by Gene Waddell (rev. 8 Dec. 2000)

[N. B.: Most of the text of this article was published with illustrations in Carologue, vol. 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2000), pp. 8-15.  The notes and bibliography have been added.]
 
 
 

    For more than four centuries, there has been uncertainty about who the Cofitachiqui were and where they lived.  They were one of the most highly civilized tribes in the Southeastern United States in 1540, and their principal towns were somewhere near the center of South Carolina.  They continued to be mentioned in travel accounts and official documents until c. 1685, when they suddenly ceased to be mentioned without any explanation.

     There have been numerous attempts to explain why the Cofitachiqui seem to have disappeared, but none has been considered wholly satisfactory except to the person who proposed it.   The problem has been made unnecessarily difficult by assumptions which have been accepted without question.  Theories have often been used to discount facts, but all of the facts can be accounted for.
 

The Most Extraordinary Building in the Southeast

    The most detailed account of the Province of Cofitachiqui was written by the historian Garcilaso de la Vega (the Inca), who relied on at least two different sources for his account of the DeSoto Expedition. [1]  Garcilasco wrote that the principal town, Talomico, was located on a high bluff overlooking a large river and  had about 500 houses and a funerary temple over 100 paces long and 40 wide (approximately 250 feet long and 100 feet wide).  Its walls and high-pitched roof were covered with multiple layers of woven cane mats and were decorated inside and out with seashells and numerous strands of pearls.  This temple was considered “the richest and most superb of all those that our Spaniards saw in La Florida” (the Southeast).  A member of the expedition who had been through much of Mexico and Peru said “it was among the grandest and most wonderful of all the things that he had seen in the New World....”[2]

     The narrative prepared by Rangel, a member of the expedition, also mentioned a temple which was “very large and very tall and broad, all covered, high and low, with very excellent and beautiful mats, and placed with such fine skill, that it appeared that all the mats were only one mat.  Only rarely was there a hut which might not be covered with matting.” [3]

     The buildings the expedition had seen previously in the present states of Florida and Georgia were covered with thatch and had walls of wattle-and-daub (a framework woven of wood and plastered with clay).[4]  The temple was too broad to have had a barrel vault like houses and temples built on the North Atlantic Coast and so was distinctively different from buildings both to the south and to the north of it.  It probably had a hipped roof like most thatched buildings in the Southeast, but its use of mats was similar to the way bark and hide were used for walls and roofs of buildings throughout the Northeast.  The materials and methods of construction for houses and for the temple are among the indications that a distinctive culture developed between the two principal cultures of the Eastern United States.[5]

     The temple was the burial place of former chiefs and their closest relations, and their corpses were inside wooden sepulchers raised on benches.[6]  Another indication of a distinctive culture is that elsewhere in the Southeast, all bodies were usually buried.[7]

     Inside the temple on either side of the entrance were six pairs of realistically carved wooden figures.  The ones nearest the entrance were about 11 feet tall, and the ones farther away diminished in size.[8]  All of these colossal figures were armed as warriors.  Elsewhere within the temple were numerous life-sized statues with portraits of men and women.[9]   The temple also  contained chests filled with so many pearls that 300 horses could not have carried all of them,[10] and it had eight large rooms, each of which was filled with a different type of weapon.[11]

     The temple was primarily the tomb of the male ancestors of the Lady of Cofitachiqui, and it contained corpses of the “lords of that province of Cofitachiqui and of their sons and brothers and nephews, the sons of their brothers.  No others were buried in that temple.”[12]  If this is literally correct, descent must ordinarily have been through the male line (patrilineal), indicating yet another distinctive trait.  Elsewhere in most of the Southeast, it was usually through the female line (matrilineal).[13]  Evidently, the young and unmarried Lady of Cofitachiqui who welcomed DeSoto held her office temporarily.  Some type of plague had killed a large part of the inhabitants of Talimeco two years before, and the Lady’s father or brother must have died recently.[14]

     Judging by the number of burials and by the quantity of pearls, the Spanish concluded that the temple represented the accumulation of many generations, and in turn, this implied that a well established monarchy had existed in the area for centuries.[15]  The wealth also implied a large sphere of influence, and DeSoto carried the female chief with him to ensure the safety of his men and to extort provisions and bearers.  He found that she was obeyed for about 100 leagues (approximately 260 miles) beyond her province.[16A ] This entire area was assumed to be part of the empire of Cofitachiqui, but it contained few towns.[16B]

     In the late 16th Century, the English artist John White depicted a similar tomb for the chief men of a tribe on the coast of North Carolina, but it was barrel vaulted and had skeletons clothed in deerskins rather than corpses in chests.[17]  It had a life-sized, carved figure which was realistically carved.  In the early 1700s, John Lawson saw a similar “Quiogozon, which is their Royal Tomb or Burial-Place of their Kings and War-Captains.  This is a very large magnificent Cabin... [in] which lie all their Princes, and Great Men, that have died for several hundred Years....”  This temple contained “idols” and in most respects corresponded to what the DeSoto narratives recorded about the funerary temple at Cofitachiqui, but in the Quiogozon, skeletons were cleaned and clothed in deerskins as White had shown.[18]  White also depicted large carved posts in his watercolors of the Indians of the North Carolina coast.[19]

     Numerous buildings of extraordinary size are known to have existed in South Carolina in the 17th and early 18th centuries.  In 1663 William Hilton visited a large communal building at St. Helena that was about 200 feet around with walls 12 feet high.[20]  In 1666 Robert Sandford recorded a similar structure on Edisto Island, and in 1670 the first settlers found another one at Sewee.[21]  Another building of equivalent size was described in detail by Lawson, who saw it in 1701 at the Waxaw town near the Wateree River.[22]  Most or all of these buildings were round and thatched rather than rectangular and covered with mats, and they were used as houses of state, but they indicate that even the small tribes of South Carolina constructed large buildings.
 

Did Cofitachiqui Disappear?

     Since nearly every detail of the DeSoto narratives was confirmed by later accounts, there can be no doubt that in 1540 the Spanish encountered a high level of civilization somewhere in South Carolina.  In 1670 the same civilization was encountered by the English, yet soon afterwards and without any explanation, Cofitachiqui  ceased to be mentioned.  What disappeared was probably the name rather than the people.

     Juan Pardo visited Cofitachiqui in 1566 and 1567, and his notary, Vandera, mentioned that a large number of chiefs had  gathered there, indicating that it continued to be a major town.  Vandera later referred to the town as “Canos, which the Indians call Canosi and, for another name, Cofetazque.”[23]  Since the Indians themselves used another name, it is likely that “Cofitachiqui” was a foreign word applied initially  by DeSoto’s Indian interpreter and later adopted by other Europeans from published accounts and maps.  Biedma states that Indians near Cofitachiqui “understood the interpreter,” which is not the same as saying that the interpreter could understand their language.[24]  The suffix -chiqui means house in Muskhogean.[25]  Cofa and Cofaqui must also be descriptive terms because they had previously been used to designate two towns located in Muskhogean territory in central Georgia.[26]

    The narratives refer to the principal town of the Cofitachiqui as “Talimico,” which is a Muskhogean word meaning “chief town,” but this was definitely a descriptive rather than a distinctive name.  The same descriptive name Talimico was used for another major town in Muskogean territory west of the Appalachian Mountains.[27]

     Most Indian tribes called themselves by one name and were called something else by Indians who spoke another language, and essentially the same situation exists in Europe and elsewhere in that what one country calls another often bears no relation to what the country calls itself.  What any tribe was called by a European nation in many cases depended on who its translators were initially.  “Chilokee” is, for example, another Muskhogean word which means simply anyone who does not speak Muskhogean (just as the Greeks called anyone who did not speak Greek a “barbarian”).[28]  The Iroquoian people who are now universally called the Cherokee called themselves the “Yunwiya”(“principal people”).[29]    Similarly, “Westo” is what the Lowcountry tribes called their “enemy,” and the English adopted the name and continued to used it even after making an alliance with the Westo (who seem to have called themselves the Rechahecrians).[30]  The Muskhogean word for enemy, “tanap,” is wholly different and is an indication that Muskhogean was not spoken north of the Savannah River by indigenous tribes.
 

Were the Kussoe the Principal Remnant of the Cofitachiqui?

     In 1672 two “Cherokee” Indians from St. Helena travelled south of the Savannah River or  “Westo-bou” (“enemy-river”), and these Indians were interrogated by the Spanish through a Muskhogean (Guale) Indian.[31] Since no Iroquoian Indians lived at St. Helena in 1672, these two Indians were almost certainly Escamacu, the tribe which the English found it easier to refer to as the “St. Helena.” The reference to them as Cherokee is another indication that Muskhogean was not spoken on the coast north of the Savannah River.

     One of the Indians who was interrogated was named Diacan, and he stated that the English had recently been at war with the “Cofatachiqui Indians.”  His testimony was corroborated by the Indian who accompanied him.  A Spaniard who evidently spoke the language of St. Helena swore that he had earlier been told the same thing.[32]

     The Spanish regularly collected information through formal interrogations, and in 1679, they interrogated an English deserter named Thomas Jibe and asked if the English had tried to get pearls from the “Cafatache.”[33]  This reference and the 1672 references to the Cofitachiqui in Spanish records provide further evidence that the Cofitachiqui still existed, and the form of the  name and mention of pearls is good evidence that these were the same people who had been visited by DeSoto in 1540.  In each case, the Spanish did not identify them further than by their name, implying that they knew perfectly well which Indians were being referred to.

     There is no reference in English documents to a war with the Cofitachiqui.  Instead, there are a number of references to a war in 1671-1672 with the Kussoe:  On September 27, 1671, “an open Warr shall be forthwith prosecuted against the said Kussoe Indians....”[34]  By October 2, a number of Kussoe had been captured, and they were to be “transported” (sold into slavery outside the Province) unless they were ransomed.[35]  By October 26, the war had escalated, and the Governor and Council ordered all able-bodied men except themselves to serve in the war against the Kussoe.[36]  By January 24, 1672, the Kussoe War had been concluded,[37] and it was about two months later that Diacan told the Spanish that the English had been at war with the Cofitachiqui when he visited Charleston Harbor.[38]

     The only way to reconcile this apparently conflicting evidence is to accept that the “Kussoe” of the English must have been at least part of the people who called themselves the “Canosi,” but were called Cofitachiqui by the Spanish and their Muskhogean allies.  Canosi transliterated from Spanish into English becomes “Kanosee” and so more closely resembles the sound of Kussoe.  Indian sounds could not be readily duplicated in European languages, and Kussoe and Canosi are not more different than the “Edisto” of the English, the “Orista” of the Spanish, and the “Audusta” of the French.[39]

     On 3 August 1674 the Council learned that the Kussoe had murdered three Englishmen, and they ordered Maurice Mathews and others to raise a party of men “to take or destroy all or any of them, the whole matter being left to their advisement.”[40]  If the Kussoe were part of the Cofitachiqui, it has to be explained why an excuse was being used to annihilate them.  Three murders should have resulted in those responsible being punished rather than in the issuance of a licence to destroy an entire tribe.  “To take” implies that the principal motive was to take as many more Kussoe as possible as slaves and, as in 1672, to transport them to the West Indies for an easy and immediate profit. The Proprietors as a group consistently insisted that the colonists protect local Indians for their usefulness in providing food and as a warning network against invasion by the Spanish or their Indian allies, and they condemned the enslavement of Indian allies.[41]  They had to repeatedly condemn this practice.

