Cofitachequi

Cofitachequi (pronounced Coffee—Ta—Check—We)[1] was a paramount chiefdom founded about AD 1300 and encountered by the Hernando de Soto expedition in South Carolina in April 1540.

The hunt for the location of Cofitachequi has been stimulated by the century-old search for the route of Hernando de Soto in his 4-year traverse of much of the southeastern United States.

At present day Winyah Bay, near the city of Georgetown, they captured and enslaved about sixty people who said they were subjects of a ruler called Datha or Duhare.

He described Datha to Peter Martyr as "white", tall, carried on the shoulders of his subjects, and ruling a large region of towns featuring earthen mounds upon which religious ceremonies were held.

[3] In 1526, inspired by these stories, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón led 600 people to establish a colony that would exploit the supposed riches of Datha.

Ayllon established a settlement near Sapelo Sound in present day Georgia, but he died and the colony was abandoned after three months, the 150 survivors returning to the Caribbean.

[5] While de Soto was among the Apalachee people in Florida, a captured boy called Perico told him of a province named "Yupaha" ruled by a woman and rich in gold.

De Soto impressed 700 people from Colfaqui and struck off eastward into a large uninhabited wilderness separating the chiefdoms of Ocute and Cofitachequi.

[7] De Soto was met by a woman the chroniclers call the Lady of Cofitachequi who was carried from the town to the river's edge on a litter that was covered with a delicate white cloth.

Rudes used the term Cofitachique in a broad sense to include all the towns that are supposed to have been part of the Cofitacheque chiefdom, or that were allies.

Unfortunately, the weaknesses in prior analyses have not prevented researchers from using the results to draw sweeping conclusions about the ethnic and linguistic composition of the area.

Rudes goes on to suggest that while Booker, Hudson, and Rankin follow John Swanton's proposal that “Muskogean-speaking people were a major constituent of the population”, a careful analysis of the evidence does not support that conclusion."

The scholar Charles Hudson listed more than 30 towns that might have been under the control of Cofitachequi, indicating a population of the chiefdom of several tens of thousands of people.

De Soto found little maize in the town to feed his soldiers and saw evidence that an epidemic, possibly European in origin, had wiped out the population of several settlements.