as
Cheraw, who lived in early times in the piedmont country about the head of Broad
river in North Carolina, adjoining the Cherokee, who still remember them under
the name of Ani'-Suwa'li. A principal trail to their country from the west led up
Swannanoa river ami across the gap which, fur this reason, was kmiwn to the
( Jherokee as Suwa'li-nunna, " Suwali trail," corrupted by the whites to Swannanoa.
Leilerer. who found them in the same general region in 1670, calls this gap the
"Suala pass" ami the neighboring mountains the Sara mountains, "which," lie
says, "The Spaniards make Simla." They afterward shifted to the mirth and
finally returned ami were incorporated with the Catawba (see Mooney, Simian Tribes
• if the East, bulletin of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1894).
Up to this point the Spaniards had followedreaching this place the Indian
queen had managed to make her escape. All the chroniclers tell of the kind recep-
196 MYTHS OF THE CHEROKEE [eth.ann.19
tion which the Spaniards met here, hut th<' only description of the town itself is from
Garcilaso, who says that it was situated in the midst of many small streams which
came down from the mountains round about, that it consisted of three hundred
houses, which is probably an exaggeration, though it goes to show that the village
was of considerable size, and that the chief's house, in which the principal officers
were lodged, was upon a high hill ( "un cerro alto" ), around which was a roadway
( " paseadero' ' ) wide enough for six men to walk abreast. By the "chief's house"
we are to understand the town-house,