     Another motive to get rid of the Kussoe was to have their land.  Shaftesbury had been offended that no land was set aside for him near Albemarle Point, the original site of Charleston, and that all the best land nearby had been quickly granted.  In 1675 the surviving Kussoe were required to move from the head of the Ashley River and to cede “the great & litle Cassoe.”  A total of 12,000 acres of their land was laid out as a signory for the Earl of Shaftesbury and was called  “St. Gyleses Plantacon Cassoe.”[42]

     The Kussoe cession was signed by about 29 Indians including “the most great Cassiqua,” two other cassiques or chiefs, and at least 11 female “captains.”[43]  The unusually high status of women among South Carolina tribes generally is well documented, as when the Queen of Edisto received Sandford and the Queen of the Congaree received Lawson.[44]  This was not the case with Muskhogean tribes.

     In 1684 the Kussoe and Kussah separately signed a joint cession with other tribes to any and all lands between the Stono and Westo (Savannah) rivers west to the Appalachian Mountains.[45]  The Kussoe were given a reservation on or near the Edisto River, and the land laid out to them was mentioned in 1711 as adjacent to a grant to Robert Daniel, whose property was bounded by the Edisto River.[46]  Another reservation had been set aside for the “Cusabo” (literally, the “Cusa-river people”) on Polawana Island near Beaufort sometime before 1712.[47A]  The reference in the 1675 cession to “the great & litle Cassoe” and the separate reservations for the Kussoe and Kussah seem to indicate that the greater part of the Kussoe remained near the Edisto River, and the lessor part, the Kussah, went farther south to the vicinity of the town of Beaufort.[47B]  Until that time, the greater and lesser Kussoe must both lived inland like most of the larger and predominantly agricultural peoples throughout the Southeast.

     By 1743, Adair listed the “Coosah” as one of the tribes which was represented among the Catawba “nation.”[48]  Although there is no known evidence that any of the Kussoe or Kussah lived in the piedmont before 1743, their former lands at the headwaters of the Ashley River were close enough to the piedmont for the forests in between the Ashley and Santee rivers to have been their hunting grounds.  A Jesuit missionary, Juan Rogel, wrote in the 16th Century that during every Fall, the coastal Indians moved into the interior as far as 20 leagues (about 52 miles) to hunt and gather until spring.[49]  Most of this land was assumed by explorers and early settlers to be unoccupied, but was utilized and claimed.  It is undoubtedly significant that the 1684 treaty signed by the Kussoe, Kussah, and other coastal tribes cleared title “on the West or north West with the Great Ridge of Mountains com[mon]ly called the Apalathean Mountains.”[50]  The territory claimed by the Kussoe for hunting purposes certainly extended at least to the  Fall Line and may have extended well into the Piedmont.

     The Kussoe and Kussah were distinctive among the Indians of the Lowcounty in living inland the year round.  The coastline was claimed and ceded by other tribes in 1684.  In general the larger tribes in the Southeast chose inland locations to have more extensive land suitable for agriculture to support larger populations.

     The Kussoe tradition recorded in 1743 that “formerly they consisted of about 1000" is likely to have been correct.[51] The Cofitachiqui had 1,000 warriors in 1670, and that means about 4,000 men, women, and children[52] while the Kussoe claimed to have had a total population of 1000.  Judging by these population estimates and by the evidence provided by Diacan, the Kussoe represented approximately one-fourth of the population of the Province of Cofitachiqui.
 

Were the Catawba the Principal Part of the Cofitachiqui?

     In 1670, within a few months after the first English colonists arrived at Charleston Harbor, Henry Woodward went inland to create an alliance with the Emperor of Cofitachiqui to gain the protection of his 1,000 warriors.[53]  Since the colony initially consisted of only about 140 men, Indian alliances were essential for its survival.

     Two years after the Kussoe War began, the Governor and Council declared war on the Westo, the "enemy" of the Lowcountry Indians, and the province needed all the allies it could get.  In 1673 the Westo were living on the Savannah River near the Fall Line, and they were rumored to be planning to invade the English settlement.  On 7 October 1673 Maurice Mathews and others were instructed to go to the “Esaugh Indians” (Esaw) to seek their help in the “present warr of the Westoes,” and by 2 February 1673/4, they had returned “from Esaugh” and reported on their mission.[54]

     The earliest mention of the Esaw is in a list of tribes which Matthews himself had made in 1671 for the Earl of Shaftesbury.  He started his list of all known tribes with the “St. Helena ye Southernmost,” and he continued from south to north until he ended it with the “...Esaw, [and] Cotachicach....”[55]  The Cofitachiqui lived nearest to the Esaw of all the tribes in the list.

     Beginning around 1673 the English began to refer to their strongest allies as the Esaw (“people of the river”), the name used by part of the Catawba to refer to themselves.  Soon afterwards, the Esaw were recognized to be less important than the main body of the Catawba, and both of these divisions of the Catawba Nation began to be referred to jointly as the Catawba.[56] Identifying the Cofitachiqui as the Catawba fits all the known evidence.  The name Cofitachiqui does disappear from the written record, but since a people with equivalent power continued to exist in the same vicinity, the Cofitachiqui must have consisted primarily of the Catawba and secondarily of the Esaw, and they probably included the Kussoe and a number of other tribes who acted together as necessary for their mutual benefit.

     In 1540 the Cofitachiqui were such a powerful nation that the Indians of central Georgia were afraid even to enter their hunting grounds.  The Georgia Indians had no idea where the towns of the Cofitachiqui were located.[57]  The DeSoto Expedition found the piedmont between the Altamaha River and the Santee River almost wholly without towns, and archaeological evidence has confirmed that major settlements which had previously existed on the Savannah River were  deserted well before 1540.[58A]  There is only one tribe known to have lived in the South Carolina piedmont that had so great a reputation for valor, and since the Catawba were feared to the north all the way to the Great Lakes, they were undoubtedly feared a much shorter distance to the south.[58B]  They are the only known tribe which can be identified as the Cofitachiqui.

     It was pure speculation to suppose that another tribe with so great a reputation once existed in central South Carolina.  It piled speculation on top of speculation to conclude that what never existed must suddenly have disappeared.
 

What Language Was Spoken by the Cofitachiqui?

     The “Issa” were encountered by Pardo in 1566 living at or near the present location of the Catawba Reservation, and judging by their name and location, they unquestionably were the “Esaw” of the Catawba Nation.  The Catawba spoke a Siouan dialect, and “Esaw” is a Siouan word for river.[59A]  Near the headwaters of the Ashley River, the territory of the Kussoe, is “Wassamassaw” Swamp, which was spelled “Wassam-issau” in 1709.[59B]  The -esaw suffix was also used elsewhere to the west and north of the Lowcountry.  It almost certainly recurs in names such as Wachesaw Landing in Georgetown  County, Wattesaw (Mattesaw) in Berkeley County, and Washasha on the South Santee in Charleston County.[60]  In each case the suffix is associated with water and so is clearly the same Siouan word which part of the Catawba used to refer to themselves.

     It is significant that  -esaw occurs so widely rather than -hatchie, the suffix widely used by Muskhogean peoples in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to indicate a river.  Hatchie is not known to have been used anywhere in South Carolina except where the Yemassee lived from 1687-1716, and it was during that period that the “Coosawhatchie” River got its present name.[61]  Earlier, the tribes indigenous to the Coast who spoke neither Muskhogean nor Siouan undoubtedly called the Kussah’s river the “Cusabo,” just as they referred to the river of their enemy as the “Westo: bou.”[62]

    The Santee, like the Catawba, must have spoken a dialect of Siouan.  Santee is the name of a major dialect of the Dakota or Western Sioux of the Great Plains.  As the ethnologist James Mooney pointed out, the Eastern Sioux are most likely to have  occupied all of the eastern part of South Carolina.[63]  Tribal names such as Santee, Congaree, Wateree, Pedee, and Sewee (in each case with a double-e suffix) all seem to have spoken Siouan, and more importantly, most if not all of  these tribes later combined with the Siouan Catawba.

    Like the Congaree, the Etiwan often intermarried with the Santee and are likely also to have spoken Siouan.[64]  Within their territory, the word Adthan or Auchaw was used to refer to Goose Creek and seems to be the same word as Auhaun, the Woccon (Siouan) word for goose recorded by Lawson.[65]  Several Muskhogean words for goose are wholly dissimilar.[66]

    When the Kussoe are included, it becomes likely that Siouan was spoken throughout most of the Coastal Plain of South Carolina north of the Ashley River.  It was probably not spoken south of the Ashley River until the Kiawah moved to Kiawah Island, the Kussoe moved to the Edisto River, and the Kussah moved to Polawana Island.  Certainly not all of the tribes which joined the Catawba spoke Siouan, and the Natchez, for example, definitely did not.  However, the Natchez who joined the Catawba were probably the ones Wes Taukchiray established as having lived previously among the Kussoe.[67]

     Several writers concluded that the Catawba must have been part of the Cofitachiqui, but were a Siouan minority within a Muskhogean majority.[68]  It is inconsistent with the great renown of the Catawba for them to have been a subject people.  There is no definite evidence that any Muskogean tribes lived north of the Savannah River with the exception of the Yemassee for a few decades.
 

Were the Burial Customs of the Cofitachiqui Unique?

     John Lawson noted that the Santee were highly unusual in having a king with the power of life and death over his people–the power an emperor could be expected to have–and he also noted that the Santee did not bury their chief, but placed him in a small building on top of a mound.[69]  The Plains Sioux placed all of their dead on scaffolds, but after several years buried everyone except their chiefs, who were never buried.

    A close parallel to the burial customs of the Cofitachiqui were those of the Biloxi, an Alabama tribe which also had a funerary temple for their head men and which definitely spoke a dialect of Siouan.[70]  The use of the Siouan language and the existance of nearly identical burial customs in widely separated areas of the Southeast need to be explained, and the most likely explanation is that these peoples were united until they were separated by Muskhogean-speaking peoples.  The Siouan language and culture is likely to have been more widespread in the Southeast until the arrival of the Muskogeans.

     Not all tribes which had funerary temples were Siouan, but all Siouan tribes seem to have observed the custom of never burying their chiefs.[71]  Most Algonquian tribes placed each corpse in a small, separate building instead of burying them, and the exceptional usage of large buildings for the bodies of chiefs by the Southern Algonquins may reflect Siouan influence.[72]  By contrast, the Muskogeans and Cherokee buried their dead.[73]
 

Where Was the Principal Town of the Cofitachiqui?

