SWANTUNI I'.AIII.V HISTORY OF THE CREEK INDIAN'S 243 
The town is given in the lists of 1760 and 1761, by Bartram, by 
Sw.-m. and in the census of 1832, 1 and. probably in a distorted form, 
in 1 750.- 
Big Tulsa, which separated from the town lasl mentioned, may 
be identical with th.it which appears in the Do Soto chronicles 
under the synonymous terms Talisi, Tallise, and Talisse. 3 Biedma 
docs not mention it. The other three chroniclers describe it as a 
large town by a great river, having plenty of corn. Elvas states 
thai "other towns and many fields of maize were on the opposite 
shore. "' Garcilasso says that this place was "the key of the 
country,' - and that it was "palisaded, invested with very good 
terraces, and almost surrounded by a river." He adds that "it 
did not heartily acknowledge the cacique [of Coosa], because of 
a neighboring chief, who endeavored to make the people revolt 
against him.'" 5 We may gather from this that Tulsa had at that 
time become such a large and strong town that it no longer leaned 
on the mother town of Coosa, as would be the case with a new or 
weak offshoot. There may indeed be some question whether this 
was the Tulsa of later history, but there does not appear to be a 
really valid reason to deny this, although the name from which it is 
thought to have been derived is a very common one. Spanish docu- 
ments of 1597-9S speak, for instance, of a town called Talaxe (or 
Talashe) in Guale and a river so called, evidently the Altamaha. 
Woodward says that "the Tallasses never settled on the Tallapoosa 
River before 1 7.~>(); they were moved to that place by James McQueen" 
from the Talladega country, 6 but the name occurs here on the earliest 
maps available, at a date far back of any period of which Woodward 
could have had information. Probably his statement applies to an 
independent body of Tulsa entered in the list dating from 1750, 2 
as in the Abihka country, and appearing on the Purcell map (pi. 7) 
as "Tallassehase," Tulsa old town. The history of this settlement 
is otherwise unknown. In De Soto's time the several tow r ns may not 
have become separated, but of that we have no knowledge. My 
opinion is that in either case the town entered by De Soto was farther 
toward the southwest than the position in which Big Tulsa was later 
found, somewhere, in fact, between the site of Holiwahali and that 
of the present St. Clair, in Lowndes County, Alabama. 7 
The name of this town occurs frequently in later documents, and 
it is given in the lists of 1 750, 1 760, and 1 761 , by Bartram, Swan, and 
' Miss. Prov. Arch., i, p. '.»:,; Ga. Col. Docs., vm, p. .-,l>:i; Bartram, Travels, p. 461; Selioolcraft, Ind. 
Tribes, v, p. 262; Sen. Doc. 512, 23d Co] < , pp. 280-281. 
i M8., AyerColl. 
• Bourne, Narr. of De Soto, i, p. 86; a, pp. 115 116; Garcilasso in Shipp, De Soto and Florida, p. 375. 
• Bourne, op. tit ., I, p. B6. 
5 Garcilasso in Shipp, De Soto and Florida, p. 375. 
« Woodward, Remini a aces, p. 77. 
7 In plate 2 the positions «i Tulsa 1 1 1 and Tawasa (li should be transposed. 
