634 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 137 



lands; the fields are below the town. (Hawkins, 1848, pp. 52-55; Swanton, 

 1922, p. 227.) 



In 1739 Oglethorpe found that the houses of this town were "built 

 with Stakes and Plaistered w*^ clay Mixed with Moss which makes 

 them very warm and Tite," not yet having given way to logs (Bush- 

 nell, 1908, p. 573). 



Coosa was described by the chroniclers of De Soto's expedition as 

 a large and prosperous place, but when the Spanish officer under 

 De Luna reached it in 1560 



it did not have above thirty houses, or a few more. There were seven little 

 hamlets in its district, five of them smaller and two larger than Coza itself, 

 which name prevailed for the fame it had enjoyed in its antiquity. (Padilla, 

 1919, p. 205; Swanton, 1922, p. 231.) 



Garcilaso, who usually exaggerates, states that in 1540 there were 

 500 houses in Coosa, but a soldier sent there by Juan Pardo in 1567 

 reported 150 "vecinos" (Garcilaso, 1723, p. 142; Ruidiaz, 1894, vol. 2, 

 pp. 485-486). The latter should evidently be taken to mean neigh- 

 borhoods or villages, or possibly families. 



Hawkins' numerous descriptions of Creek settlements say more 

 about the topography than about the towns themselves, but Bartram 

 gives us a worthwhile picture of Kolomi as he saw it in 1774, which 

 I append entire: 



Here are very extensive old fields, the abandoned plantations and commons 

 of the old town, on the east side of the river ; but the settlement is removed, and 

 the new town now stands on the opposite shore, in a charming fruitful plain, 

 under an elevated ridge of hills, the swelling beds or bases of which are covered 

 with a pleasing verdure of grass; but the last ascent is steeper, and towards 

 the summit discovers shelving rocky cliffs, which appear to be continually 

 splitting and bursting to pieces, scattering their thin exfoliations over the 

 tops of the grassy knolls beneath. The plain is narrow where the town is 

 built; their houses are neat commodious buildings, a wooden frame with 

 plastered walls, and roofed with Cypress bark or shingles; every habitation 

 consists of four oblong square houses, of one story, of the same form and 

 dimensions, and so situated as to form an exact square, encompassing an area 

 or courtyard of about a quarter of an acre of ground, leaving an entrance 

 into it at each corner. Here is a beautiful new square or areopagus, in the 

 centre of the new town ; but the stores of the principal trader, and two or three 

 Indian habitations, stand near the banks of the opposite shore on the site 

 of the old Coolome town. The Tallapoose River is here three hundred yards 

 over, and about fifteen or twenty feet deep; the water is very clear, agreeable 

 to the taste, esteemed salubrious, and runs with a steady, active current. 

 (Bartram, 1792, p. 267.) [But compare text fig. 3, p. 393.] 



His impressions of a Seminole town are equally captivating : 



As I continued coasting the Indian shore of this bay (an expansion of the 

 St. Johns River), on doubling a promontory, I suddenly saw before me an 

 Indian settlement, or village. It was a fine situation, the bank rising grad- 

 ually from the water. There were eight or ten habitations, in a row or street 



