28 Bureau of American ethnology [bom,. 73 
to a committee of Congress, February, 1821, a list of Seminole towns 
is given. 1 The names of the first 22 are "extracted from a talk held 
by Gen. Jackson, with three chiefs of the Florida Indians, at Pensa- 
cola, September 19, 1821," and to them Captain Bell adds 13 towns 
on his own authority. The particular tribe of Seminole represented 
in each town is not always given, but it is appended in italics to the 
names of the last five. Thus there is a town of the Mikasuki, a town 
of the Coweta, a town of the Chiaha, a town of the Yuchi, and last of 
all we read "35. South of Tampa, near Charlotte's Bay, Clwctaws." 
Later still, in a census of the Florida Indians taken in 1847, there 
were 120 warriors reported, among whom were 70 Seminole, 30 
Mikasuki, 12 Creeks, 4 Yuchi, and 4 Choctaw. 2 The only Mississippi 
Choctaw actually known to have been brought into Florida were 
taken there along with some Delaware Indians as scouts for the 
American Army, and at a much later date than the letter of Captain 
Bell. Moreover, from both Bell's account and the census of 1847 
the Choctaw enumerated would appear to have formed a considerable 
band, and it may well be asked why it is, if the scouts were brought 
in in such quantities, we do not hear of a Delaware band as well ? 
These references therefore introduce the question of a possible con- 
nection between the Calusa and Choctaw. 
All that is now known of the Calusa language is a considerable 
number of place names, for a few of which translations are given, 
and a single expression, also translated. Practically all of these come 
from the Memoir of Hernando de Escalante Fontaneda, a Spaniard 
held captive among the Calusa Indians for 17 years, somewhere 
between 1550 and 1570. 3 Attempts to find equivalents in known 
Indian tongues have been made by Buckingham Smith (1854) and 
A. S. Gatschet (1884). i Although better equipped for this task, the 
latter was handicapped, as always, by a lack of critical acumen in 
the treatment of etymologies, and unfortunately he chose for com- 
parison Spanish, Timucua, and Creek, the two last because they 
were the Indian languages of the region with which he was most 
familiar. Smith, on the other hand, without a tithe of Gatschet's 
philological ability, was favored by fortune in happening to depend 
for his interpretations on several Choctaw Indians, including the 
famous chief, Peter Pichlynn. Smith seems not to have had any 
true appreciation of the differences between Indian languages and 
to have assumed that the authority of an. Indian of almost any 
southeastern tribe was equally good. By mere luck, however, he 
» Morse, Rep. to Sec. of War., pp. 306, 308, 311 ; also see pp. 406-407. 
2 Schoolcraft, Ind. Tribes, i, p. 522. 
a Col. Doc. Ined., v, pp. 532-546; Smith, Letter of Hernando de Soto and Memoir of Hernando de Esca- 
lante Fontaneda. The translation in French, Hist. Colls. La., 1S75, pp. 235-265, is badly disarranged. 
* Smith, op. cit.; Gatschet, Creek Mig. Leg., i, p. 14. 
