SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTEORN XJNUTED STATES 55 



banks of a rivulet which may have been Salt Creek, a stream flowing 

 into Ouachita River near the bend above Arkadelphia. The main 

 part of the province where they were encamped probably lay con- 

 siderably farther up, about Cedarglades or Buckerville. 



Hearing of Tula, a province in a southerly direction, on October 1 

 the Governor set out to reconnoiter it with 13 horsemen and 50 foot 

 soldiers, but he was set upon so vigorously that he returned next day 

 in haste. On the 5th he led the entire army thither, and they entered 

 the town 2 days later. It was abandoned, but the next morning the in- 

 habitants came upon them and a conflict followed so severe that, al- 

 though the Indians were driven off. Ran j el calls them "the best fighting 

 people that the Christians met with." The language of these Tula 

 Indians was so different from the speech of those among whom the 

 Spaniards had been traveling that they had difficulty in finding an in- 

 terpreter. We know now that they were one of the Caddo tribes and 

 feel safe in locating them about the present Caddogap and on Caddo 

 River. There is reason to think that the Coligua, Tanico, and Palisema 

 provinces were occupied by Tunica Indians, the first two being the tribes 

 we later encounter under the names Koroa and Tunica, while Palisema 

 seems to have a Tunican ending. 



Acting on information obtained from the Tula Indians, De Soto 

 now decided to turn toward the southeast where he was told of a tribe 

 named Utiangue from which he hoped to obtain provisions for the 

 approaching winter. In 4 days they reached a place called Quipana, 

 which was either on the Ouachita or the Little Missouri, and, contin- 

 uing on down the Ouachita came, on November 2, to the object of their 

 search. To reach it the Spaniards may have gone down Antoine Creek 

 to the Little Missouri River and followed that to the Ouachita, or 

 descended to the latter by Caddo River. In any case, Utiangue was 

 certainly upon the Ouachita and probably near Camden or Calion. 

 At Utiangue the explorers found the provisions they were in search 

 of and, mindful of previous experiences when in their winter quarters 

 among the Apalachee and Chickasaw, promptly constructed a stock- 

 ade about their camp. From our chroniclers it appears that the winter 

 of 1541-42 was very cold, and they declared that there was snow during 

 a month. 



March 6, 1542, De Soto broke camp at Utiangue and descended the 

 Ouachita in search of a province called Anilco because he heard that 

 it was near the Rio Grande, that is, the Mississippi, and he needed to 

 reach the sea in order to recruit his forces. During the winter Juan 

 Ortiz had died and afterward the explorers were often in great diffi- 

 culties owing to the fact that they were not able to understand their 

 other interpreters sufficiently well. At a place called Ayays, believed 

 to have been near Columbia, La., they crossed the Ouachita to the 



