creek, in McMinn county, Tennessee; (3) on Tuckasegee river, about
two miles above Webster, in Jackson county, North Carolina. At each
of these places are remains of ancient settlement. It is possible
that the name of Kenesaw mountain, near Marietta, in Cobb county,
Georgia, may be a corruption of Gansâ'gi, and if so, the Canasagua
of the narrative may have been somewhere in this vicinity on the
Chattahoochee. The meaning of the name is lost.
On leaving Canasagua they continued down the same river which they
had followed from Guaxule (Garcilaso), and after traveling several
days through an uninhabited ("despoblado") country (Elvas) arrived
at Chiaha, which was subject to the great chief of Coça (Elvas). The
name is spelled Chiaha by Ranjel and the Gentleman of Elvas, Chiha by
Biedma in the Documentos, China by a misprint in an English rendering,
and Ychiaha by Garcilaso. It appears as Chiha on an English map of
1762 reproduced in Winsor, Westward Movement, page 31, 1897. Gallatin
spells it Ichiaha, while Williams and Fairbanks, by misprint, make
it Chiapa. According to both Ranjel and Elvas the army entered it
on the 5th of June, although the former makes it four days from
Canasagua, while the other makes it five. Biedma says it was four
days from Guaxule, and, finally, Garcilaso says it was six days and
thirty leagues from Guaxule and on the same river, which was, here
at Chiaha, as large as the Guadalquivir at Sevilla. As we have seen,
there is a great discrepancy in the statements of the distance from
Cofitachiqui to this point. All four authorities agree that the town
was on an island in the river, along which they had been marching
for some time (Garcilaso, Ranjel), but while the Elvas narrative
makes the island "two crossbow shot" in length above the town and
one league in length below it, Garcilaso calls it a "great island
more than five leagues long." On both sides of the island the stream
was very broad and easily waded (Elvas). Finding welcome and food
for men and horses the Spaniards rested here nearly a month (June
5-28, Ranjel; twenty-six or twenty-seven days, Biedma; thirty days,
Elvas). In spite of the danger from attack De Soto allowed his men to
sleep under trees in the open air, "because it was very hot and the
people should have suffered great extremity if it had not been so"
(Elvas). This in itself is evidence that the place was pretty far to
the south, as it was yet only the first week in June. The town was
subject to the chief of the great province of Coça, farther to the
west. From here onward they began to meet palisaded towns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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