The Bituriges: A Dominant Celtic Tribe in…

The Spanish continue on from their base at Joara, to claim sovereignty over several other settlements in in present day Catawba County, North Carolina, including Guaquiri (near present day Hickory) and Quinahaqui.

Some have argued that the Cherokee are the descendants of the Mississippian people who lived in the valleys of Southern Appalachia until the late sixteenth century.

Based on both linguistic and archaeological evidence, most scholars agree that the Cherokee, an Iroquoian-speaking people, did not arrive in the region until later, after having migrated from the Great Lakes area, where they and other Iroquoian peoples coalesced.

They either conquered the Mississippian inhabitants or occupied their already-abandoned villages.

By contrast, the language of the Dallas-phase inhabitants of the upper Tennessee Valley (including the people of Chiaha) was a Muskogean language known as Koasati.

It is still used today by the Koasati tribe of Louisiana.

The chroniclers of de Soto and Pardo show that Cherokee-speaking people coexisted with the Mississippian Muskogean-speakers as early as the sixteenth century.

Cherokee-speaking people lived in the mountains between Joara and Chiaha, most notably at Guasili, a village in the Nolichucky valley visited by de Soto.

While Pardo was at Joara, he was visited by several Cherokee-speaking chiefs.

At Chiaha, however, Pardo was not visited by any Cherokee-speaking chiefs.

The fact that Chiaha and Tanasqui were the only two fortified villages noted by Pardo (other than the Chisca village destroyed by Moyano) may suggest that the people of Chiaha were at war with the Cherokee living in the mountains.

Several Mississippian village names mentioned by Pardo were retained in some form by their later Cherokee inhabitants, namely Citico (Pardo's Satapo) and Chilhowee (Pardo's Chalahume) in the Little Tennessee Valley.

The name of the Cherokee capital of Tanasi, also in the Little Tennessee Valley, may have been influenced by the earlier village of Tanasqui, which according to Pardo was just east of Chiaha.