S WANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 135 



GUAI4E 



(Pronounced Wall in English) 



The Spaniards gave this name to a "province" extending along the 

 present coast of Georgia from St. Andrews Sound to the Savannah 

 River. It may be a form of Muskogee wahali^ "the south," and the 

 names by which it was known to the Timucua Indians — Ibaha, Ybaha, 

 Ibaja, Iguaja, Yupaha — may have been corruptions of this. The 

 Indians of this connection constituted a kind of confederation under 

 one head chief and the dominant element seems to have been Muskogee, 

 although there were probably Hitchiti-speaking Indians among them. 

 The name itself was an extension of that given to what is now St. 

 Catherines Island, and there was also a Guale town which seems to 

 have been on the mainland inland from St. Catherines. It is possible 

 that the first use of this term is in the form Gualdape in the narratives 

 of the Ayllon colony established on the South Carolina coast in 1526. 

 The final settlement was made on a river called Gualdape, which I 

 regard as the Savannah or some stream in the immediate neighborhood. 

 In 1562 the Huguenot colonists of Port Royal heard of this island under 

 the name Ouade and visited it several times to obtain corn. After 

 Spain had displaced the French in 1565, Jesuit missionaries established 

 themselves in the province and one of these, Domingo Augustin, com- 

 posed a grammar of the language, but they soon abandoned the field 

 in despair, and in about 20 years their places were taken by Franciscans 

 whose work began in 1573 and who soon had a chain of missions along 

 the entire coast. In 1597 all of these missions were destroyed in a gen- 

 eral uprising and only one missionary escaped, Father Davila, of Ospo, 

 the southernmost of the stations. A punitive expedition undertaken 

 by the Governor of Florida reduced nearly all to submission by the 

 spring of 1601. Later in the year the remaining hostiles were attacked 

 by those who had returned to their former allegiance, part of them 

 were killed, including the two leaders of the insurrection, and the rest 

 driven into the interior. In 1604, when Governor Ibarra visited the 

 Indians along this coast, churches had been built at St. Catherines and 

 St. Simons (Asao), and a third was planned near Sapelo. Insurrec- 

 tions, which seem to have been of minor character, occurred in 1608 and 

 1645. In 1655 six missions are enumerated in the province, but already 

 attacks by Indians from the north were beginning, and in 1661 there 

 seems to have been a general assault by Yuchi, during which some of 

 the churches were sacked. The invaders were finally beaten off by a 

 force dispatched from St. Augustine. In 1680 there were still four 

 missions in Guale. The same year some Yuchi, Creeks, and Cherokee, 

 acting in the English interest, and accompanied, it appears, by several 

 Englishmen, attacked two of these, but were forced to withdraw by 