     The most specific and reliable information about the location of  the principal town of the Cofitachiqui  is shown on a map compiled by Maurice Mathews and redrawn by Joel Gascoyne in c. 1685.[74]  Verner W. Crane pointed out in 1928 that Mathews had shown “Cotuchike... a little  distance above the forks [of the Wateree and Congaree Rivers], below the ‘Esah’ (Catawba).”[75]  This map has far more detail than the one Gascoyne had published in 1682.  Since Gascoyne was in England, all of the new information is likely to have been  provided by Mathews, who Gascoyne credits and who was Surveyor General of the Province.[76]  Like Woodward earlier, Mathews probably went by the main path to the Esaw in late1673 or early 1674, and Cofitachiqui was surely on the main path.  Mathews is known to have travelled 200 miles up the Santee before 1680.[77]  He was an unusually knowledgeable and reliable source, and the map based on his information shows Cofitachiqui the east side of the Wateree.  The scale of this map indicates that the town was about 10 miles north of where the Wateree flows into the Santee.[78]

     Mathews’ location is consistent with the two most specific distances given in the DeSoto narratives: Beidma stated Cofitachiqui was “up to thirty leagues” from the coast (about 78 miles),[79] and Elvas stated that the Indians indicated “the sea was two days’ journey away” (which would have been possible by canoe before the swift current of the Santee was dammed and diverted).[80]  Pardo’s distance of “about twenty league to the sea” (about 52 miles) is possibly correct, but less likely, and his distance of 50 leagues from St. Helena (about 130 miles) is less helpful because it is uncertain how far west or northwest he travelled before turning north, northwest, or northeast.[81]  What is certain from the Pardo accounts is that Cofitachiqui cannot have been on the Savannah River and had to have been in the vicinity of the center of South Carolina.[82-83]

     The location shown by Mathews is also consistent with the statement by Woodward that Cofitachiqui was northwest of Charleston Harbor.  Woodward noted that his trip required 14 days travel on foot, but this was the length of time required for a round trip; a member of the Governor’s Council noted shortly afterwards that the trip took 8 days.  In 1674 Woodward travelled an equivalent distance by foot to visit the Westo town on the Savannah River near the present Augusta, and that trip took 7 days.[84]  The distance from Charleston to the Fall Line near Columbia or near Augusta is approximately the same.
 There is further evidence that Cofitachiqui was somewhere in the Santee River watershed.  Gascoyne’s 1682 map shows Cofitachiqui at the headwaters of the Santee.[85]  Delisle’s 1718 map of the Southeast shows a route for DeSoto which appears to be based at least partly on earlier  information which no longer survives, and as Robert S. Lefaye, Jr., has pointed out, it shows Cofitachiqui near the Ft. Watson Mound.[86]

     There is much additional information which has led various conscientious scholars to conclude that Cofitachiqui was located in various places from the Savannah River to the Pee Dee River,[87] but a location somewhere within the Santee River watershed from St. Stephens to Camden is more likely, and a location near the confluence of the Wateree and Congaree rivers is the most likely of all.

     A location within the Santee River system is also compatible with Paul Quattlebaum’s persuasive argument that the attempted Allyon settlement was in the vicinity of Winyah Bay[88A] and with the statement by Elvas that “...the [Cofitachiqui] Indians said [it] had been in the port two days’ journey thence..., and that Allyon had died there.” [88B]  The Cofitachiqui had Spanish armor, axes, a rosary, and other material, and a Spaniard who had been with Allyon and was with DeSoto had no doubt that these artifacts had come from the attempted settlement.[89]

     Eventually, archaeological excavations will probably find the postmolds of the funerary temple at Talimico unless the site has been destroyed, and the best place to look for it is where Mathews’ map shows it.  Somewhere nearby should be a high mound and enormous quantities of fresh-water pearl shells left by the Cofitachiqui.  Rangel’s narrative states that Talomeco had a “very authoritative oratory on a high mound.”[90]  Unless this mound has been washed away by a river or hauled away for topsoil, it should still exist, and depending on whose distances are correct, it could be in Williamsburg County (where Robert Mills shows mounds on his 1826 map of Williamsburg District), in Clarendon County (where the Ft. Watson Mound survives), in Sumter County (near Pinewood), or in Kershaw County (near Camden), but a location as far east as Williamsburg District or as far north as Camden are unlikely.[91] No know mound in South Carolina is large enough to have held the funerary temple, but an “oratory” was probably a chief’s or priest’s house (or the house of a chief who was also chief priest).[92]  Archaeological excavations should also eventually find marine shells, copper weaponry, and Spanish artifacts.
 

What Are the Other Possibilities?

     In the most comprehensive study of all the relevant evidence, the anthropologist Stephen Baker concluded that the towns of Cofitachiqui were “most likely” to have been located “in Sumter County at the south end of the High Hills of Santee.”[93]  He also argued that the Congaree Indians were the most likely remants of the Cofitachiqui, but that when Lawson visited the Congaree, they must have been living at or near Camden.[94]

     Lawson saw a prospect about 20 mile long the WNW on January 13, 1701, shortly before he encountered the Congaree Indians.   Judging by the direction of the view, by the distance which could be seen, and by the elevations noted, he can only have been ESE of the Congaree Swamp at the time.[95]  His location at this point in his travels places the Congaree Indians at or near the site marked as Cofitachiqui by Mathews in c. 1685.

     The Congaree are also likely to have been part of the Province of Cofitachiqui, but not the principal part.  Wes Taukchiray has brought together all known evidence about the Congaree, and there is no evidence that they ever had more than a few dozen warriors.  By 1743 the remant of the Congaree had joined the Catawba rather than the Catawba joining the Congaree.[96]

     Baker argued that the Kussoe and all other coastal tribes south of the Ashley River were part of the Cofitachiqui, but he was mislead by an incorrect assumption which Gov. John Yeamans made while still at Barbadoes and before coming to the settlement at Charleston Harbor.  Yeamans misinterpreted a surviving letter to him from Woodward.[97]  There is abundant evidence that each of the tribes which lived on the coast between the Ashley and Savannah rivers was wholly independent.[98]

     Baker dealt in detail with the important issues of whether or not Cofitachiqui was related to Allyon’s Chicora and Lederer’s Ushery.  Paul Quattlebaum independently determined from the sailing directions of Spanish ships that Winyah Bay was the probable location of the first attempt by the Spanish to settle in the Southeast.[99]  The Ribaut Expedition learned from Indians at St. Helena that “Chiquola” was to the north of them.[100]  Since both the Cofitachiqui and Chicora are said to have been large nations which occupied the same relative location, they must have been the same people.  Baker concluded, however, that the Cofitachiqui and the Duhare were the same people.[101]

     “Chiquola” is apparently the same Muskhogean word which forms part of Apalachicola.  As mentioned, the suffix “-cola” and the prefix “tola-“  mean “town.”  The word “apelichika” in Choctaw, a Muskhogean language, also means “town” and the word “chuka” means “house.”[102]  Chicora, Cofitachiqui, and Talimico appear to be Muskhogean words referring to the principal town or many houses of the Canosi.

      “Ushery” is another example of a name for a people in a foreign language.  Baker notes  that William Byrd II explicitly  identified the Ushery as the Catawba.[103]  Ushery was what the Catawba were called by Virginia Indians, and again in this case, what a tribe was called did not necessarily indicate anything about its own language.  Baker identified the Ushery with the Cofitachiqui, but primarily with the Congaree rather than with the Catawba.  Lederer referred to a “great Lake” called Ushery that “tends Westerly,” and judging by the size and location of this lake on his map, he seems, like Lawson, to have been referring to the Congaree Swamp.[104]

      Charles Hudson, Chester DePratter, and a number of other anthropologists have found Baker’s thesis highly useful, but have reached the conclusion that the largest group of mounds on the Wateree River must have been the location of the most powerful chiefdom, a theoretical construct.[105]  However, a number of excavations in the Camden area have indicated that the largest surviving mound predates 1540, and “no sixteenth- or seventeenth-century artifacts have been recovered.”[106] More extensive excavation is needed there and at the other mound sites which are possibilities, and a more complete inventory of South Carolina mounds is needed.[107]

     Hudson and DePratter both separately and jointly have contributed importantly to the interpretation of the route the DeSoto expedition took throughout the Southeast, but no one has yet exhausted the evidence available on Indian trails, and little use has been made of early maps.  The narratives continually refer to roads which DeSoto’s army was able to travel along from one major town to another at a fairly rapid pace, and numerous manuscript and published maps of the Southeast show such trails.  For example, a c. 1715 map of Indian tribes shows that a trail existed from Apalachee (in the vicinity of Tallahassee, Florida) to where the Fall Line intersects the Savannah River , and it could well have been used by DeSoto.[108]  There were Indian trails just above the Fall Line in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina to avoid the swamps of the Coastal Plain, and these often went from one fording place to another at or near the Fall Line.

     The four principal narratives of the DeSoto Expedition do not by any means agree in all details. Even the number of days needed to travel from Apalachee to Cofitachiqui varies from about 31 (Ranjel) to 43 (Garcilaso).  Despite the tremendous amount of research which has been done by John R. Swanton and his successors, the most that can definitely be said about the Expedition's route along the South Atlantic Coast is that when DeSoto left Apalachee, the rivers still flowed south directly into the Gulf; when he got to central Georgia, the rivers began to flow east into the Atlantic; when he crossed the Appalachian Mountains, the rivers began to flow west into the Mississippi.  He travelled on the east side of the Appalachian Mountains far enough north to have had to cross at least the southern end of them to have reached streams which flowed west rather than south.   In order to cross mountains and reach a river which flowed west, DeSoto had to travel at least as far north as the westernmost boundary of South Carolina.  Ross and others have shown that the Pardo accounts are a necessary supplement to establish that the DeSoto Expedition reached as far as the center of South Carolina, but there is still uncertainty about how far north and west the expedition went and where it crossed the mountains.   There can be no consensus as long as basic issues such as the length of a league are disputed.
 

Conclusions

      The evidence as a whole indicates that the Cofitachiqui were the Catawba and their Siouan allies who were given another name by Muskhogeans to the south of them.  The main reasons there has been so much disagreement about their identity are that so many assumptions have been taken from granted and so much evidence has been discounted when it did not fit preconceptions.

     This article has considered a broad a range of evidence and has discounted as little of it as possible. Various historical accounts have been compared with one another and evaluated for reliability; ethnohistorical data has been discussed and compared with other cultures including information about languages, burial customs and architecture; geography has been considered in terms of features such as rivers and mountains, distances travelled, directions, and paths; relevant archaeological evidence has been noted; and secondary sources have been taken into consideration.  Although all of these types of evidence should routinely be considered, some have been  neglected and other overemphasized in attempts to solve the problems relating to Cofitachiqui.

     Later records of tribal names and placenames make it likely that Siouan was being spoken by the Cofitachiqui and by most other tribes north of the Ashley River and east of the Broad River  to the Atlantic Ocean.  The principal basis for assuming that the Catawba were not the Cofitachiqui has been that the Cofitachiqui were assumed to have spoken Muskhogean.  No definite evidence has been found that a major group of Muskhogean peoples existed anywhere in South Carolina before the end of the 17th Century.

    Definite evidence exists that the Spanish encountered a dramatic change in cultural patterns when they reached Cofitachiqui.  The funerary customs and architecture in particular were so different as to be described in detail.  By comparison, the linguistic evidence provided by the narratives is meager and uncertain, but the linguistic evidence for the area as a whole sufficed for the Eastern Sioux to be defined by Mooney as a linguistic entity.  The Eastern Sioux are a previously unrecognized cultural area.

     There is good evidence that the Catawba were equivalent in size and influence to the Cofitatichiqui as well as in the same area from the middle of the 16th Century.  The Esaw were an integral part of what Europeans mistakenly identified as an empire, and other closely related peoples were the Santee and Congaree and probably the Kussoe, Etiwan, and Sewee as well as a number of the tribes in eastern South Carolina who later joined the Catawba.  Language and culture sufficed to unit the Cofitachiqui against surrounding nations with different languages and largely different cultures.

    The people who referred to themselves as the Canosi can be identified primarily as the Catawba, who were the right size and in the right place at the right time.  Their supposed empire consisted of tribes which spoke the same language, faced the same threats, and united with them.
 
 
 
 
 

Acknowledgments: W. Eric Emerson asked me to make a short presentation on the ethnological value of the Shaftesbury Papers when the volume was reprinted on October 23, 1999.  Peter A. Rerig  included an expanded version of this presentation in the issue of Carologue devoted to South Carolina Indians (Autumn 2000).

