176 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [boll. 73 
whose name was Ocute." The chief of Ocute furnished bearers 
and provisions to the Spaniards, though apparently not without 
protest, and the latter set up a wooden cross in his village as an 
entering wedge to conversion. 1 Ocute would seem to have been the 
province called Cofa by Garcilasso, which he describes as "suitable for 
cattle, very productive in corn, and very delightful." 2 
Our next glimpse of Ocute is in the testimony given by Gaspar 
de Salas with respect to his expedition from St. Augustine to Tama 
in the year 1596. 
The greater part of this testimony will be introduced in discussing 
the Tamali tribe. After leaving Tama the narrative continues: 
At one day's journey from Tama they came upon the village of Ocute, where they 
were very well received by its cacique, who made them many presents, the women 
bringing their shawls, which he calls aprons, which look like painted leather. 3 Some 
of them say that they have been in New Spain and have or are imitating their dress. 
As they wished to go on farther, the cacique of Ocute tried very earnestly to dissuade 
them from it, weeping over it with them, as he said that if they went any farther 
inland the Indians there would kill them, because a long time ago, which must have 
been when Soto passed there, taking many people on horseback, they killed many of 
them; how much more would they kill them who were but few? This is the reason 
why they did not go ahead, but returned from there. They likewise heard the 
Indians of that village as well as the Salchiches say that at four days' journey from 
there, and after passing a very high mountain where, when the sun rose, there seemed 
to be a big fire, on the farther side of it lived people who wore their hair clipped (cut), 
and that the pine trees were cut down with hatchets, and that it seems to the witness 
that such signs can only apply to Spaniards. He [the witness] says that this country 
[Tama, etc.] seems to him to be very rich, or at least sufficiently so to produce any 
kind of grain, even if it be wheat, and has many meadows and pastures for cattle, and 
its rivers have sweet water in places, and that it seems to him that if there were any- 
body who knew how to find and wash gold in those rivers it could surely be found. 4 
The first appearance of the Hitchiti under the name by which we 
know them best is after South Carolina had been settled, when it 
occurs in documents as that of a Lower Creek town, and on the 
maps of that period it is laid down on Ocmulgee River below the 
town of the Coweta. From the Mitchell map this site is identifiable 
as the "Ocmulgee old fields" on the site of the present Macon, which 
is in agreement with a legend reported by Gatschet to the effect that 
the Hitchiti were "the first to settle at the site of Okmulgee town, an 
ancient capital of the confederacy." 5 
William Bartram thus describes the Ocmulgee old fields as they 
appeared in his time: 
1 Bourne, op. cit., pp. 90-91. 
2 Garcilasso in Shipp, De Soto and Florida, p. 344. 
3 He says carpeta, which in Spanish is a table cover, a portfolio, or any leather (use. 
* Serrano y Sam, Doc. Hist., pp. 144-1 15. Translated by Mrs. F. Bandolier. 
6 Gatschet, Creek Mig. Leg., i, p. 78. 
