SwANTON] INDIANS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES 151 



escaped without wounds. Their losses were so great that they did 

 not resume their journey until November 14. In 1559 a detachment 

 of soldiers sent inland by Tristan de Luna from the Bay of Achuse 

 (Pensacola) reached a town on or near Alabama River which bore 

 a Choctaw name, Nanipacana, and evidently belonged to the Mobile 

 Indians. The few Indians they met reported that the town had 

 been almost destroyed by people like themselves. In 1567 Juan 

 Pardo heard of this province, but did not visit it. In 1675 Bishop 

 Calderon learned that the Mobile were "on the western frontier, on 

 an island near the harbor of Spiritu Santo," meaning the mouth of 

 the Mississippi River. In 1686 a Florida letter informs us that the 

 Mobile were at war with the Pensacola Indians, and they are noted 

 again in the narratives of the expeditions in 1693 undertaken to 

 survey Pensacola Bay. When Iberville established himself in Biloxi 

 Bay, the tribe was living on Mobile River about 2 leagues below the 

 junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee, with the related Tohome 

 above. In April, he visited Pascagoula River and dispatched his 

 brother with two other men and the Pascagoula chief to visit the 

 Mobile and Tohome. In 1702 Bienville began the construction of a 

 fort in Mobile Bay at what is now Twenty-seven Mile Bluff, and 

 some time later, within about 30 years, the Mobile moved to the 

 mouth of Mobile River, where they seem to have remained until 

 after 1763. We then lose sight of them and infer that they had be- 

 come lost among the Choctaw Indians, whose language they spoke 

 with little variation. 



Mobile population. — If the lowest estimate of dead Indians in the 

 battle of Mabila is accepted, and little allowance made for the Mo- 

 bile Indians in other towns, we must suppose that they had a total 

 population of 6,000 or 7,000 in 1540. Mooney estimates that they num- 

 bered 2,000 in 1650, including the Tohome. Bienville, however, tells 

 us that when he first met them they counted 500 men, but that in 

 1725-26 the number had sunk to 60. In 1730 Regis de Rouillet gives 

 only 30, and in 1758 De Kerlerec allows 100 warriors to the Mobile, 

 Tohome, and Naniaba together. 



Mocogo OR Mucogo 



A province or tribe about the inner end of Hillsboro Bay, Fla., 

 when De Soto landed in the neighboring province of Ogita in 1539. 

 The chief of this tribe had previously saved the life of a castaway 

 named Juan Ortiz, who afterward became De Soto's principal inter- 

 preter. The name is mentioned by Laudonniere, but it subsequently 

 disappears from the pages of the chroniclers. 



