218 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 73 
and by the Industry & hazard of l> r . Henry Woodward, and a strict peace & amity 
made Betweene those said nations and our people in o r province of Oorolina, &C. 1 
We could wish there were more information, but this is sufficient 
to show that the early English colonists called the Kasihta by a name 
corresponding very closely with that used by De Soto's companions. 
They give the tribe so called the prominent position which it had in 
his day and which it afterwards occupied, and distinguish it clearly 
from the Westo, who I believe to have been Yuchi. 2 We have, 
therefore, a valid reason for concluding that the Cofitachequi and 
Kasihta were one and the same people. 
That this was not the only body of Kasihta Indians in the Creek 
country seems to be shown by the name of a town, Casiste, which 
the Spaniards in De Soto's time passed through somewhere near 
the Tallapoosa. 3 
On Saturday, May 1, 1540, after having lost his way and spent some 
days floundering about among the wastes of southeastern Georgia, 
De Soto with the advance guard of his army came to the river on the 
other side of which was Cofitachequi, was met by the chieftainess 
of that place — or by her niece, for authorities differ — and was re- 
ceived into her town in peace. May 3 the rest of the army came up 
and they were given half of the town. On the 12th or 13th they left. 
They found here a temple or ossuary which the Spaniards call a 
"mosque and oratory," and which they opened, finding there bodies 
covered with pearls and a number of objects of European manufacture, 
from which they inferred that they were near the place in which 
Ay lion and his companions had come to grief. 4 Elvas says of the 
people of that province: 
The inhabitants are brown of skin, well formed and proportioned. They are more 
civilized than any people seen in all the territories of Florida, wearing clothes and 
shoes. This country, according to what the Indians stated, had been very populous, 
but it had been decimated shortly before by a pestilence. 5 
The location of Cofitachequi has been discussed by many writers. 
Most of the older maps place it upon the upper Santee or the Saluda, 
in what is now South Carolina, but this is evidently too far to the 
east and north. Later opinion has inclined to the view that it was 
on the Savannah, and the point oftenest fixed upon is what is now 
known as Silver Bluff. The present writer in a paper published 
among the Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Associ- 
ation 6 expressed the opinion that it was on or near the Savannah but 
lower down than Silver Bluff, on the ground that the Yuchi, who have 
i Rivers, Hist, of S. C, p. 389. 
2 See pp. 288-291. 
3 Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, i, p. 87; n, p. 116. Elvas calls it "a large town"; Ranjel, "a small village." 
In later Spanish documents the name of Kasihta is spelled Casista. 
« Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, I, p. 69; n, pp. 13-15, 98-102. 
6 Ibid., I, pp. 66-67. 
s Proc. Miss. Val. Hist. Asso., v, pp. 147-157. 
