Spaniards and Indians — Don Mexia hijnself being one of the prisoners. Col. Moore transported fourteen hundred of the Indians, and fixed them in a settlement near the Savannah river. The settlements were completely destroyed. This agrees tolerably well with the traditionary account of the old Indian Chefixico, who says that his father told him the settlements formed by intermarriage of the Spaniards and Indians, had been destroyed by a great warrior, after three invasions. Chefixico says that when a boy, the country was so open as to be scarce of any game, and was not resorted to by the Indians until the forests grew up; that it was then full of orange and fig trees, and the roads and bridges still to be seen. The traces of the roads are still visible, and numerous sites of villages, forts, and private residences. A number of towns are laid down on the old maps, the principal of which are St. Mathew, St. Juan, Aspalag, Ocon, Tapalaga, St. Marks, Appalachee, Ayavala, San Pedro, etc. No such place as St. Louis is marked, and I am at a loss to know on what authority the ruins of a fort near Tallahassee have been called by that name.”
The foregoing extracts from early writers give us not only the route of this highway through northeast Florida, but that this section of the state was, in places, well settled and quite prosperous in the far distant past. The road through northwest Florida, from south of Tallahassee to Pensacola, was laid out by these same missionaries, and though no account has as yet been found of its construction, it was undoubtedly built near the dates given of the connecting up of the missions at St. Augustine and St. Marks. Williams’ “West Florida,” published in 1827, shows a road leading from south of Tallahassee westward, crossing the Apalachicola river about due west of Tallahassee, thence west, crossing the Econfina at what was called “Natural Bridge,” and dividing into two roads north of Choc-tawhatchee Bay, one leading northwest into the borders of Alabama. thence southwesterly, crossing the Escambia river at Cotton’s ferry, and on the west bank of the river into Pensacola. The southerly branch of this old road took a southeasterly course, crossing Rock, Boggy and Twin creeks and reaching Pensacola Bay north of the residence of Judge Brackenridge, which was on the north shore of Santa Rosa Sound.
It is probable that one or both of these ro°ds followed the old Spanish trial, as it would be likely that anv well defined old road would have been used by those traveling in this section in or about 1815-20.