Chisca
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The Chisca were a tribe of Native Americans living in eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia in the 1500s. They were encountered by both the Hernando de Soto Expedition in 1542 and the Captain Juan Pardo Expedition in 1568. A small exploration party sent out by de Soto in the vicinity of the upper Tennessee River was defeated by Chisca soldiers.[1] The experience influenced de Soto to limit explorations in Chisca territory.
Captain Juan Pardo also sent exploration parties that had battles with the Chisca (Pardo called them Chisca; his chronicler called them Uchi). His men destroyed their settlement at Maniatique, thought to be at present-day Saltville, Virginia.[2]. The name Chisca was seldom seen in Spanish colonial records after the sixteenth century.
Most likely the Chisca were severely affected by lack of immunity to the newly introduced European diseases, which in the mid-late 1500s and 1600s AD ravaged the advanced indigenous societies of the Southeastern United States. Some of the remaining people were known to have moved south to join the newly formed Muscogee (Creek) Confederacy; others joined their neighbors the Koasati (Coushatta) and migrated to Louisiana; and others were absorbed by Cherokee bands moving into Virginia and eastern Kentucky from western North Carolina.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Hudson, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun, 203
- ^ See Robin Beck, "From Joara to Chiaha: Spanish Exploration of the Appalachian Summit Area, 1540-1568", Southestern Archaeology 16(2) Winter 1997, for a full scholarly discussion of the location of Maniatique.
[edit] References
Beck, Robin, "From Joara to Chiaha: Spanish Exploration of the Appalachian Summit Area, 1540-1568", Southeastern Archaeology 16(2) Winter 1997
Hudson, Charles, The Southeastern Indians, Knoxville,TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1976.
Hudson, Charles, Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun, Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
Swanton, John R. The Indian Tribes of North America, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1952.
Thornton, Richard, Ancient Roots I: The Indigenous People of the Southern Highlands, Morris, NC: Lulu Press, 2007.
Worth, John E. (2004). "Chisca". in Raymond D. Fogelson, ed.. Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 14: Southeast. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 176–77 [unified volume Bibliography, 772–999].
