Ilasi

Ilasi, recorded by the Spanish as Ylasi, was a town toward the Pee Dee River on the eastern side of the country associated with Cofitachequi. In 1540 Hernando de Soto's expedition reached the powerful chiefdom farther west, where a woman known to the Spaniards as the Lady of Cofitachequi received them. The towns of the region formed part of a changing political landscape, and by the time Juan Pardo visited in the 1560s Ylasi had emerged as a regional power in its own right.