    John Poindexter read what was supposed to be a final draft of the published version, and his suggestions resulted in several further drafts. Wes Taukchiray provided me with copies of the most recent articles on Cofitachique, and he and I discussed previous interpretations in detail.   He made numerous constructive criticisms, and after the article was published, he and Tom Blumer urged me to add notes.  Much of the material in the notes is from my letters to Wes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Notes

1.  Garcilaso 1956 (Spanish) and 1993 (English).  Garcilaso identifies two eye-witnesses who provided information about the temple of Cofitachqui: Juan Coles and Alonso de Carmona (1993: 305-306).
     Garcilasco was half-Spanish and half-Indian, and although not a member of the expedition, he was a conscientious historian who carefully gathered and evaluated primary sources and fairly reported the merits and failings of both cultures.  Garcilaso’s account of the DeSoto Expedition is a neglected classic of anthropology, North American exploration, and world literature.

2.  Garcilaso 1956: 221.  He wrote, “más de cien pasos de largo y cuaranta de ancho,” and Varner and Varner incorrectly translated “pasos” as feet (Garcilaso 1980: 315).  The temple is described in detail in Garcilaso 1993: II, 298-306; cf. 295-297 for a similar, but smaller funerary temple for the nobles of Cofitachiqui (at an unnamed town which is generally referred to as the Town of Cofitachiqui to distinguish it from Talomeco).

3. Rangel 1993: I, 280.  Biedma mentions the temple, but was most interested in the amount of pearls it contained (1993: I, 230-231).  Elvas was only interested in the pearls (1993: I, 83).
    These three accounts supplement and substantially confirm the accuracy of Garcilaso’s much fuller account.  As a historian, Garcilaso is as intelligent, incisive, conscientious, and  credible as Tacitus, and only a fool would dismiss what is otherwise undocumented in Tacitus.  Since Tacitus is well supported by the primary sources which are available, when he goes beyond them, he must be accepted without better evidence.  His evidence is always preferable to later conjectures about what could have happened instead, and the same is true of Garcilaso.

4.   Garcilaso 1993: II, 298.

5.  Bushnell 1919.
    Mats were sometimes used together with bark for barrel-vaulted buildings on the coast of North Carolina (noted by John White at Pomeiock [Hulton 1984:  pl. 32]).
     Towns in the Appalachian Mountains were the first ones the DeSoto Expedtion encountered that were palisaded (Rangel 1993: I, 283).  Towns on the North Carolina coast were palisaded (Hulton 1984) and also on the east coast of Florida (Lorant 1965), but evidently not in west Florida, central Georgia, and throughout South Carolina in 1540.  The existence of funerary remains above ground for centuries also implies that the Indians of South Carolina had established an unusual degree of security.

6.  Garcilaso 1993: II, 302.

7.  Bushnell 1920.

8.  Garcilaso 1993: II, 299.  The largest statues were “four varas” tall.

9.  Ibid., 301-302.

10.  Ibid., 303.

11.  Ibid., 303-305.

12.  Ibid., 302.  This explicit statement that only men were buried in the temple seems to be contradicted by the reference to chests carved with portraits “of the deceased man or woman who was in the chest,” but it may not be.  Possibly, women were buried only in the smaller temple when they were considered nobility as opposed to royalty.  Varner and Varner mistranslated “...sus hijos y hermanos y sobrinos hijos de hermanos...” as “their children, their brothers and sisters, and their neices and nephews” (Garcilaso 1956: 224; Varner and Varner 1980: 319).

13.  Driver and Massey 1957: 402 (map 155).  Ordinarily in a matrilineal society, descent was through women to men rather through women to women.  In a patrilineal society, it is ordinarily through men to men and sometime temporarily through women (as with European royalty).  The Lady of Cofitachiqui is explicitly said to have been unmarried (Garcilaso 1993: II, 285), and it is likely that whatever her position was, it was held temporarily and was to have been transferred to a male when she married (as in Lawson 1967: 57) or when she had a male child.

14.  This town was deserted and overgrown (“large uninhabited towns choked with vegetation, which looked as though no people had inhabited them for some time”; Ranjel 1993:  I, 83).
     Garcilasco refers to the “...vassals of a lady, a young marriagable woman who had recently inherited”–that is, she was unmarried, but in charge soon after her predecessor had died (II, 285).  Her position is variously described in the other narratives.
     The Elvas narrative adds that “we traversed her lands for a hundred leagues, in which as we saw, she was very well obeyed...” [I, 85]).  There are at least three possibilities: (1) the territories were under her authority; (2) she was among allies; (3) the peoples she visited were not allies, but were fearful of offending the Cofitachiqui.
     Cofitachiqui had about 500 houses when DeSoto visited in 1540 and about 1,000 warriors when Woodward visited 130 years later.  These are the only totals available for either houses or warriors, and they may not be comparable, but there is reason to believe that they are.  DePratter pointed out that DeSoto’s army of over 600 men were housed in half of the town’s houses, and if 250 houses were needed for 600 men, that works out to 2.4 men per house.  Dividing 1000 warriors by 500 houses works out to 2 warriors per house.  The houses must have been small, and small houses probably indicate a patrilineal society.  Matrilineal groups ordinarily include a number of generations in a single dwelling.
     DeSoto encountered only a few small towns for about 150 miles south of Cofitachique and only two towns for about 150 miles west or northwest of Cofitachiqui.  The population figure of 1,000 warriors means a total population of only 4,000 or 5,000 people–a small town by modern standards–and we do not know how large an area this number of people was spread over.  By comparison, in c. 1715 the Cherokee’s total for all its towns was approximately 2,000 warriors–only about twice as many (Swanton 1922: map 3).

15.  Garcilaso 1993: II, 303 (“for many centuries”).

16A.  Ibid., II, 309, 313, and 314.
     In 1980 I wrongly took for granted that the league used for navigation was also used for distances on land (Waddell 1980: 366, n. 51).  The sea league was a fraction of a degree of latitude (usually either 20 or 17.5 to a degree), and this was the most accurate way to judge long distances at sea.  On land, distances were paced off, and someone was assigned the task of keeping track of the number of paces.
     The Coronado Expedition was almost exactly contemporary with the DeSoto Expedition, and it was through areas in which  distances between surviving Indian towns are known.  F. W. Hodge concluded that “the league is equivalent to 2.63 English miles.  This Spanish judicial league is still used in Mexico” (1907: 334, n. 2).
     The Spanish league used by the DeSoto Expedition was probably the judicial league of approximately 2.6 miles.  Elvas stated that the Island of Cuba is 300 leagues long (1993: I, 53-54), and it is actually about 730 miles long, which works out to about 2.4 miles per league.   If the marine league of 3.459 had been used, Cuba would have been thought to be 1038 miles long, and if the geographic league of 3.946 miles had been used, Cuba would have been thought to be 1184 miles long.  Mistakes of this magnitude are unlikely.  However, the shorter distances recorded for known distances in Cuba vary considerably.

16B.  For a map summarizing available information on the distribution of Siouan, Muskhogean, Iroquoian, and other linguistic stocks in c. 1500, see Bushnell 1934:  map 4.

17.   Hulton 1984: pl. 38 (color illustration).  Waddell 2000:9 (black and white illustration).
     DeBry’s engravings depict White’s watercolors with a high degree of accuracy, but sometimes add irrelevant backgrounds.  In the case of his engravings of this funerary temple, he added an outer wall which is not part of the painting (1965: 269).  The temple White painted was only about 15 feet wide (using 1.5 feet as an average shoulder width for the men shown) and so could easily have been spanned by bent saplings.  Lorant’s color reproductions are retouched photographs and are unreliable.

18.  Lawson 1967: 188-189.  Lawson is also a negelected classic work of American ethnohistory, natural history, and literature.
     Bartram found no evidence of idolotry among the Indians of the South: “So far from idolotry are they, that they have no images amongst them...” (1791: 390-391).  This seems to be another distinction which separates the Creeks and Cherokees from the Cofitachiqui and the coastal tribes of North Carolina and Virginia whose cultures were largely destroyed before Bartram travelled throughout the Southeast.

19.  Hulton 1984: p. 39.

20.  Cheves 1897: 20-21.

21.  Ibid., 65, 66, and 166.

22.  Lawson 1967: 42-43.

23.  Hudson 1990: 301 and 311.

24.  Biedma 1993: I, 230.  Biedma adds, “This is no little thing for us because of the great necessity for interpreters that there is in the land.”  Evidently, the expedition was now entering a new language area which the interpreters who had been travelling with them did not understand, and it was necessary to find an Indian who could speak a language known to these interpreters.  Later in the expedition, Garcilaso noted that “...because of the great variety of languages that he [DeSoto] found as a result of the many provinces that he had passed through, almost every one of which had a language different from the others, ten, twelve, or fourteen interpreters were needed to talk with the caciques and Indians of these provinces.  The statement would pass from Juan Ortiz [who had lived among Indians in the present state of Florida] to the last of the interpreters, all of whom stood up like a chorus to receive and pass on the words to the next one, according to the manner in which they understood one another” (1993: II, 384; emphasis added).  Since “almost every one” of the provinces spoke a mutually unintelligible language, this adds still further to the likelihood that a different language was spoken in the province of Cofitachiqui than in the province to the south of it.

25.  Swanton notes that Capachequi, a small town in the province of Apalache, includes the suffix “-chiki,” which mean house, yet for Cofitachiqui, he notes that “tchikhi” in Muskhogean refers to “anything piled up, a mound” (1939: 60).  Either or both meanings could be correct.

26.  Ibid., 315.  Swanton supposed that Coça could mean either a bird in Muskogee or canes in Choctaw (60).  Coosa-chiqui could mean cane-house, which fits with the change in house construction beginning at Cofitachiqui.  A difficulty with this interpretation is that Cofitachiqui is almost invariably spelled with an “f”, and it almost invariably is spelled with five syllables.  The word Coosa or Coça was the name of a large Muskhogean confederation in the present state of Alabama, and it seems invariably to have been spelled with an “s” sound rather than with an “f” sound (Swanton 1952: 161-162).  The evidence for the meaning of “-chiqui” is better than for the meaning of “Cofita-.”

27.  “In the Pardo narratives the name Lameco or Solameco is given as a synonym for Chiaha.  This is probably intended for Tolameco, which would be the Creek equivalent for ‘Chief Town’” (Swanton 1946: 115).  “Sola-“ is not only likely to be equivalent to “Tola-,” but also to “Cola-,” which occurs as part of the name of towns such as Apalachicola and Pensacola.  Ordinarily, resemblance does not suffice to made a definite connection, but for the names of numerous towns to begin or end with the essentially the same sounds does not seem to be coincidental.  For similar conclusions, see Hudson 1990: 68-69.

28.  Swanton 1946: 46.

29.  Milling 1940: 266.

30.  Cheves 1897: 378.

31.  Gallardo 1936: 51.

32.  Ibid.  The Spanish text in these 17th Century documents is has both “Cofitachiqui” (55) and “Cosatachiqui” (53).  The handwritten letters “f” and “ç” can be easily misread.

33.  Ibid., 136.
     The continued existence of the Cofitachiqui between when they were visited by Pardo in 1566-1568 and when they were visited by Woodward in 1670 is attested by a visit made to “Cafatachiqui” by Pedro de Torres in 1628 (Swanton 1922: 220).  Among the latest references to them as the Cofitachiqui is the Spanish interrogation of Thomas Jibe in 1680 (Gallardo 1936: 136).  This makes it likely that the location shown on the c. 1685 map by Matthews was still in use by the same people who had occupied the same or nearly the same location since 1540.

