Coosa

Early Indian Wars in Florida

Narvaez in Florida

Previous to the permanent establishment of the English in North America, the French and Spaniards made many attempts to get possession of various parts of the country. The coasts were carefully explored, and colonies planted, but they were soon given up as expensive, and involving too much hardship and danger. The first expedition to the coast of Florida was made in 1512, by Juan Ponce de Leon, renowned for his courage and warlike abilities. Ponce de Leon, becoming governor of Porto Rico (Puerto Rico), and hearing from the Indians that there existed a beautiful and fertile country to the northward, … Read more

Coosa Tribe

Coosa Indians. A small tribe, now extinct, which lived about the mouth of Edisto or Combahee River, South Carolina. Its name is preserved in Coosaw and Coosaw-hatchee rivers. According to Rivers they lived northeast of Combahee River, which separated them from the Combahee tribe. They appear to be identical with the Couexi of the Huguenot colonists (1562) and with the Coçao of Juan de la Vandera s narrative of 1569. They were hostile to the English in 1671; in 1675 the “great and lesser Casor” sold to the colonists a tract lying on Kiawah, Stono, and Edisto rivers; there is … Read more

The Late Slave Raiding Period 1705-1721

This is the period when Native Americans increasingly became the pawns of France and Great Britain in their struggle over North America. For a quarter of a century, France had formally claimed all lands within the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio River Basins, based on the explorations of LaSalle. With the founding of the first capital of the Province of Louisiana, Mobile, in 1702, France also claimed the basin of the Mobile-Alabama-Tallapoosa-Coosa-Etowah-Coosawattee River System. At the same time, France recognized the claim of the Kingdom of Spain to the Chattahoochee-Flint River System all the way to what is now the northeastern … Read more