Tallisi is undoubtedly Talua-hássi, "old town," but which one of the numerous settlements of this name it may have been is now impossible to determine. Casiste resembles Kasí'hta, but cannot have been Kasí�ta on Chatahuchi river, for de Soto reached Tuskalusa or "Black Warrior," which I take to be a town on the river of that name, within two days from Casiste, traveling west.[126] Piache, if Creek, could be api-údshi _little pole, small tree_. Garcilaso de la Vega states that Tascalusa was on the same river (?) as Tallisi and below it. The documents of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries frequently give names of localities and tribes to the local chiefs, as was done here in the case of Tascalusa, Mavila, Alimamu and others. Chíaha is a Cheroki name, and is explained elsewhere as "place of otters." Some modern critics believe that de Soto's army did not cross the mountains into what is now North Carolina and Tennessee, the "over-hill" seats of the Cheroki people, but only skirted the southern slope of the Apalachian ridge by passing through Northern Georgia west into Northern Alabama, and then descending Coosa river. In order to determine de Soto's route in these parts, we have to decide first, whether the days and directions of the compass noted by his chroniclers deserve more credence than the local names transmitted in cases when both form conflicting statements. The names of localities could not be pure inventions; they prove by themselves, that tribes speaking Creek or Maskoki proper were encountered by the adventurous leader in the same tracts where we find them at the beginning of this nineteenth century. It follows from this that the Creek immigration from the west or northwest, if such an event ever occurred within the last two thousand years, must have preceded the time of de Soto's visit by a long lapse of time. Thus the terms itálua, talófa, talássi belong to the Creek dialect only; had H. de Soto been in a country speaking a Hitchiti dialect, he would have heard, instead of these, the term ókli, and instead of tálua mútchasi: ókli himáshi.[127]