34.  Cheves 1897: 342.

35.  Ibid., 344-345.

36.  Ibid., 346.

37.  Ibid., 400.

38.  Gallardo 1946: 53.

39.  Discussed in Waddell 1980: 139.

40.  Cheves 1897: 451.

41.  Shaftesbury stated the policy towards Indians succinctly: “...make them useful without force or injury” (ibid., 427).

42.  Transcribed and discussed in Waddell 1980: 262-264.

43.  What is apparently the original treaty before it was damaged is illustrated in Waddell 2000:  11.

44.  Cheves 1897: 65-66.  Lawson 1709: 34.

45.  Waddell 1980: 246-248 and 264.
     In 1682 R. F. (Ferguson) placed the “Kusso” on the Ashepoo River in between the Edisto tribe and the St. Helena tribe (Waddell 1980: 246).  The 1684 cession by the “Kussah” states that the St. Helena and Combohe tribes were north or northeast of the Kussah, and their southern boundary was left blank in the manuscript.   I think now that these directions are correct and that one group of Kussoe was roaming throughout the area from the Edisto River to the Savannah River and was temporarily without a fixed home after having ceded lands between the Ashley and the Edisto rivers.  Since these “Kussah” are given the southernmost position in the separate cessions, their southern boundary in 1684 must have been the “Westoh River”–the southern boundary of the joint cession–and I presume the southern boundary was left blank in the “Kussoe” cession from uncertainty over how best to designate the Savannah River.
     At least by 1711 one group had been allowed to return to or to remain northeast of the Edisto, and by then land had been surveyed there for them.  I have no doubt that “laid out”meant to a surveyor or a register that the land had actually been surveyed for the Kussoe.   St. Gyles and the Daniel’s tract were probably only about 6 miles apart with the Kussoes living in between the two or lower than Daniel's tract on the Edisto River.

46.  Ibid., 265-266.

47A.  Ibid., 252-253.

47B.  When the "neighboring Indians" were referred to as the "Cusabo," all of the tribes indigenous the coast between the Savannah and Ashley rivers were briefly referred to as the "Kussah-river."  The Kussah almost certainly spoke Siouan, and the indigenous tribes definitely did not speak Siouan.   The use of a hybrid name "Cusabo" (Siouan "Cusa-" and  the local "-bo") and calling a group of tribes after the river on which a single unrelated tribe was located is a hopeless muddle.  Each of the indigenous tribes was wholly independent, and it would be misleading to refer to them as a group by any surviving Indian name.  A name is needed for their linguistic and cultural area, and  I propose referring to them as the Lowcountry Indians.

48.  Adair 1930: 236.

49.  Quoted and discussed in Waddell 1980: 39.

50.  Ibid., 247.

51.  Ibid., 269.
      The Kussoe must have been a much larger tribe than any Coastal Tribe for two reasons: the 1684 cessions mention the territory of the Kussoe as being adjacent to three other tribes, and all English men in the colony were called up to fight them in 1674.  R. F. (Ferguson) stated in 1682 (seven years after the Kussoe cession) that the “Kusso” on Ashepoo River “are the greatest Nation hereabouts:   yet they report of themselves to be, but not to exceed fifty Bowmen” (Waddell 1980:  246).

52.  Ibid., 8-9.

53.  Cheves 1897: 258.

54.  Ibid., 428-449.

55.  Ibid., 334.

56.  Milling also notes that in the middle of the 19th Century Alexander Gregg and Henry R. Schoolcraft recorded similar migration legends for the Catawba.  The Catawba tradition was that they had formerly lived far to the northwest and had been forced by the Connewanga (Iroquois) to relocate around 1450 (Milling 1940: 232).  This is consistent with numerous migration legends of the Dakota Sioux that they too were forced to move west by the Iroquois at about the same time (Swanton 1952: 281-283).  Similar “legends” which mention specific numbers of years even centuries in length have often been confirmed by European sources.
     The Catawba also stated that on coming to South Carolina, they warred with the Cherokee until an agreement was reached making the Broad River the boundary between their territories.  The traditions of both the Catawba and the Cherokee indicate that they were both arrived in the Southeast at much the same time with the Cherokee preceeding the Catawba, and available archaeological evidence supports these traditions.
     David Anderson wrote about the Savannah River that “after 1450, however, virtually the entire basin, which was densely occupied throughout much of prehistory, and by  progressively more complex chiefdoms from circa 1200 to 1450, was precipitously abandoned” (1994: 3).  Evidently, the Catawba and Cherokee forced out the peoples who were building temple mounds throughout much of South Carolina until around 1450.

57.  Garcilaso 1993: 274.

58A.  The Savannah River was largely deserted from c. 1450-c. 1650 (Anderson 1994: 3).

58B.  For example, Jedediah Morse wrote in 1822 that the Catawba were “the bravest, the most formidable, and generous enemies of the Six Nations” (quoted in White 1980: 40).

59A.  Usually, rivers or portions of rivers were named after the tribes which lived on them, but in this case a portion of the Catawba which spoke a different dialect was identified by their word for river.  It was not uncommon for explorers to point to an object and to misunderstand the response.
     At least by 1709 Lawson knew that the Waccon (Siouan) word for water was “Ejau” (1967: 234; he listed no separate word for creek or river on p. 236).  Milling noted that the Catawba name for the Broad River is “Eswa Huppedaw, or boundary” (1940: 232).  Notably, the suffix -daw occurs in Awendaw, a Sewee word; possibly -saw, -daw, and -wah are all attempts to record the same sound (see n. 60B herein).
     Mooney first recognized that the “Issa” referred to in the Pardo narratives near the present location of the Catawba obviously referred to the Esaw and thus to the Catawba (noted by Milling 1940: 233).

59B.   Tackchiray pointed out that the Catawba made camps at Wassamasaw and Parker’s Ferry when they came to the Lowcountry to make and sell pottery (reproducing an account by William Gilmore Simms [White 1980:39]).  The Catawba were believed to have had about 1,500 warriors in 1671 according to an estimate of 1775 that was based on earlier data, and this is comparable  to the 1,000 warriors Woodward estimated for the Cofitachiqui.  An independent estimate for the total population of the Catawba of 4,000  in 1690 conforms closely (1760; ibid., 40).

60A.  Waddell 1980: 341-343, 344, and 337-338.  I argued in 1980 that Siouan was probably spoken by some of the tribes of the Lowcountry (ibid.., 31).

60B.  “Woosah” was spelled first as “esau” and is also certainly  Siouan for creek or river. Also,  -esaw was corrupted to various degrees in Echaw, Chebasah (Jehossee), and possibly in several other words (Yeshoe, Ittichicaw, Caw-Caw, Timicau, and Oni-se-cau).
     The occurrence of the word in areas occupied by the Santee, Sewee, Etiwan, and Kussoe, help to make it likely that these tribes were all Siouan and add substatially to the likelihood that the Coosa who united with the Catawba were not Muskogean Coosa, but Kussoe from the Lowcountry (possibly with Natchez along with them and the Pedee as well).

61.  West of the Appalachian Mountains, the DeSoto narratives recorded the -hatchie suffix in Athahachi and the -lusa (black) suffix in Tascaluça (1939: 60).  These suffixes were commonly recorded later throughout the Southeast, yet neither is known to have been used in South Carolina before 1687, when the Yemassee arrived.  The prefix oki- (water) is also not known to occur in South Carolina.  Where they would ordinarily have occurred, other suffixes and prefixes occur (see n. 67 herein).

62.  Cheves 1897: 428.

63.  Mooney 1894: 374 (except possibly the Winyah, who may have spoken the same language used by the coastal tribes between the Ashley and Savannah rivers).

64.  White 1985.

65.  Waddell 1980: 83.

66.  Byington 1915: 462.

67.   Taukchiray’s annotated collection of all the evidence on the Kussoe (White 1980) presuaded me  that the Kussoe and Kussah were different branches of the same tribe–presumably identical to the Greater and Lesser Kussoe.
     The primary source material is sloppy and contradictory, but I think now that it is extremely important that R. F. (Ferguson) stated in 1682 (seven years after the Kussoe cession) that the “Kusso” on the Ashepoo River “are the greatest Nation hereabouts” (Waddell 1980:  246).  Ferguson’s account places them between the Edisto tribe and the St. Helena tribe, and, as noted, the 1684 cession by the “Kussah” states that the St. Helena and Combohe tribes were north or northeast of the Kussah and their southern boundary was left blank.
    The cession of 1684 mentions both “Kussoe” and “Kussah” in the text, but is signed only by two “Kussa” captains.  I think these are the same two “great” Kussoe chiefs who also signed as the representatives of the Greater and Lesser Kussoe in 1675.
     In 1696 the “Causa” are listed adjacent to the St. Helena, and the “Cussoes” are listed adjacent to the Santees.  There must be two groups of Kussoes with separate leaders to make sense of this and other evidence which is impossible to resolve otherwise.
     In 1706 the “Cussos” (I think the “Kussah” branch) notified the Assembly that “they are now goeing to Remove” to an area “south of the Combahee.”  By 1707 the Coosaw River or “Cusaboe” had been named for them (and was soon renamed by the Yemassee as the Coosawhatchie).  By 1711 “Coosaw Island” included Polawana Island, which in 1712 was granted to the “Cusabo” (Kussah).  In 1711, the Kussoe had land north of the Edisto River that had been “laid out” to them (next to Daniel’s tract).  By then, there were unquestionably two groups of Kussoe.
     I plan to combine the two sections of my book on the Kussoe and Kussah.  I will probably continue to distinguish the two groups as Kussoe and Kussoe in order refer to them more definitely (rather than as the Great and Lesser),  to avoid creating further confusion, and to save face.

