26 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
I met in Oklahoma stated that his mother knew how to speak 
Hitchiti and he believed that many more of his people had known 
how to speak that language in earlier times. This would naturally 
be the case if, as seems to be indicated, the Chiaha were a Hitchiti 
speaking people, but of course it is possible that the Osochi anciently 
belonged to the Hitchiti group also. However, whether they ever 
spoke Hitchiti as a tribe or not, I am strongly of the opinion that 
they are the descendants of the people known to De Soto and his 
companions as the Ucachile, 1 Uzachil, 2 Veachile, 3 or Ossachile. 4 
Veachile is probably a misprint for Ucachile. If this identification 
is correct the Osochi were evidently a Timucua tribe, which gradually 
migrated north until absorbed by the Lower Creeks. Confirmatory 
evidence appears to be furnished by a Spanish official map of the 
eighteenth century 5 on which at the junction of the Chattahoochee 
and Flint Rivers a tribe or post is located with the legend, " Apalache 
6 Sachile." Apparently the compiler of the map supposed that the 
6 in this name was the Spanish conjunction instead of an integral 
part of the word. The position assigned to them by him agrees 
exactly with that of the Apalachicola Indians at that period, and if 
"6 Sachile" really refers to the Osochi we must suppose either that 
they had united with some of the Apalachicola or that they were 
classified with and considered a branch of them. Since the word 
Timucua often appears as Tomoco or Tomoka in English writings 
this hypothesis would also explain the Tomooka town westward of 
the Apalachicola on the map of Lamhatty 6 and the Tommahees 
referred to by Coxe in the same region. 7 These particular Timucua 
would be none other than the Osochi. 
The Kasihta, Coweta, Coosa, Abihka, Holiwahali, Eufaula, Hilibi, 
and Wakokai, with their branches, have always, so far as our infor- 
mation goes, been considered genuine Muskogee people. The only 
suspicion to the contrary is in the case of the Coosa, whose name 
looks very much like a common corruption of the Choctaw word 
Tconshak, meaning "cane." By this name the Muskogee were known 
to the Mobile Indians. In Padilla's history of the De Luna expedi- 
tion we read that, when the Spaniards accompanied the Coosa in 
an attack upon their western neighbors, they came to a wide 
river known as " Oke chiton," or "great river." If this name was in 
the Coosa language it would prove that at that time they spoke 
Choctaw, but more likely it was in the language of their enemies. 
1 Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, n, p. 73. 
* Ibid, i, p. 41. 
» Ibid, n, p. 6. 
< Garcilasso de La Vega, in Shipp, Hist, of De Soto and Florida, p. 330. 
6 Reproduced in Hamilton, Colonial Mobile, p. 210. 
« Amer. Anthrop., n. s. vol. x, p. 569 
i French, Hist. Colls. La., 1850, p. 234. On his map he has "Tomachees" (Descr. Prov. Car., 1741). 
