MooXEY] DE SOTo's ROUTE lit',) 



passed over that river seven iniles above its junction with tlie Etowah, and that 

 he marched from thonco down to Chiaha, wliich, all contend, lay immediately at the 

 confluence of the two rivers; while other ancient Indians asserted that ho cn)sse<l, 

 with his army, immediately opposite the town. But this is not very important. 

 C'liupling the Indian traditions with the account by (Jarccllasso and tliat liy the Por- 

 tug\icse eyewitness, we are inclined to believe the latter tradition that the expedition 

 continued to advance down the western side of the Oostanaula until they halted in 

 view of the mouth of the Etowah. De Soto, having arrived inunediately opposite 

 the great town of Chiaha, now the site of Rome, crossed the Oostanaula," etc. (His- 

 tory of Alabama, p. 2o, reprint, 1896) . He overlooks the fact that (chiaha wius not a 

 Cherokee town, but belonged to the province of Co^a — i. e., the territory of the 

 Creek Indians. 



A careful study of the four original narratives makes it plain that the expedition 

 did not descend either the Ocistananla or the Etowah, and that conseciuently Chiaha 

 could not have been at their junction, the present site of Kome. On the oilier han<l 

 the conclusion is irresistible that the march was down the Chattahoochee from its 

 extreme head springs in the mountains, and that the Chiaha of the narrative was 

 the Lower Creek town of the same name, more commonly known as Ohehaw, for- 

 merly on this river in the neighborhood of the modern city of Columbus, Georgia, 

 while Coste, in the narrative the next adjacent town, was Kasi'ta, or Cusseta, of the 

 same group of villages. The falls at this point mark the geologic break line where 

 the river changes from a clear, swift current to a broad, slow-moving stream of the 

 lower country. Attracted by the fisheries and the fertile bottom lands the Lower 

 Creeks established here their settlement nucleus, and here, up to the beginidng of 

 the present century, they liad within easy distance of each other on both sides of 

 the river .some fifteen towns, among which were Chiaha (Chehaw), Chiahudshi 

 (Little Chehaw) 1 'H"' Kasi'ta (Cusseta). Most of these settlements were within 

 what are now Muscogee and Chattahoochee counties, Georgia, and Lee and Russell 

 counties, Alabama (see town list and map in Gatschet, Creek iligration Legend). 

 Large mounds and other earthwi:>rks on both sides of the river in the vicinity of 

 Cohmdius attest the importance of the site in ancient days, while the general apjiear- 

 ance indicates that at times the adjacent low grounds were submerged or cut off by 

 overflows from the main stream. A principal trail crossed here from the Ocnudgee, 

 pa.ssing by Tuskegee to the Upper Creek towns about the junction of the Coosa and 

 Tallapoosa in Alabama. At the beginning of the present century this trail was 

 known to the traders as " De Soto's trace" (Woodward, Reminiscences, ji. 7(5). As 

 the Indian towns freipiently shift their position within a limited range on account 

 of epidemics, freshets, nr impoverishment of the soil, it is not necessary to assume 

 that they occupied exactly the same sites in l.")40 as in 1800, but only that as a group 

 they were in the same general vicinity. Thus Kasi'ta it.^elf was at one ]>eriod above 

 the falls and at a later period .some eight miles below them. Both Kasi'ta and ( 'hiaha 

 were principal towns, with several branch villages. 



The time given as occupied on the march from Canasagua to Chiaha would seem 

 too little for the actual distance, but aa we have seen, the chroniclers do not agree 

 among themselves. We can easily believe that the Spaniards, buoyed up by the 

 certainty of finding food and rest at their next halting jilace, made better progress 

 along the smooth river trail than while blundering helplessly through the mountains 

 at the direction of a most unwilling guide. If Caiuisagua was any wdiere in the neigh- 

 borhood of Kenesaw, in Cobb county, the time mentioned in the Elvas or (iarcihuso 

 narrative would probably have been sufficient for reaching Chiaha at the falls. The 

 uninhabited country between the two towns was the neutral ground bctw-een tlie 

 two hostile tribes, the Cherokee and the Creeks, and it is worth noting that Kene- 

 saw mountain was made a jtoint on the boundary line afterward established bctwcin 

 the two tribes through the mediation of the United States government. 



