Garcilaso de la Vega, on the oral testimony of a Spanish cavalier, and on written docu- ments from two other soldiers, who were also engaged in the expedition. It is extremely difficult to reconcile in all their details either of the two relations, with respect to distances and courses, with the now well-known geography of the country. There is however a portion of the journey which is sufficient- ly clear to throw light on the object of our inquiry. Ferdinand de Soto landed in the year 1539, on the western coast of East Florida, in the Bay of Espiritu Santo, now called Tampa Bay, having with him six hundred men according to the Portuguese narrator, and twelve hundred according to Gar- cilaso. He thence proceeded in the direction of the seacoast to a village called Anhayca, in the Province of Appalachee. This w T as situated in the vicinity of a port into which he or- dered his vessels, and which, from the position designated, must necessarily have been somewhere in Apalachee Bay. We cannot therefore err much in placing Anhayca, in the vicinity of the Ockockona River. East, and not far from it, the names of Uzachil and Anille are mentioned, and there is a river precisely in the same position, which to this day is The title is " Relacam verdadeira dos trabalhos que ho Governador don Fernando de Souto y certos fldalgos Portugueses passarom no descobrimento da Provincia la Frodida. Agora novamente feita per hum fidalgo d'Elvas." Printed at Evora, 1557. Hakluyt translated and published this work; Voyages, &c. Vol. V. (1609.)
 * Catalogue of Mr. Rich, who has a copy of the original edition.