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Show MOONEY] DE SOTO'S ROUTE 195 with but few mountains on the way, and the town itself was situated close under a mountain (" a la falda de una8ierra,,) beside a small but rapid stream which formed the boundary of the territory of Cofitachiqui in this direction. From Ranjel we learn that on the same day after leaving this place for the next " province" the Spaniards crossed a very high mountain ridge (" una sierra muy alta"). Without mentioning the name, Pickett ( 1851) refers to Xuala as " a town in the present Habersham county, Georgia," but gives no reason for this opinion. Rye and IrVing, of the same date, arguing from a slight similarity of name, think it may have been on the site of a former Cherokee town, Qualatchee, on the - head of Chattahoochee river in Georgia. The resemblance, however, is rather farfetched, and moreover this same name is found on Keowee river in South Carolina. Jones ( De Soto in Georgia, 1880) interprets Garcilaso's description to refer to " Nacoochee valley, Habersham county"- which should be White county- and the neighboring Mount Yonah, overlooking the fact that the same description of mountain, valley, and swift flowing stream might apply equally well to any one of twenty other localities in this southern mountain country. With direct contradiction Garcilaso says that the Spaniards rested here fifteen days because they found provisions plentiful, while the Portuguese Gentleman says that they stopped but two days because they found so little corn! Ranjel makes them stop four days and says they found abundant provisions and assistance. However that may have been, there can be no question of the identity of the name. As the province of Chalaque is the country of the Cherokee, so the province of Xuala is the territory of the Suwali or Sara Indians, better known later as Cheraw, who lived in early times in the piedmont country about the head of Broad river in North Carolina, adjoining the Cherokee, who still remember them under the name of Ani/- Suwa/ li. A principal trail to their country from the west led up Swannanoa river and across the gap which, for this reason, was known to the Cherokee as Suwa'li- huflna, " Suwali trail/' corrupted by the whites to Swannanoa. Lederer, who found them in the same general region in 1670, calls this gap the " Suala pass" and the neighboring mountains the Sara mountains, " which," he says, " The Spaniards make Suala." They afterward shifted to the north and finally returned and were incorporated with the Catawba ( see Mooney, Siouan Tribes of the East, bulletin of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1894). Up to this point the Spaniards had followed a north course from Cofitachiqui ( Biedma and Elvas), but they now turned to the west ( Elvas, final chapter). On the same day on which they left Xuala they crossed " a very high mountain ridge," and descended the next day to a wide meadow bottom (" savana"), through which flowed a river which they concluded was a part of the Espiritu Santo, the Mississippi ( Ranjel). Biedma speaks of crossing a mountain country and mentions the river, which he also says they thought to be a tributary of the Mississippi. Garcilaso says that this portion of their route was through a mountain country without inhabitants (" despoblado") and the Portuguese gentleman describes it as being over " very rough and high ridges." In five days of such travel- for here, for a wonder, all the narratives agree- they came to Guaxule. This is the form given by Garcilaso and the Gentleman of Elvas; Biedma has Guasula, and Ranjel Guasili or Guasuli. The translators and commentators have given us such forms as Guachoule, Quaxule, Quaxulla, and Quexale. According to the Spanish method of writing Indian words the name was pronounced WashulS or Wasuli, which has a Cherokee sound, although it can not be translated. Buckingham Smith ( Narratives, p. 222) hints that the Spaniards may have changed Guasili to Guasule, because of the similarity of the latter form to a town name in southern Spain. Such corruptions of Indian names are of frequent occurrence. Garcilaso speaks of it as a " province and town,'' while Biedma and Ranjel call it simply a town (* * pueblo "). Before reaching this place the Indian queen had managed to make her escape. All the chroniclers tell of the kind recep- |
