MYER] GORDON TOWN SITE 551 
end is at some distance from the inside end, so that to enter the circle without 
passing over it, it is necessary to make a turn. It is by this opening that one 
enters the fort, the inner side of which is protected by a half tower and the outer 
side in the same way. Besides, if they are in great fear, this opening or passage 
is filled with brambles and thorns. * * * The walls of these forts are com- 
posed of great posts, which are made of the trunks of trees a span in circumfer- 
ence, buried 5 to 6 feet in the earth and extending 10 above it, and pointed above. 
The lines of contact of these posts, however round, are covered inside with other 
posts a foot in diameter. This wall is provided outside with half towers 40 
paces apart. They make them doubtless to prevent scaling. The lower ends 
of the posts are supported inside by a banquette 3 feet wide by as much in height, 
which is itself supported by stakes bound together with green branches in order 
to retain the earth which is in this banquette.2° 
’ 
MAvviLa 
Mauvila was a strongly fortified Indian town destroyed by De 
Soto. It was probably located near the junction of the Tombigbee 
and Black Warrior Rivers in Greene County, Ala. Its walls closely 
resembled those of Gordon site. They are described as follows in 
Irving’s “ Conquest of Florida,” vol. m1, pp. 37-88: 
It stood in a fine plain, surrounded by a high wall formed of huge trunks of 
trees driven into the ground, side by side, and wedged together. These were 
crossed within and without by. others smaller and longer, bound to them by 
bands made of split reeds and wild vines. The whole was thickly plastered 
over with a kind of mortar, made of clay and straw trampled together, which 
filled up every chink and crevice of the woodwork, appearing as if smoothed 
with a trowel. Throughout its whole circuit the wall was pierced with loop- 
holes, from whence arrows might be discharged at an enemy, and at every fifty 
paces it was surrounded by a tower, capable of holding seven or eight fighting 
men. Numbers of the trees which had been driven into the ground had taken 
root and flourished, springing up out of the rampart and spreading their branches 
above it, so as to form a circle of foliage round the village. There were but two 
gates to the place, one to the east, the other to the west. In the center was a 
large square, around which the principal dwellings were erected. 
Referring to these walls, in describing the Spanish attack, Irving 
Says, on pages 45-46: 
They then charged the enemy with a fury, inspired by their recent maltreat- 
ment, and drove them back into the village, whither they would have followed 
them, but were assailed with such showers of stones and arrows from the wall 
and loopholes that they were compelled to draw back. 
A further description of the part these walls played in the attack 
is given on page 49: 
In an instant a band of two hundred resolute cavaliers dashed forward to the 
assault. The savages received them valiantly and beat them back several times. 
The gate, however, was soon broken open and the Spaniards rushed in, pell- 
mell, amidst a shower of darts and stones. The opening being too narrow to 
admit them all readily, some attacked the wall with their axes; quickly demol- 
ished the frail facing of clay and straw, and laying bare the cross-beams and their 
fastenings, assisted each other to scramble up by them, and thus got into the 
village to the aid of their comrades. 
% Du Pratz, quoted by Swanton in Bull. 43, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 133. 
53666°—28——36 
