Note 29 — Chapter 4

In the letter addressed by the survivors to the Audiencia of Santo Domingo (Oviedo, Historia General y Natural de las Indias, III., cap. i. 583, Madrid, 1853), it is stated that when the natives were asked whence came these intrusive articles, which included also some pieces of shoes, canvas, broadcloth, and iron, they replied by signs that they had taken them from a vessel that had been wrecked in the bay. Compare also cap. VII. 615. It has been suggested that possibly the objects may have come from the vessel which Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon lost in 1526, but as this wreck occurred at the mouth of Cape Fear River, on the southern coast of North Carolina, it does not seem likely that they could have been derived from this source. That natives of the West Indies had intercourse by canoe with Florida, and that an Arawakan colony was early established on the southwest coast of the peninsula, is now well established.