610 PREHISTORIC VILLAGES IN TENNESSEE [ETH. ANN. 41 
of more than four hundred leagues, and throughout the whole region over which 
they run the people who inhabit near descend and live upon them, distributing 
a vast many hides into the interior country.*” 
By ‘‘cattle” he undoubtedly means bison. The portion of 
“Florida” here referred to is most probably somewhere on the 
present coast of Texas in the neighborhood of Galveston Island. His 
narrative does not make the exact location clear. 
Very few bison appear to have been in the southern part of the 
United States east of the Mississippi River at the time of De Soto’s 
memorable journey in 1540. In all his long wanderings over what is 
now Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and 
Mississippi, his chroniclers make no record of bison haying been 
actually seen or eaten by the Spaniards. 
Curiously enough, the only two references to bison made by these 
chroniclers in this portion of the southern United States locate them 
in What is now middle Tennessee. These two references are found 
in the account of De Soto’s two attempts to reach the town of Chisca, 
which he thought might be rich in gold. The author has unearthed 
a considerable amount of evidence which tends to show that the site 
of Chisca was very probably the well-known ruin, Old Stone Fort, 
on Duck River near Manchester, Coffee County, Tenn. 
The first mention of bison is in the account of the “two Christians” 
sent out from Chiaha (probably at the present junction of the Little 
Tennessee River and the Tennessee River in Loudon County, Tenn.) 
to make an attempt to reach Chisca. 
In three days they went to Chisea, got back, and related that they had been 
taken through a country so scant of maize and with such high mountains that 
it was impossible the army should march in that direction; and finding the dis- 
tance was becoming long, and that they should be back late, upon consultation 
they agreed to return, coming from a poor little town where there was nothing 
of value, bringing a cowhide as delicate as a calfskin the people had given them, 
the hair being like the soft wool on the cross of the merino with the common 
sheep.*” 
The other mention is in the narrative of the men sent out from 
the Province of Chicaga in northeastern Mississippi near the Ten- 
nessee River. From this point De Soto again sent out men to 
attempt to reach Chisca at the Old Stone Fort. 
They traveled seven days through desert, and returned in great extremity, 
eating green plums (persimmons) and maize stalks, which they had found in a 
poor town of seven or eight houses. The Indians stated that thence toward the 
north, the country, being very cold, was very thinly populated; that cattle were 
in such plenty, no maize field could be protected from them, and the inhabitants 
lived upon the meat.*! 
39 Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca, edited by F. W. Hodge, in ‘Spanish Explorers in the Southern United 
States,’’ New York, 1907, p. 68. 
40 Narrative of \he Expedition of Hernando De Soto, by the Gentleman of Elvas, edited by Theodore 
H. Lewis in Spanish Explorers in the Southern United States, New York, 1907, p. 182. 
‘i Ibid, pp. 212-213, 