68.  Booker et al. (1992)  argue that the Guale spoke Muskogean; that the Lowcountry tribes spoke the same language as Guale; that the Cofitachiqui spoke the same language as the Lowcountry tribes; and,  therefore, that the Lowcountry tribes and the Cofitachiqui spoke Muskogean.  (Chester DePratter provided me with a copy of this article).  The Guale unquestionably spoke Muskhogean, but the rest of the argument is not based on sound evidence.  The authors ignored a large body of evidence that most of the tribes of the Lowcountry did not speak Muskhogean (Waddell 1980: 23-33).
     I pointed out that a Guale interpreter could not understand Diacan and another Indian who were natives of St. Helena.  The formal record states that two interpreters were needed to interrogate these Indians: “Through Antonia Camuñas, interpreter of the Guale language, another interpreter called Diego, a native of St. Catherine, was examined.  The latter, being a Christian, was duly sworn, before God and upon the cross, and promising to tell the truth, he was directed to question Diacan as follows...” (Gallardo 1936: 54).  This make it perfectly clear that Camuñas spoke Spanish and Guale, that the Indian interpreter spoke Guale and the language of the St. Helena, and that the St. Helena Indian did not speak Guale.
     When Woodward went to Cofitachiqui, he took the Cassique of Kiawah to interpret for him.  A letter from the Council of the Province states that Woodward wanted to go to England to tell the Proprietors about his discoveries, but that he could not be spared because of  “his familiar acquaintance amongst the natives, and his knowledge in their language.” The same letter refers to the Emperor of Cofitachiqui “unto whom by the Casseca of Kaiawah he [Woodward] made knowne the settlement of the English in these parts...” (Cheves 1897:  191-192).  This is explicit evidence that the language Woodward had learned on the Coast did not enable him to communicate directly with the Cofitachiqui.
    In 1666 Woodward had been left by Sandford at Port Royal "for the mutuall learning of their language," and at the time, the Cassique of Kiawah had come Port Royal to try to persuade the English to settle at Charleston Harbor (Cheves 1897:  78).  The Kiawah chief "used to come" (repeatedly went) to the Cape Fear River ("Charles Towne in Clarendon") to trade with the English (ibid., 68), and he was "a uery Ingenious Indian & a great Linguist in this Maine" (ibid., 167).  This information can be interpreted to mean that Woodward learned the language spoken at Port Royal and that the Kiawah chief knew the language spoken at Port Royal and already knew considerable English at least by 1670 and probably by 1666.  Judging by the form of the word "Kiawah," it is possible that the Kiawah spoke Siouan and that the Kiawah chief translated Siouan at Cofitachiqui for Woodward, who spoke only the language of Port Royal.
     Bandera is explicit that at Canos (Cofitachiqui) the chiefs assembled there were “all summoned together by Guillermo Rufin, interpreter of their language, and through him it was declared to them...” (Hudson 1990: 260).  This and other similar statements indicate, as the authors argue, that Rouffi knew the language spoken at Cofitachiqui.  However, he also knew French and Spanish, and as a gifted linguist, he must have know another Indian language besides the one or more languages spoken on the Coast (including almost certainly Edisto since he married a daughter of the Edisto chief and since he was at Orista when Rojas summoned him).
    Swanton provided good evidence that Muskhogean was spoken at Guale, Apalachee, and at Coosa, and this suffices to account for the distance of 200 leagues where the Muskhogean language was said to have been spoken (Booker et al. 1992:  441, n. 6).  Booker et al. admit that it is a surmise on their part that an unnamed writer who mentioned 200 leagues was referring to the places visited by the Pardo expeditions (ibid., 416).  This statement on which so much reliance is placed was made by the Jesuit Juan Rogel (Zubillaga 1946: 325 [rather than 425]).  When Rogel made this statement, he had recently arrived at Port Royal from the southwest coast of the present State of Florida where Muskhogean was not spoken.  Although he later became an important source, his statement about the Muskhogean language is probably based on second-hand information and is in any case ambiguous.
      On the basis of fragmentary, ambiguous, and dubious evidence, the authors assert that the Cofitachiqui spoke Muskhogean (“Creek and/or Hitchiti was spoken in the central town...”; p. 435).  If Muskhogean had been spoken widely in South Carolina, its surviving placenames should show some evidence of it as they often do elsewhere in the Southeast, but as has been stated, this is not the case (note 61 herein).
     The authors’ principal evidence that Muskhogean was spoken by the Cofitachique consists of two placenames:  Cofitachiqui and Tolameco.  If there were any direct evidence that the Indians themselves used these two words, there would be no question that they spoke Muskhogean, but there is none.  Since Canosi was what the Indians called themselves, Cofitachiqui is likely to be a name assigned by a Muskogean interpreter.  This is even more likely for Tolameco since it is not a placename, but a descriptive name meaning chief town or town of the chief (as the authors acknowledge on p. 418).  Bandera stated that  Pardo “went directly to another place that is named Olameco and, for another name, Chiaha” (Hudson 1990: 303.  This indicates that two names were being used for the same town [as Booker et al. state on p. 408, yet their map 2 shows these names appear as two separate towns]).  Talomeco and Olameco were names being used to designate two towns at about the same time (1540 and 1566) in two areas separated by the Appalachian Mountains.
     The authors make no use of the “Early History of the Eastern Siouan Tribes,” a persuasive summary Swanton wrote in 1936.  He states that in 1881 Gatschet and Dorsey established that the Catawba language was Siouan “beyond reasonable doubt” and that in 1895 Mooney “demonstrated very satisfactorily the Siouan connection of the ...  Woccon, Catawba, Sugaree, Waxhaw, Cheraw or Sara, Wateree, Congaree, Santee, Sewee, Pedee...” and other tribes (Swanton 1936:  371, 373).  The authors acknowledge that “Catawban as a family is distantly related to Siouan, but it is a mistake in modern nomenclature to call Catawba ‘Siouan’” (410), but they cite vocabularies which were collected so late that they are likely to reflect the influence of other peoples who incorporated with the Catawba.  Some of the tribes which joined the Catawba definitely did not speak Siouan as their native language, and at least some descendants of the speakers of other languages are likely to have been among the latest surviving informants and after centuries had no way of knowing whether some words were Catawban or not.  More weight needs to be given to earlier sources such as Oscar M. Lieber, who provided highly significant, but little used evidence in his “Vocabulary of the Catawba Language, with Some Remarks on Its Grammar, Construction, and Pronounciation” (1858: 327-342).
     The evidence that Siouan was spoken throughout eastern South Carolina is poor, as was admitted by Mooney and as has been often repeated, but there is even less good evidence that Muskhogean was ever spoken anywhere in eastern South Carolina.  The burden of proof is on anyone who disputes the widespread and definite evidence of numerous surviving placenames.  This type of evidence has been relied upon extensively in Europe with persuasive results.
     For determining relationships, Booker et al. consider it more important for their sociograms to represent whenever one member of a tribe is known to have visited another tribe than when the remnants of one tribe united with another tribe.  It is far more likely that a tribe which united with another one spoke a mutually intelligible language.  It is possible to find example of tribes which united for mutual protection against a common enemy and did not speak the same language, but it is common sense that this was contrary to what usually happened.  Many tribes are known to have moved great distances to rejoin peoples of the same linguistic stock (such as the Tuscarora to the Five Nations).

69.  Lawson 1967: 27-29.
     Lawson’s account of a burial on top of a mound is related to the method used by the Cofitachiqui, but not equivalent.  He describes monuments to individuals with (as well as I can tell) nothing more than an “umbrella”-like structure to cover a box of one person’s bones.  He states that the grave itself was about 4' X 8'.  These were not temples or even houses, but tombs with a ridge “like the Roof of an House” (1967:  28).

70.  Bushnell 1920: 135-137.

71.  Ibid., 122-146.  Bushnell attributed burial mounds in the Ohio Valley to the Sioux (142), but among the Biloxi he noted that they did not bury their chiefs (135-137).  At least some Sioux on the Great Plains did not bury their chiefs (1927: 35).

72.  Bushnell 1927: 3-4 and 14.

73.  Bushnell 1920: 91, 106-107, and 110.  The Choctaw (Muskhogean) placed corpses on scaffolds only until the flesh could be easily removed and eventually placed the bones they gathered in a burial mound (94-95).  By contrast the Powatan (Algonquian) tomb of kings (27) was similar to what John White depicted on the North Carolina coast.

74.  The central portion of this map is reproduced in Waddell 2000: 13.

75.  Crane 1928: 13, n. 28.

76.  For a discussion of this influential map, see Cumming 1962: 162-163 (no. 101).
     As late as 1684, maps still showed the Wateree River flowing into the Atlantic Ocean.  Until Mathews made his c. 1685 map, no one depicted the geography of the interior of South Carolina at all accurately.  Even Lawson, who traveled up the Santee and Wateree in 1700, did not know that the Wateree flowed into the Santee and got the geography of the South Carolina entirely incorrect on his c. 1708 map, but he was Surveyor of North Carolina.

77.  Matthews 1680: 155.

78.  Measured on a facsimile in the Map Division, Library of Congress.

79.  Biedma 1993: I, 231.

80.  Elvas 1993: I, 83.  If the league being used was 2.63 miles, all of these distances and times for travel seem to rule out a location as far inland as Camden.

81.  Pardo 1990: 301.

82-83.  In 1930 Mary Ross concluded from the evidence of the Pardo narratives that Cofitachique had to be located near the center of South Carolina (Baker 1974: 8).

84.  Cheves 1897: 186, 201, and 456-459.

85.  Waddell 2000: 15.  Gascoyne’s entire 1682 map is reproduced and discussed in Cumming 1962: pl. 39 and pp. 159-160 (no. 92).

86.  Waddell 2000: 15.  Delisle’s entire 1718 map is reproduced and discussed in Cumming 1962:  pl. 47 and pp. 186-187 (no. 170).
    Robert S. Lefaye, Jr., personal communication.

87.  In 1873 C. C. Jones located Cofitachiqui on the Savannah River at Silver Bluff (157), and after extensive research, the United States DeSoto Expedition Commission came to the same conclusion (Swanton 1939).  In 1928 Verner Crane pointed out the importance of Mathew’s c. 1685 map as evidence for the location of Cofitachiqui on the Wateree River (13, n. 28), but this information was overlooked for decades more.  In 1930 Mary Ross argued in favor of a location on the Congaree River near Columbia (Baker 1974: 8 and Appendix V, p. 1).  In 1945 Herbert E. Ketcham considered a location on the Pee Dee River a possibility worthy of further study (reprinted in DePratter 1987: 36, n. 46).

88A.  Quattlebaum 1956.

88B.  Elvas 1993: I, 84.

89.  Ibid.;  Rangel 1993: I, 279; and Biedma 1993: I, 231.

90.  Rangel 1993: I, 280.

91.  Mills 1825: map of Williamsburg District.  Squier and Davis 1848: 105-108 and pl. 37; Blanding mentions that three mounds had been destroyed by 1847.  Mills 1825: map of Kershaw District.
     In 1566 Bandera noted that the soil near Cofitachiqui was “bright red” and that the river valleys contained “much rock and [many] boulders” (Hudson 1990: 301).  In 1670 Woodward found the Province of Cofitachiqui to be “exceedinge rich and fertill generally of a red mould and hillie with most pleasant vallies and springes haueing plentie of white and lack Marble...” (William Owen quoted in Cheves 1897: 201).  Red earth begins at the inner Coastal Plain and occurs as far east as the vicinity of Ft. Watson (State Board of Agriculture 1883: frontispiece map).  Boulders are ordinarily found beginning at the Fall Line.  These geological features make it unlikely that Cofitachiqui was farther east than the Fall Line.

92.  The largest mound known to have existed at Camden had a top about 72 feet in diameter (Squier and Davis 1848: 107).
    This single mound mentioned at Cofitachiqui in any of the narratives of the DeSoto or Pardo expeditions cannot be assumed to have been built by the Cofitachiqui.  Bartram found the Creeks and Cherokees using mound sites, and both peoples stated that they did not build the large temple mounds he encountered throughout the Southeast.  He stated that “the Cherokee themselves are as ignorant as we are, by what people or for what purposes these artificial hills were raised...” and that a Cherokee council house was on a mound which was “of a much ancienter date than the building” (Bartram 1791: 407; 297).  Numerous migration accounts indicate that both the Creeks and Cherokee were (like the Catawba) relatively recent arrivals in the Southeast (as Bartram noted on pp. 68 and 297).    He noted also that the Yemassee and Choctaw continued to build funerary mounds (130 and 404), but these mounds differ in size and shape from temple mounds.  A 1817 account by Elias Cornelius notes that a group of Cherokee at the Etowah site stated such mounds “were never put up by our people” (quoted in Larson 1989: 133).
     Clarence B. Moore pointed out in 1899 in his book on mounds of the South Carolina coast, “these mounds... may be divided into two classes: larger mounds used for domiciliary purposes and low mounds used for burial” (165).  Domicilary mounds are known to have been used only for the houses of chiefs, but could have been reused by later peoples for various purposes such as a platform for a council house.

