60 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



he believed to be an eligible site in a bay which he named Filipina 

 (Mobile Bay). June 11, 1559, the prospective colonists sailed in 13 

 vessels under the command of Don Tristran de Luna, and settled 

 in a bay called Polonza (Pensacola), but also established a settle- 

 ment near the head of Mobile Bay. An expedition consisting of 

 200 men sent inland came to a large river, undoubtedly the Alabama, 

 and found an abandoned town upon it which bore a Choctaw name, 

 Nanipacana, "Hill Top." It had probably belonged to the Mobile 

 Indians, as some natives whom they met farther on stated that it 

 had been partly destroyed and its inhabitants driven away by men 

 like them. The major at the head of De Luna's scouting party sent 

 word back to him regarding this discovery, and De Luna presently 

 removed there with 1,000 of his colonists, leaving a lieutenant with 50 

 men and some Negro slaves in charge of the port. In the spring, how- 

 ever, food gave out and the settlers were reduced to such straits that a 

 detachment consisting of 50 horse soldiers and 150 foot soldiers with 5 

 captains under the major who had led the way to Nanipacana, and in- 

 cluding 2 Dominican friars, was sent north in search of the reputedly 

 rich province of Coga. These men left Nanipacana in April and 

 must have lost their way repeatedly, as it was June before they 

 reached Olibahali, or Hothliwahali, on Tallapoosa River. 



The inhabitants of this town treated them kindly, but the burden 

 of supporting such a horde of famished strangers was naturally not 

 much to their taste and they soon managed to induce them to move 

 on in search of their main objective, resorting to a simple stratagem 

 for that purpose. A few days' march, however, brought the Span- 

 iards at last to CoQa, where they stayed for 3 months. There they 

 learned of the death of a Levantine and a Negro, who had been left 

 behind by De Soto and had lived 11 or 12 years among the natives. 



The Coga Indians were at that time engaged in war with another 

 tribe called Napochies, who lived west of them on a river which 

 seems to have been the Black Warrior. The native name of this 

 stream, as preserved by the chroniclers of the expedition, is Oque- 

 ojiiton, the dative form of the Choctaw words meaning "Big Water," 

 and so it is indeed translated by Father Davila Padilla, our princi- 

 pal authority. Unless they had brought interpreters with them 

 from the region of Nanipacana, this indicates that the Napochies 

 were related to the Choctaw and Mobile Indians south and south- 

 west of them, not to the Chickasaw, because the Chickasaw equiva- 

 lent would have been Oka-ishton (in Spanish probably Oque-ixton) . 

 It could not have been in the Coga language, which was Creek. 



The Coga induced their guests to take part with them in an expedi- 

 tion against this tribe in which they occupied and burned an aban- 

 doned town, killed one or two natives, and compelled the tribe to 



