swawtoh] EARLY HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIANS 57 
Tn 1569 the Jesuit missionary Juan Rogel arrived at Santa Elena, 
and at the Bame time Antonio Sedeno and Father Baez proceeded 
to Guale. In a letter written by Rogel to Menendez, December 9, 
1570, he relates the fortunes, or rather misfortunes, of his work 
among the people of th<> province of Orista. 
In the beginning of my relations with those Indians [he says], they grew very 
much in my eyes, for seeing them in their customs and order of life far superior 
to those of Carlos, 1 lauded God, seeing each Indian married to only one woman, 
take care of and cultivate his land, maintain his house and educate his children 
with i^reat care, seeing that they were not contaminated by the most abominable 
of sins, not incestuous, not cruel, nor thieves, seeing them speak the truth with 
each other, and enjoy much peace and righteousness. Thus it seemed to me we 
were quite sure of them and that probably I would take a longer time in learning 
their language in order to explain to them the mysteries of our Holy Faith than 
they would need to accept them and become Christians. Therefore I myself and 
three more of the fathers of our company studied with great diligence and haste to 
learn it and within six months I spoke to them and preached in their tongue. 
But after two and a half months the time for gathering acoms ar- 
rived, and all left him and "scattered through those forests, each one 
to his own place, and came together only at certain feasts, which 
they held every two months, and this was not always in one place, 
but at one time here and at another in another place, etc." In fact 
they lived scattered in this manner for nine months out of the year. 
And there are two reasons for this | he says] : First because they have been accus- 
tomed to live in this manner for many thousands of years, and to try to get them away 
from it looks to them equal to death; the second, that even if they wished to live thus 
the land itself does not allow it — for being so very poor and miserable and its strength 
very soon sapped out — and therefore they themselves state that this is the reason why 
they are living so disseminated and changing their abode so often. 
Rogel endeavored to continue his work, attending the infrequent 
gatherings mentioned above whenever he was able. At one time he 
spoke to the greater part of "the vassals of Orista" who had come 
together at the Rio Dulce, presumably the Savannah, and in the 
spring he proposed that they plant enough ground so that they could 
remain in one place, where he could approach them more easily. 
This was done, but all except two f amilies soon left, and later Vandera, 
commander of the fort of San Felipe, was compelled to exact several 
canoe loads of com from the Indians and to quarter some of his 
troops among them. This, as Rogel anticipated and as the event 
proved, incensed the Indians so much that further missionary efforts 
on his part were out of the question, and on July 13, 1570, he left 
them to return to San Felipe, which he soon afterwards abandoned 
for Habana. One main cause of Rogel's failure to impress these 
people was evidently a misapprehension on his part, for he says that 
when he began to preach against the devil they were highly offended, 
declaring that he was good, and afterwards they all left him. Pre- 
