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22 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
was also extremely uneven; and not less than five days were spent in
reaching Xualla, the next town at which the Spaniards stopped. Pickett
locates this town in Habersham County, near what is now the Town of
Clarksville; and there are Spanish antiquities in the neighborhood
which seem to warrant this impression. Irving locates it on the site of a
former Indian town at the head of the Chattahoochee River; while, ac
cording to Jones, it was situated in Nacoochee Valley, near the foot of
Mpunt Yonah. .There are also numerous relics in this vicinity, which
point to the Spaniards.
From this place, De Soto seems to have moved in a westerly direc
tion ; but scarcely were his columns in motion before the queen succeeded
in making her escape into the forest, and so effectually did she elude
pursuit that efforts to recapture her proved fruitless. The journey from
Xualla to Gauxule consumed five days. Mountains arose on every hand,
with intervening valleys, rich in pasturage and irrigated by clear and
rapid streams. Gaiixule, according to Jones, occupied the site of Coosa-
wattee Old Town in the County of Murray. Two more days of travel
brought the Spaniards, on the 22d day of May to Conasauga, which,
according to Meek and Pickett, was a town on the Conasauga River, in
Mxirray County, but which, according to Jones, was between the Cona-
saxiga and the Coosawattee rivers, in Gordon County, on the site of New
Echota. Thence dispatching an Indian messenger ahead to announce
his arrival, De Soto, on June 5, 1540, reached Chiaha, which most of the
authorities identify as the modern city of Rome, between the Oostanaula
and the Etowah rivers.
It may be of interest in this connection to state that an eminent in
vestigator, James Mooney, dissents from the majority view on this sub
ject and locates Chiaha on the site of the present Town of Columbus.
While his opinion in the matter may strike the average reader as some
what erratic, it cannot be lightly dismissed. Mr. Mooney is a recognized
authority on American antiquities. He is connected with the Smith-
sonian Institution in "Washington, District of Columbia, and is not only
the latest scholar to investigate the route of De Soto but, what entitles
his view to special weight is the fact that he has based his researches
largely upon an original document which was not published, except in
a mutilated form, until 1851, and which was not consulted by the other
investigators, namely, an unfinished report in Spanish by one Ranjel,
secretary to the expedition.
There is no essential deviation between Jones and Mooney until the
Spaniards leave Cutifachiqui, which both identify as Silver Bluff. Then
the two commentators part company; and where Jones locates Xualla in
Nacoochee Valley, Mooney locates it at the head of the Broad River in
Western North Carolina, where a tribe of Indians then lived called the
Suwali, better known later as Cheraws. Gauxule, a town which the
Spaniards reached after traveling in a westerly direction, he locates in
Nacoochee Valley. Thence proceeding down the Chattahoochee River,
he identifies Conasauga as an old Indian town near the banks of this
stream, in the neighborhood of Kennesaw Mountain, a name whose simi
larity of sound may be something more than a mere coincidence; and
finally he comes on down to Columbus, in the situation of which town he
recognizes the Chiaha of the Spanish narratives.