De Soto in 1540. "
We come now to a great gap of nearly a century. Shea has a notice
of a Spanish mission founded among the Cherokee in 1643 and still
flourishing when visited by an English traveler ten years later.' but as
his information is derived entirely from the fraudulent work of Davies,
and as no such mission is mentioned by Barcia in any of these years,
we may regard the story as spurious (10). The first mission work
in the tribe appears to have been that of Priber, almost a hundred
years later. Long before the end of the sixteenth century, however,
the existence of mines of gold and other metals in the Cherokee country
was a matter of common knowledge among the Spaniards at St. Augus-
tine and Santa Elena, and more than one expeditionhad been fitted out
to explore the interior. ' Numerous traces of ancient mining opera-
tions, with remains of old shafts and fortifications, evidently of Euro-
pean origin, show that these 'discoveries were followed up, although
the policy of Spain concealed the fact from the outside world. How
much permanent impression this early Spanish intercourse made
on the Cherokee il is impossible to estimate, but it must have been
considerable (11). ,
The Colonial and Revolutionary Period— i»>;>-L-1784
It was not until 1654 that the English first came into contact with
the Cherokee, called in the records of the period Rechahecrians, a cor-
ruption of Rickahockan, apparently the name by which they were
known to the Powhatan tribes. In that year the Virginia colony,
which had only recently concluded a long and exterminating war with
the Powhatan, was thrown into alarm by