50 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



over their chief. They also claimed that they had no canoes and 

 compelled the Spaniards to make cane rafts for the passage of the 

 river. On the 15th or 16th the explorers finished crossing and 

 camped in the forest, and in 2 or 3 days more, early on the morn- 

 ing of October 18, St. Luke's day, they reached a fortified town 

 called Mabila, where Tascalusa had promised to give them carriers 

 and supplies and to turn over to them the slayers of the two Span- 

 iards. Except that this must have been somewhere in Clarke County, 

 Ala., we are ignorant of its location, although from the nature of the 

 encounter of which it was the scene, it would seem as though plenty 

 of material for identification must have been left on the spot. Here, 

 at any rate, the Indians of Tascalusa rose upon their European 

 visitors and were nearly wiped out in the ensuing contest, which cost 

 the Spaniards themselves the lives of about 20 men and a number 

 of horses besides all the pearls they had brought from Cofitachequi 

 and a large part of their reserve equipment. Nearly all of the 

 remaining Spaniards bore scars upon their bodies. 



This battle had a decisive influence upon the entire course of the 

 expedition. Coming as it did just before De Soto planned to meet 

 Maldonado at the port of Achuse, it discouraged his followers so 

 completely that many of them fully intended to desert as soon as 

 they reached the ships; and the loss of the pearls, the only riches 

 they had been able to secure, deprived De Soto of the bait he counted 

 upon to fill the files of his army. Word of the treachery contem- 

 plated, in which the treasurer of the expedition, Juan Gaytan, seems 

 to have been the ringleader, reaching De Soto determined him to 

 save his enterprise, one in which he had invested his entire fortune, 

 by moving again into the interior. On November 14, therefore, after 

 having spent nearly a month in recuperation and to allow the wounds 

 of his followers to heal, De Soto marched directly north, and in 4 

 days discovered "a fine river." The trail they were pursuing was 

 probably almost along the line of a later road which ran from Grove- 

 hill to the neighborhood of Thomasville, and then through Dixon's 

 Mills and Linden to Old Spring Hill, where it divided, one branch 

 going to Demopolis and the other to Greenville. The river they 

 came upon was the Tombigbee or the Black Warrior. If the former, 

 it must have been at the bend west of Linden ; if the latter, as se^ms 

 most likely, it would have been near the mouth of Prairie Creek. 

 The next day, November 18, they passed over bad places and through 

 swamps and reached an Indian town called Talicpacana or Taliepataua, 

 beyond which were two others, MoQulixa and Zabusta. The location 

 of these villages has been very satisfactorily determined by J. Y. 

 Brame as lying along what is called Melton's Bend not far from the 

 old town of Erie. The names are clearly in the Choctaw language 



