SWANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNIITED STATES 125 



sentative of the Muskogee in the northernmost section of the old 

 Creek country. Old Coosa town was on Coosa Elver between the 

 mouths of Talladega and Tallasseehatchee Creeks. It seems to have 

 been there from De Soto's time, in 1540, down into the eighteenth 

 century. In 1560 an officer under Tristan de Luna led 200 soldiers 

 into the province of Coosa. They spent the summer there and took 

 part in an expedition against the Napochi (q. v.), returning to the 

 Gulf coast in November. In 1567 a soldier under Juan Pardo also 

 visited the town, crossing from the Tennessee. In the seventeenth 

 century, when English traders reached northern Alabama, the Coosa 

 were still there. A part of them appear to have moved down upon 

 Tallapoosa River before 1761, where they settled near the Creek towns 

 of Kan-hatki and Fus-hatchee, and they may have had some connec- 

 tion with "Old Coosa," of which we learn about this time, a settle- 

 ment between Tuskegee and Koasati. Perhaps it was a body of these 

 Indians migrating toward Florida which occupied the "Cousah Old 

 Fields" between the Choctawhatchee and Apalachicola Rivers some 

 time before 1778. Besides bodies of Indians bearing the name itself, 

 two important groups of towns are said to have descended from the 

 Coosa. One of these included the historically important town of 

 Otciapofa, or "Hickory Ground," sometimes called Little Tulsa, resi- 

 dence of Alexander McGillivray, which was on Coosa River a few 

 miles above its junction with the Tallapoosa ; and Big Tulsa, includ- 

 ing a number of branch settlements, opposite Tukabahchee and about 

 the great bend of the Tallapoosa. De Soto encountered a "Talisi 

 province" on Alabama River, evidently in the point at Durand's Bend 

 in Dallas County. It is probable that this is the earliest reference 

 to the Tulsa people, though that is not certain. A little later, in the 

 form Talaxe (Talashe), it appears as the name of the Altamaha River 

 and a town on the same in the province of Guale. There was a Tulsa 

 Old Town in the Abihka country, but it is not possible to determine 

 whether it represents a really old settlement or one relatively late 

 and so named because it had been abandoned. These are probably 

 the Tulsa Indians said by Woodward to have been moved to the 

 Tallapoosa in 1756 from the Talladega country by James McQueen. 

 Other branches of the Tulsa were the Chowockeleehatchee, Saoga- 

 hatchee, and Lutchapoga. The other group descended from Coosa is 

 best known under the name Okfuskee, and of them there were several 

 different settlements. There were branches bearing other names such 

 as Tcatoksofka, Abihkutci, Tukabahchee Tallahassee or Talmutcasi, 

 Sukaispoga, Imukfa, Tohtogagi, Ipisagi, Tukpafka (later renamed 

 Nuyaka), Tcuthlako-nini, Hothli-taiga, Tcahki thlako, Okfuskutci, 

 and perhaps Atcina-ulga. Most of the people of this group took part 

 in the Creek-American war and suffered accordingly. The rest of their 

 history is bound up in that of the Muskogee (q. v.). 