93.  Baker 1974: 97; cf. Appendix IV, p. 7, and Appendix V, p. 5.

94.  Ibid., Appendix II.  Baker called the Congaree the principal “remnant” of Cofitachiqui, and  he referred to the Congaree and  Santee the core of Cofitachqui (198; cf. 47).  He concluded that “...the Cofitachiqui, apparently under the name of Congarees, were eventually absorbed into the Catawba Nation which continued the centralization of regional authority” (6).

95. Lawson’s journal is more specific than the DeSoto or Pardo narratives, but he often omits the number of miles he travelled.  Even so, it helps to provide more specific locations for the tribes of central South Carolina and deserves to be traced mre accurately:
(1) We can be sure where Lawson was on 6 Jan. 1701 when he saw the unusual “Brick and Stone” house at French Jamestown (1967:  21).  The ruins of this house are marked on a map compiled from pre-1785 plats and are designated “Mr. Gaillard Senr. Stone & brick house” (Smith 1908: map 2).  They still exist near the historical marker on the south bank of the Santee River a few hundred yards east of the railroad bridge.
(2) Lawson states that on Jan. 7th he crossed the Santee–that is, went to the north side–and on the 8th, he was following “the usual Path” (p. 21), but because of flooding he had to make a 10-mile detour and so travelled a total of about 20 miles to the west on the 7th and 8th.  On the 9th, he had difficulty getting across another swamp (without a canoe), and he does not indicate how far he travelled.  On the 10th, he was at a Santee mound.  From the 7th through the 10th, he probably travelled about 25 miles to the west of French Jamestown, and this estimate fits well with the next set of milages he gives.
     A location approximately 25 miles west of French Jamestown corresponds well with the four mounds shown on Mills’s 1825 map of Williamsburg District.  Lawson says the Santee were still constructing burial mounds, and if these mounds date from c. 1700, they were probably built by the Santee.
(3) After leaving French Jamestown, the next point which Lawson can definitely be known to have reached was the prospect he saw on Sunday, 13 Jan (p. 31).  He wrote, “we travell’d by a Swamp-side, which Swamp I believe to be no less than twenty milles over, the other side being as far as I could well discern, there appearing great ridges of Mountains, bearing from us. W. N. W.  One Alp with a Top like a Sugar-loaf, advanc’d its head above all the rest very considerably....”  As topographical maps of the vicinity indicate, the specific direction (WNW), the distance seen, and the elevations can only refer to the Congaree Swamp, and Lawson has to have been to the ESE of it on an elevation high enough to see about 20 miles.  He was probably on the hilltop west of Millford Plantation.  Since Lawson was a surveyor, his specific directions and distance cannot be ignored.  Baker was equally convinced that the prospect was at Statesburg (1974: Appendix II, p. 13), and DePratter and Green placed Lawson at the overlook in Poinsette State Park (2000: 20).
     To get to this prospect from the Santee mound, Lawson travelled 20 miles on the 11th, another 20 miles on the 12th, and 15 miles on the 13th for a total of 55 miles (p. 31).  By my rough measurement, it is about 80 miles from French Jamestown to the Congaree Swamp, and 80 minus 55 leaves 25 miles as the approximate distance of the Santee mounds from French Jamestown.  The distance of 55 miles from the Congaree Swamp to the Santee mounds precludes the Ft. Watson mound from being the Santee mound which Lawson mentions.
(4) Lawson spent the 14th at the prospect of the Congaree Swamp, and on the 15th he travelled all day (presumably his average of about 20 miles) and on the 16th travelled a half day (presumably 10 miles).  He does not say how many miles he travelled either day, but after a day and a half of walking, he was probably in the vicinity of Statesburg.  He indicates elsewhere that his group was walking with packs on their backs, and although they sometimes travelled as far as 30 miles in one day, that far was rare.  At their usual pace, they cannot have walked a distance of about 55 miles from the Congaree Swamp to Camden in a day and a half.  The maximum for a day and a half was probably 45 miles, and 30 miles is more likely to have been the distance travelled.
(5) After leaving the Congaree village, Lawson began to indicate his milage again, and on the 17th he went 30 miles; on the 18th, 20 miles; and on the 19th, 8 miles for a total of 58 miles to the Wateree-Chickanee town, which must have been in the vicinity of Lancaster.
     Lawson mentions no Indian town from the vicinity of Statesburg to Lancaster, and he seems to have bypassed Camden completely.  He travelled for approximately 170 miles from French Jamestown to the vicinity of Lancaster and saw only two small villages.
     From the Wateree-Chickanee town to the Catawba town is about 45 miles farther, and in this area Lawson encountered numerous large towns.  Only 3 miles away from the Wateree-Chickanee, he visited a major Waxaw town, described its large statehouse in detail, and noted that he had no idea whether or not he was near a major river or how far he was from the coast (p. 46).  As his 1709 map indicated, he had no idea which river system he was near.  This makes me highly suspicious of the attempts to exactly pinpoint where any Indian town was that he had seen before reaching the Catawba.
     At the Catawba town, he picked up the Virginia Path (p. 50) and followed it to the headwaters of the Pamlico River.  Since the location of the Virginia Path is well recorded (as on Moseley’s 1733 map of North Carolina and Mitchell’s 1755 map of the United States; Cumming 1962), there is little doubt about where he went after he left the Catawba town.  In general, the later towns he mentions were where this path reached the ford of a river.

96.  White 1985.

97.  Cheves 1897: 218 and 186-188.  Yeamans assumed the Emperor of Cofitachiqui was the “Supreme Cossique” (casique or chief in Latin), but what Woodward actually wrote to Yeamans was simply that while at Cofitachiqui, “I there contacted a league wth. Ye Empr. & all those Petty Cassekas betwixt us & them....”  Literally, this means between Charleston Harbor and the center of the State and not south of Charleston or east and west of Cofitachqui.  It could be taken to imply that there were other chiefs meeting at Cofitachiqui (as when Pardo visited it), but this is speculation. In any case, if these chiefs had been  absolute subjects of as “emperor,” they need not have been mentioned as agreeing to a treaty; it would have sufficed to say that the Emperor had committed his subjects to defend the province.
     Soon after this alliance was made, the Spanish attempted to attack the settlement at Albemarle Point, and the English were cut off from the assistance of tribes to the south of Charleston Harbor, “yet ye more northerne Indians as those of Wando, Ituan [Etiwan], Seweh [Sewee] and sehey [Santee?], came to our assistence and I am persuaded yt. in 10 dayes time we might haue muster’d neere 1000 bowemen thay seemed verie zealous in our behalfe their Cassekas making verie ample speeches to incite their bands of bowemen to ingage for us....  I have seene one of their Capitanos speak to his people halfe an hour together, with ye greatest passion yt could be invigheing agt. Ye Spaniards & applauding ye English...” (Cheves 1897: 199).  This passage indicates that the warriors of the tribes living within five days travel to the north of Charleston Harbor had to be persuaded as individuals by their respective chiefs to fight for the English.  This is good evidence that the individuals of these tribes could not be ordered to go to war by any chief or any emperor.  Persuasion is well documented as having been necessary to get individual Indians to go to war in tribes throughout the United States north of Mexico, and this fact is contrary to assertion that chiefdoms existed widely.  The Cherokee were also considered to have an “emperor,” but his influence was limited entirely to his persuasive ability.
     Baker states that the “major goal of this thesis is to demonstrate that a rank society suggestive of the chiefdom stage of cultural evolution was in existence during the earliest contact period and that it persisted well into the historic period.  It is theorized that this collective society embrased peoples of both the Piedmont and Coastal Lowlands... ” (1974: 14).  This theory facilitated interpreting evidence in ways which the documentation does not support (Waddell 1980: 384-385, n. 319).  For example, he argued that “central collection as part of a system of economic redistribution was evident [in the Lowcountry] in 1671...,”  and he assumed without evidence that corn being stolen by the Kussoe was sent to Cofitachiqui and that corn stored at Sewee was to have been sent to Cofitachiqui rather than used locally.

98.  Definite evidence that the Lowcountry tribes were independent of one another is the series of land cessions which were made in 1684.  Separate cessions for each tribe which occupied the coast indicate that each tribe was considered to have title to the territory it occupied, just as the 1674 cession of the Kussoe and Kussah had indicated.  If any or all of this territory had been claimed by an emperor, land would certainly have been acquired through the emperor, and one signature would have sufficed.
     There is a tremendous amount of additional evidence that Lowcountry tribes were independent.  For example, Anthony Ashley Cooper asked a member of the Council “whether the Indian Cassques your Neighbours be absolutely supreme Lords, in theire owne Territory’s, or else be Tributary Princes and pay subjection and homage to any greater king who is their Emperor,” and another member of the Council, Maurice Matthews, replied that he found “noe tributaries among them” (Cheves 1897: 313 and 334).  Additional evidence is discussed in detail in my chapter on “Intertribal Relationships” (Waddell 1980: 16-22).

99.  See notes 88-89 herein.

100.  Swanton 1922: 219; Quattlebaum 1956: 47-48; Baker 1974: 115 (citing Laudonnière’s account of the Ribaut Expedition).
     The “l” substituted for an “r” in Chicora does not mean that the Indians at St. Helena spoke Muskhogean, but probably means that they did not speak Siouan.  It cannot be ruled out that one or more tribes in the Port Royal area spoke Muskhogean, but judging by surviving placenames and available information on the need for translators, most of them seem to have spoken the language of the Lowcountry Indians.

101.  Ibid., 198.  The location of Duhare is even more uncertain than the location of Chicora.  As Swanton noted, “unfortunately Peter Matyr does not tell us whether the Spaniards turned north or south from Chicora in going to...” Duhare (1922: 47).

102.  Byington 1915: 586.

103.  Baker 1974: Appendix III, 1.

104.  Baker 1974: Appendix III, 2, 28.  Lederer 1672: 17-18; his map is reproduced in Cumming 1964: pl 36 and is discussed on pp. 150-151 (no. 68).

105.  For example, in Hudson 1990: 70-71 and 115-116, n. 47; also in DePratter 1994: 207.
     DePratter argued in favor of a site with numerous mounds (ibid., 205), but only one mound was mentioned in any of the DeSoto narratives (Rangel 1993: I, 280), and none are mentioned in the Pardo narratives.  A chiefdom can be inferred from the existence of a major mound site, but mounds could equally well have been built voluntarily.  There is no evidence either way.

106.  DePratter 1994: 211-212.

107.  Camden and Ft. Watson are among the few mound sites which have been excavated even partially in South Carolina.
    Thomas provided a list of mounds in South Carolina that is still useful (1891: 194-196).  DePratter shows the relative locations of Mississippian sites in South Carolina and adjacent areas (1994: figs. 2-3), and two major examples could be added: Silver Bluff (Bartram 1928: 258-259; Jones 1873: 152-156) and Indian Hill on St. Helena Island (Moore 1899: 164).  Among the other mound sites deserving investigation are ones mentioned by Mills (1826: 771 and 486-487) and others  previously mentioned as shown on his district maps (1825).

108.  “The Distribution of Indian Tribes in the Southeast About the Year 1715" (Swanton 1922:  map 3).  This map is discussed in Cumming (1962: 181 [no. 157]), and he calls Swanton’s tracing of a blueprint “inaccurate.”  The original of this map and of the entire c. 1685 Matthews map are both in the British Museum, and both need to be made readily available through facsimile reproduction.
     Another path which could have been followed from Apalachee to the Savannah River at a point about 80 miles inland is shown on Moll’s 1729 map (Cumming 1962: pl. 50; pp. 195-196 [no. 206]).
     In addition to the maps by Gascoyne, Mathews, and Delisle, numerous contemporary maps show Cofitachiqui while it was still being referred to by the same name (for example, Cumming 1962: pls. 6, 15, 19, and 30).
 
