^
Update this timeline entry
Governor Cotes captured four Chichumecos as interpreters
Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121
Project ID
Chapter
No chapter
Timeline title
Start date
End date
Filename received
Filename assigned
Content
Enable editor
Use plain text
Code entry
Another possible reference to the influx of this band [Yuchi] appears in a letter to the king from Gov. D. Alonso de Aranguiz y Cotes, dated September 8, 1662. He says: "In a letter of Nov. 8, of the paat year, 1661, I recounted to Y. M. how in the province of Goale, near this presidio, there had entered some Indians who were said to be Chichumecos which ate human flesh, and if I had not assisted in opposing their design they would have destroyed it, as I had had news regarding others from infidel Indians who came fleeing from them, and as I saw that they would retire by the way they came I made examinations and inquiries in different directions until I took four prisoners near the province of Apalachecole which is a hundred and eighty leagues distant from this presidio. Having sent infantry for the purpose I took some Indians of the Chisca Nation to serve as interpreters of their language because there was no one in these provinces who could understand them, and they said they were from Jacan, that when they retired from the province of Goale they went to that of Tama and to that of Catufa, and that there they wandered about in different bands, and the said Chisca Indians, after having explained what people they were said that very near the lands of those people there was only one very large river, on the middle course of which had fortified themselves a nation of white people who warred with them continually and were approaching these provinces, and they do not know whether they are Spaniards or English."1 The position which the Indians describe as that of their former home, along with their proximity to the white people, strongly suggests that occupied by the Rechahecrians on the James, yet it is strange that they should be unable to state whether their white neighbors were or were not English. These new arrivals are spoken of as if distinct from the "Chisca"—a fact tending to throw doubt on their "Yuchean affinities; but it is probable that the term Chisca was limited by the governer to that band of Yuchi with which the Spaniards were familiar until then, those who had made their home on Choctawhatchee River. These invading ''Chichumecos" may have been the Indians who appear soon afterwards in the narratives of the early English explorers of the Carolina coast and the accounts of the South Carolina colonists, under the name of Westo. (Swanton)
Replace existing data with this data
