238 bureau or American ethnology [bull. 73 
know where to find a trace of the flight which a whole village had taken and although 
the people of Coza endeavored diligently to find out whether they had hidden in 
the forests, they could not obtain any news more certain than their own conjectures. 
"It can not be otherwise,' ' they said, "than that the enemy, knowing that we were 
coming with the Spaniards became suspicious of the security of their forests and 
went to hide on the great water." When the Spaniards heard the name of great water, 
they thought it might be the sea, but it was only a great river, which we call the 
River of the Holy Spirit, the source of which is in some big forests of the country 
called La Florida. It is very deep and of the width of two harquebuse-shots. In a 
certain place which the Indians knew, it became very wide, losing its depth, so that 
it could be forded and it is there where the Napochies of the first village had passed, 
and also those who lived on the bank of that river, who, upon hearing the news, also 
abandoned their village, passing the waters of the Oquechiton, which is the name 
the Indians give that river and which means in our language the great water (la grande 
agua). 1 Before the Spaniards arrived at this little hamlet however, they saw on the 
flat roof (azotea) of an Indian house, two Indians who were on the lookout to see 
whether the Spaniards were pursuing the people of the two villages who had fled 
across the river. The horsemen spurred their horses and, when the Indians on guard 
saw them, they were so surprised by their monstrosity [on horseback] that they 
threw themselves down the embankment towards the river, without the Spaniards 
being able to reach them, because the bank was very steep and the Indians very 
swift. One of them was in such a great hurry that he left a great number of arrows 
behind which he had tied up in a skin, in the fashion of a quiver. 
All the Spaniards arrived at the village but found it deserted, containing a great 
amount of food, such as maize and beans. The inhabitants of both villages were on 
the riverbank on the other side, quite confident that the Spaniards would not be able 
to ford it. They ridiculed and made angry vociferations against the people from Coza. 
Their mirth was short lived, however, for, as the Coza people knew that country, they 
found the ford in the river and they started crossing it, the water reaching the chests 
of those on foot and the saddles of the riders. Fray Domingo de la Anunciacion 
remained on this side of the water with the cacique, because as he was not of the war 
party it did not seem well that he should get wet. When our soldiers had reached 
about the middle of the river, one of them fired his flint lock which he had charged 
with two bails, and he felled one of the Napochies who was on the other side. When 
the others saw him on the ground dead, they were greatly astonished at the kind of 
Spanish weapon, which at such a distance could at one shot kill men. They put him 
on their shoulders and hurriedly carried him off, afraid that other shots might follow 
against their own persons. All the Napochies fled, and the people of Coza upon 
passing the river pursued them until the fugitives gathered on the other side of an arm 
of the same stream, and when those from Coza were about to pass that the Napochies 
called out to them and said that they would fight no longer, but that they would be 
friends, because they [the Coza people] brought with them the power of the Spaniards; 
that they were ready to return to their former tributes and acknowledgment of what 
they owed them [the Coza people]. Those from Coza were glad and they called to 
them that they should come in peace and present themselves to their cacique . They all 
came to present their obedience, the captain of the Spaniards requesting that the van- 
quished be treated benignly. The cacique received them with severity, reproach- 
ing them harshly for their past rebellion and justifying any death he might choose to 
give them, as well for their refusal to pay their tributes as for the lives of so many Coza 
people which they had taken, but that the intervention of the Spaniards was so highly 
appreciated that he admitted them into his reconciliation and grace, restoring former 
1 This is pure Choctaw, from oka, water, and the objective form of chito, big. This river was not the 
Mississippi, as Padilla supposes, but probably the Black Warrior. 