 
 
 

Bibliography
Adair, James
1775 [1930] Adair’s History of the American Indians.  Ed. by Samuel Cole Williams.  Reprinted by Promontory Press,
    New York.

Baker, Steven G.
1974 Cofitachique: Fair Province of Carolina: History and Archaeology of the Carolina Indian.  Master’s thesis.
    University of  South Carolina, Columbia.

Bartram, William
1791 [1928] Travels of William Bartram.  Ed. by Mark van Doren.  Dover Publications, New York.

Biedma, Luys Hernández de
1993 “Relation of the Island of Florida.”  Trans. By John E. Worth.  In Clayton et al., vol. 1, pp. 225-306 (from
    Orviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias, bk. 17).

Booker, Karen M.; Charles M. Hudson; and Robert L. Rankin
1992 “Place Name Identification and Multilingualism in the Sixteenth-Century Southeast.”  Ethnohistory 39:  399-451.

Bushnell, David I., Jr.
1919 Native Villages and Village Sites East of the Mississippi.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Amerian Ethnology
    Bulletin 69.  Government Printing Office, Washington.
1920 Native Cemeteries and Forms of Burial East of the Mississippi.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American
    Ethnology Bulletin 71.  Government Printing Office.
1927 Burials of the Algonquian, Siouan, and Caddoan Tribes West of the Mississippi.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau
    of American Ethnology Bulletin 83.  Government Printing Office, Washington.
1934  "Tribal Migrations East of the Mississippi."  Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 89, no. 12, pp. 1-9 (with
    4 maps.

Byington, Cyrus
1915 A Dictionary of the Choctaw Language.  Ed by John R. Swanton and Henry S. Halbert.  Smithsonian Institution,
    Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 46.  Government Printing Office, Washington.

Clayton, Lawrence A.; Vernon James Knight, Jr.; and Edward C. Moore
1993 The De Soto Chronicles: the Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America, 1539-1543.  University of
    Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Cheves, Langdon, ed.
1897 “The Shaftesbury Papers and Other Records Relating to Carolina and the First Settlement on Ashley River Prior to
    the Year 1676.”  Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society, vol. 5, pp. 1-523.  South Carolina Historical
    Society, Charleston.

Crane, Verner
1928 [1956] The Southern Frontier, 1670-1732.  University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Cumming, William P.
1962 The Southeast in Early Maps with an Annotated Check List of Printed and Manuscript Regional and Local Maps
    of Southeastern North America During the Colonial Period.  University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

DePratter, Chester B.
1989 “Cofitachiqui: Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Evidence.” Studies in South Carolina Archaeology: Essays
    in Honor of Robert L. Stephenson, pp. 133-156.  Ed. by Albert C. Goodyear, III, and Glen T. Hanson.
    Anthropological Studies 9.  Occassional Papers of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and
    Anthropology.  University of South Carolina, Columbia.
1994 “The Chiefdom of Cofitachequi.”  The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South,
    1521-1704, pp. 197-226.  Ed. by Charles Hudson and Carmen Chaves Tesser.  University of Georgia Press, Athens.

DePratter, Chester B., ed.
1987 “Explorations in Interior South Carolina by Hernando de Soto (1540) and Juan Pardo (1566-1568).”  South
    Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology Notebook 19: 1-61.

DePratter, Chester B.; Charles M. Hudson; and Marvin T. Smith
1983 “The Route of Juan Puado’s Explorations in the Interior Southeast, 1566-1568.”  Florida Historical Quarterly
    62: 125-158.  (Reprinted in DePratter, ed., 1987.)

DePratter, Chester B., and Marvin T. Smith
1980 “Sixteenth Century European Trade Goods in the Southeastern United States: Evidence from the Juan Pardo
    Expeditions (1566-1568).  Spanish Colonial Frontier Research, ed. by Henry F. Dobyns.  Center for
    Anthropological Studies, Albuquerque.

DePratter, Chester, and Val Green
2000 “John Lawson and the Great Catawba Trading Path.”  Carologue, vol. 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2000): 16-20.

Driver, Harold E., and William C. Massey
1957 Comparative Studies of North American Indians.  Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Held
    at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, New Series–vol. 47, part 2.  American Philosophical
    Society, Philadelphia.

Elvas
1993 “The Account by a Gentleman from Elvas.”  Trans. By James Alexander Robertson.  In Clayton et al., vol. 1,
    pp. 33-171.

Gallardo, José Miguel
1936 “The Spaniards and the English Settlement in Charles Town.” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical
    Magazine, v. 37, no. 2 (Apr.): 49-64; v. 37, no. 4 (Oct.), pp. 131-141.

Garcilaso de la Vega (the Inca)
1956  La Florida del Inca: Historia del Adelantado Hernando de Soto Gobernador y Capitán General del Reino de la
    Florida, y de Otros Heroicos Caballeros Españoles e Indios.  Fondo de Cultura Económica México.
1980 The Florida of the Inca: a History of the Adelantado, Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain General of the
    Kingdom of Florida, and of Other Heroic Spanish and Indian Cavaliers.  Tr. By John Grier Varner and Jeanette
    Johnson Varner.  University of Texas Press, Austin.
1993 “La Florida by the Inca: History of the Adelantado Hernando de Soto, Governor and Captain-General of the
    Kingdom of la Florida, and Other Heroic Gentlemen, Spaniards and Indians.”  Trans. by Charmion Shelby.  In Clayton
    et al., vol. 2, pp. 27-576.

Hodge, Frederick W., ed.
1907 “The Narrative of the Expedition of Coronado, by Pedro de Castañeda,” pp. 273-387 in Frederick W. Hodge
    and Theodore H. Lewis, eds., Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, 1528-1543.  Charles Scribner’s Sons,
    New York.

Hudson, Charles M.
1970 The Catawba Nation.  University of Georgia Monographs, Number 18.  University of Georgia Press, Athens.
1990 The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Exploration of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568.  With Documents
    Relating to the Pardo Expeditions Transcribed, Translated, and Annotated by Paul E. Hoffman.  Smithsonian Institution
    Press, Washington.

Hudson, Charles; Marvin T. Smith; and Chester B. DePratter
1984 “The Hernando de Soto Expedition: from Apalachee to Chiaha.” Southeastern Archaeology 3: 65-77.  (Reprinted
    in DePratter, ed., 1987.)

Hudson, Charles M.; John E. Worth; and Chester B. DePratter
1990 “Refinements in Hernando de Soto’s Route Through Georgia and South Carolina.”  Columbian Consequences:
    Spanish Borderlands East, pp. 107-119.  Ed. by D. H. Thomas.  Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington.

Hulton, Paul
1984 America, 1585: the Complete Drawings of John White.  University of North Carolina Press and British
    Museum Publications, [Chapel Hill and London].

Jones, Charles C., Jr.
1873 Antiquities of the Southern Indians, Particularly of the Georgia Tribes.  D. Appleton and Company, New York.

Larson, Lewis H., Jr.
1989  “The Etowah Site.”  In Patricia Galloway, ed., Southeastern Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and Analysis;
    the Cottonlandia Conference.  University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.

Lawson, John
1709 [1967] A New Voyage to Carolina.  Ed by Hugh Talmage Lefler.  University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Lieber, Oscar M.
1858 “Vocabulary of the Catawba Language, with Some Remarks on Its Grammar, Construction and Pronunciation,”
    pp. 327-342 in Collections of the South-Carolina Historical Society, vol. II.  South-Carolina Historical Society,
    Charleston.

Lederer, John
1672 The Discoveries of John Lederer, in Three Several Marches from Virginia, to the West of Carolina, and Other
    Parts of the Continent: Begun in March 1669, and Ended in September 1670.  Together with a General Map of the
    Whole Territory Which He Traversed.  Tr. by William Talbot.  Samuel Heyrick, Horlborn.

Lorant, Stefan, ed.
1965 The New World: the First Pictures of America Made by John White and Jacques Le Moyne and Engraved by
    Theodore De Bry with Contemporary Narratives of the Fench Settlements in Florida, 1562-1565, and the English
    Colonies in Virginia, 1585-1590.  Revised ed.  Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, New York.

Matthews, Maurice
1680 [1954] “A Contemporary View of Carolina in 1680.”  South Carolina Historical Magazine 55 (1954): 153-159.

Milling, Chapman J.
 1940 Red Carolinians.  University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Mills, Robert
1825 [1980] Mills’ Atlas of the State of South Carolina, 1825.  Southern Historical Press, Easley.
1826 Statistics of South Carolina, Including a View of Its Natural, Civil, and Military History, General and
    Particular.  Hurlbut and Lloyd, Charleston.

Mooney, James
1894  Siouan Tribes of the East.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 22.  Government
    Printing Office, Washington.

Moore, Clarence B.
1899 “Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Coast of South Carolina.” Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences
    of Philadelphia, Second Series, vol. XI, pt. 2, pp. 146-166.

Quattlebaum, Paul
1956 The Land Called Chicora: the Carolinas Under Spanish Rule with French Intrusions, 1520-1670.  University of
    Florida Press, Gainsville.

Smith, Henry A. M.
1908 “French James Town.”  South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 9: 220-227.

Squier, E. G., and E. H. Davis
1848 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and
    Explorations.  Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. 1.  Smithsonian Institution, Washington.

State Board of Agrriculture of South Carolina
1883 South Carolina.  Resources and Population.  Institutions and Industries.  Printed for the State by Walker, Evans &
    Cogswell, Charleston.

Swanton, John R.
1922 Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors.  Government Printing Office, Washington.
1936 “Early History of the Eastern Siouan Tribes,” pp. 371-380 in Essays in Anthropology in Honor of Alfred Louis
    Kroeber.  University of California Press, [Berkeley].
1939 Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission.  76th Congress, 1st Session, House Document
    No. 71.  Government Printing Office, Washington.
1946 The Indians of the Southeastern United States.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin
    137.  United States Government Printing Office, Washington.
1952 The Indian Tribes of North America.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 145.  United
    States Government Printing Office, Washington.

Taukchiray, Wes (see also Wes White)
1993 “Location and Later Ownership of the Land Surveyed for the Kusso Indians In or Before 1711.”  Four Holes
    Indian Community (typescript in the collection of the South Carolina Historical Society).

Thomas, Cyrus
1891 Catalog of Prehistoric Work East of the Rocky Mountains.  Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American
    Ethnology, Bulletin 12.  Government Printing Office, Washington.

Vega–see Garcilaso de la Vega.

Waddell, Gene
1980 Indians of the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1562-1751.  Published for the Southern Studies Program, University of
    South Carolina.  Reprint Co., Spartanburg.
 2000 “Cofitachiqui.”  Carologue, vol. 16, no. 3 (Autumn): 8-15.

White, Wes (see also, Wes Taukchiray)
1980 Some of the Written Records of the Natchez-Kussoo Indians of Edisto River; Written as Part of the
    “Historical Overview” Portion of the Tribe’s Petition for Recognition.  Monograph in the collection of the South
    Carolina Historical Society.
1985 “A Summary of the History of the Congaree Nation of Indians from 1712-1760.”  Raleigh.  Typescript in the
    Collection of the South Carolina Historical Society.

Zubillaga, Felix
1946 Monumenta Antiquae Florida (1566-1572).  Vol. 69.  Societatis Iesu, Rome.