Chiaha
Chiaha was a Native American chiefdom located in the lower French Broad River valley in modern East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States.
[1] Chiaha was at the northern extreme of the paramount Coosa chiefdom's sphere of influence in the 16th century when the Spanish expeditions of Hernando de Soto and Juan Pardo passed through the area.
[2] The Spanish explorers' accounts of Chiaha provide a rare first-hand glimpse of life in a Dallas phase Mississippian-era village.
In 1539, Hernando de Soto (c. 1496-1542), a Spanish conquistador, embarked on an expedition across what is now the southeastern United States in hopes of finding a passage to the Pacific Ocean and the Orient, which the Spaniards believed was much closer than across the large continent.
[7] In early May 1540, they arrived at Cofitachequi, a paramount chiefdom (based near modern Camden, South Carolina) which dominated much of the southeastern U.S. east of the Appalachian Mountains.
On June 4, while camped near the confluence of Lick Creek and the Nolichucky River, the expedition was greeted by several Chiaha natives, who brought the Spaniards a ration of corn.
The chief of Chiaha loaned de Soto his house, and the expedition members were initially well treated by the village's inhabitants.
After approximately two weeks, however, de Soto angered the village elders when he asked them to provide thirty women for his expedition.
In December 1566, De Aviles dispatched an expedition under Captain Juan Pardo into the interior with the goal of subduing the native inhabitants and mapping a route to the Spanish settlement at Zacatecas, Mexico, where they had silver mines.
[15] Pardo followed the Wateree River northward into North Carolina, eventually arriving at the village of Joara (De Soto's Xuala).
Pardo built Fort San Juan at Joara and explored the area nearby before being recalled to Santa Elena.
[6] While Pardo was away, Moyano spent several days searching for gold and gems in the Joara area (modern Burke County, North Carolina).
In April 1567, he marched northward across the mountains with 15 soldiers and a contingent of natives (likely a Joaran army) and attacked and destroyed a Chisca village in the upper Nolichucky valley.
After receiving a serious threat from a mountain chief, Moyano was forced to continue westward down the Nolichucky to the French Broad River, and thence to Chiaha on Zimmerman's Island.
They built a small fort, San Pedro, near the fortified capital of Chiaha (known as Olamico, a Muskogean word for "chief town") and awaited Pardo's arrival.
He spent several days traversing the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in modern Sevier and Blount counties before reaching the village of Chalahume in the Little Tennessee Valley.
The Mississippian period, which began in Tennessee around 900 AD, marked the transformation of Native American tribes into complex agrarian societies.
At Chiaha, De Soto and his men were given large portions of sofkee (a gruel similar to hominy grits), honey, and a sweet-tasting sauce made from bear fat.
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.
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 Pardo recorded as just east of Chiaha.
