The chief or cacique of the tribe which inhabited the country between the mouth of the St. Johns River and St. Augustine was named Satourioua, or Satouriva, and in his intercourse with the French and Spanish he exhibited a remarkable sagacity and fidelity, as well as a dignity unlooked for in a savage. Laudonnère describes his first meeting with this chief in these words: “We found the Paracoussy Satourioua under an arbor, accompanied by fourscore Indians at the least, and appareled at that time after the Indian fashion, to wit: with a great hart’s skin, dressed like chamois and painted with devices of strange and divers colors, but of so lively a portraiture and representing antiquity with rules so justly compassed that there is no painter so exquisite that could find fault therewith. The natural disposition of this strange people is so perfect and so well guided that without any aid and favor of arts they are able by the help of nature only, to content the eye of artisans; yet even of those which by their industry are able to aspire unto things most absolute. “The paracoussy now brought us to his father’s lodging, one of the oldest men that lived upon the earth. Our men regarding his age began to make much of him, using this speech, Ami--ami--that is to say friend, whereat the old sire showed himself very glad. Afterwards they questioned with him concerning the course of his age; whereunto he made answer showing that he was the first living original from whence five generations were descended. M. de Ottigni having seen so strange a thing turned to the man praying him to vouchsafe to answer him to that which he demanded touching his age. Then the old man called a company of Indians, and striking twice upon his thigh, and laying his hand upon two of them, he showed him by signs that these two were his sons; again, smiting upon their thighs, he showed him others not so old who were the children of the first two; which he continued in the same manner until the fifth generation. But this old man had his father alive, more old than himself, and this man, which seemed to be rather a dead carcass than a live body, for his sinews, his veins, his arteries, his bones and other parts appeared so clearly that a man might easily tell them and discern them one from another, and both of them did wear their hair very long, and as white as possible, yet it was told us that they might yet live thirty or forty years more by the course of nature, although the younger of them both was not less than two hundred and fifty years old.”[3] Laudonnère employed the Indians to assist him in finding gold, and sent various boat expeditions to the head-waters of the St. Johns River. It is reported, though unlikely, that one of his officers penetrated the interior as far as the Mississippi.