United States or India ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Soto would have soothed him, but one of Soto's men, made angry with the insolence of the Indian who had brought the Cacique's answer, seized the man by his cloak, and when the Indian stepped quickly out of it, answered as quickly with his sword. Suddenly, out of the dark houses, came a shower of arrows." "It was the plan of the Cacica of Cofachique," explained the Egret.
"That was how the Spaniards saw her for the first time, and found her so lovely that they forgot to ask her name; they called her 'The Lady of Cofachique, and swore there was not a lovelier lady in Europe nor one more a princess. "Which might easily be true," said the Egret, "for she was brought up to be Cacica in Far-Looking's place, after the death of her son Young Pine."
It was about the slaves who went with her when she gave Soto the slip in the deep woods, that she quarreled afterward with the old Cacica." "At the western border of Cofachique, which is the beginning of Tuscaloosa's land," went on the Princess, "I came away with my women and my pearls; we walked in the thick woods and we were gone. Where can a white man look that an Indian cannot hide from him?
Dorcas remembered her geography. "Tuscaloosa is in Alabama," she said; "that's a long way from Savannah." "Not too long for the Far-Looking. She and the Black Warrior that's what Tuscaloosa means were of one spirit. In the ten or twelve years after the Cacique, her husband, was killed, she put the fear of Cofachique on all the surrounding tribes, as far as Tuscaloosa River.
I never meant to let them go, though there were some of them I gave to a soldier ... there were slaves, too, of Soto's who found the free life of Cofachique more to their liking than the fruitless search for gold...."
And Soto, as he came through that country, picked up their War Leader Patofa, and the best of their fighting men, for they had persuaded him that only by force would he get anything from the Cacica of Cofachique. The truth was that it was only by trusting to the magic of the white men that Patofa could get to us.
"Whatever happened to them," she said, "they came back, Spanish, Portuguese, and English, back they came. I remember how Lucas de Ayllon came to look for the pearls of Cofachique " "Pearls!" said the children both at once. "Very good ones," said the Pelican, nodding her pouched beak; "as large as hazel nuts and with a luster like a wet beach at evening.
He fingered the strand on Young Pine's neck, making signs of friendship. "The ship was making way fast, and the shore of Cofachique was dark against the sun. Ayllon had sent his men to the other side of the ship while he talked with Young Pine, for he did not care to have them learn about the pearls. "Young Pine lifted the strand from his neck, for by Ayllon's orders he was not yet in chains.
"It was lovely summer weather," said the Princess, "as the Spaniards passed through the length of Cofachique; the mulberry trees were dripping with ripe fruit, the young corn was growing tall, and the Indians were friendly. They passed over the Blue Ridge where it breaks south into woody hills.
"You have heard," said the Lady of Cofachique, hesitating for the first time in her story, and yet looking so much the Princess that the children would never have dared think anything displeasing to her, "that I went a part of the way with the Adelantado on the Tribute Road?" Her lovely face cleared a little as they shook their heads.
Word Of The Day