When Hernando de Soto returned to Spain from two decades of adventure in
the New World, he must have seemed to those who encountered him, or even
heard of him, the embodiment of what a _conquistador_ should be. He
carried his tall, hard, handsome body with the unmistakable air of
triumph that comes from having won by his own efforts wealth, fame, and
a noble bride—all before he was 35 years old. The exact date of his
birth is unknown, but it may have coincided with the last year of the
15th century. His birthplace was in the austere province of Extremadura.
His father was a Méndez, his mother a de Soto; his elder brother Juan
followed the Spanish custom of using both names: Juan Méndez de Soto.
Hernando, the second son, chose to be different. According to his
biographer, Miguel Albornoz, he was his mother’s favorite. He therefore
dropped Méndez from his name and became known to history only as De
Soto—an appellation he carried far.
Another native of Extremadura and a neighbor of the De Soto family was
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the fabled conqueror of Darién (Panama) and
discoverer of the Pacific Ocean. Determined to emulate Balboa, who was
still alive somewhere in the New World, young Hernando de Soto made his
way, aged 14 or so, to Seville. There he found employment as a page in
the household of the notorious schemer, 75-year-old Pedro Arias Dávila,
better known as Pedrárias. When Pedrárias sailed to Central America in
1514 as a colonial administrator, De Soto went along.
He witnessed the quarrel that sprang up between his patron and Balboa, a
quarrel that ended in 1519 when Balboa was convicted of treason through
the intrigues of Pedrárias and beheaded. Grieving, De Soto retrieved the
headless corpse and with the help of an Indian girl gave it a Christian
burial. Yet he remained loyal to Pedrárias and followed him to
Nicaragua, where he developed the ice-hard maturity that marked his
later career. He mastered the arts of dealing in Indian slaves, looting
temples, and ransacking Indian graves for valuable mortuary offerings.
By such means he prospered so well that when Pizarro, also a native of
Extremadura, needed help on his expedition to Peru, De Soto was able to
respond with two ships and 200 men.
[Illustration: De Soto was a leader of experience and resolve. The
expedition’s chronicler characterized him as “an inflexible man, and
dry of word, who, although he liked to know what the others all
thought and had to say, after he once said a thing he did not like
to be opposed, and as he ever acted as he thought best, all bent to
his will.” This likeness was published in Antonio Herrera y
Tordesillas’s _Historia General_, 1728. No authentic portrait is
known to exist.]
In the final assault on the Incas, De Soto was generally the one chosen
to lead reconnoitering or vanguard parties over the difficult trails of
the Andes. After the first great victory was achieved, he saw a sight
that ever afterwards burned in his memory. The conquered emperor,
Atahualpa (actually one of two brothers contending for the throne),
offered, as his ransom, to pile a room 17 feet wide, 22 feet long, and 9
high with golden ornaments, vases, goblets, statuettes. In addition he
said, he would fill a somewhat smaller adjoining chamber twice over with
silver. In spite of that tremendous gesture, he was then tricked into
ordering the death of his brother, for which he himself was executed.
The treachery drew angry protests from De Soto.
The next conquest was of mountain-perched Cuzco, less rewarding than
anticipated because it had been stripped of treasure during the filling
of the rooms. Though De Soto was named lieutenant-governor, the quarrels
that broke out between the generals led him to give up the position and
return to Spain with his share of the booty. Various estimates of its
size have been given, but since there is no satisfactory way of
comparing purchasing power then and now, the figures are elusive. Still,
it must have been the equivalent of several million of today’s dollars.
He made a point of cutting a fine figure in Spain. Everywhere he went he
was accompanied by a dazzling entourage composed mostly of officers who
had ridden with him in Panama and Peru. He became a favorite of the
King, to whom he loaned money; and he married a daughter of his old
patron, Pedrárias. A plush life. But as the lazy days drifted by, De
Soto grew restless. He needed activity and he wanted gold. Roomfuls of
gold. And fame.
Yielding to his importunities, Charles V made him governor of Cuba and
_adelantado_ of Florida, which then stretched from the Atlantic as far
north as the Carolinas and on around the Gulf of Mexico to the Río de
las Palmas. The usual stipulations about the division of treasure were
spelled out in the license. The King was to have one-fifth of all spoils
of battle, one-fifth of any revenue derived from mining precious metals,
and one-tenth of all loot taken from graves, sepulchres, Indian temples.
Once the region had been explored, De Soto was to become the governor of
whatever 200 leagues of coastal area he picked out. There he was to
found colonies and build three fortified harbors. He was to pacify the
Indians and provide the necessary number of priests and friars to
convert them. He was to bear the entire costs of the expedition. When it
was over, he would receive, in addition to his share of any booty and a
grant of land 12 leagues square (about 50,000 acres), a salary of 2,000
ducats a year, roughly $60,000 today.
The expedition, its quota of men more than filled with volunteers who
supplied their own armor and arms, landed in Cuba in June 1538 and spent
nearly a year there while De Soto attended to administrative duties and
organized the _entrada_. He used far more care than Narváez had. While
scouts searched for a good harbor on Florida’s west coast, the
commissary department rustled up many loads of hard ship biscuit, 5,000
bushels of maize, quantities of bacon, and a herd of rangy hogs. They
also brought with them long, clanking strands of iron chains and
collars, portents of things to come.
The chronicles of the expedition give different figures about the
numbers involved, but this is a reasonable approximation: close to 700
men, perhaps a hundred camp followers, including a few women, many
slaves, eight ecclesiastical persons, and 240 or so horses. Having
learned from Cabeza de Vaca about some of Narváez’s mistakes, De Soto
included among the soldiers several artisans capable of working with
their hands. People, horses, hogs, and big dogs that could be used for
attacking Indians, and a confusion of supplies and equipment were loaded
aboard five low-waisted, high-pooped, square-rigged ships ranging from
500 to 800 tons burden. Overflow was accommodated, uncomfortably, in two
caravels and two small pinnaces.
The fleet spent a week in late May 1539, reaching the southernmost part
of what is generally believed to have been Tampa Bay.[2] While the ships
were groping over the shoals so that unloading could begin, patrols of
both horsemen and footmen, happy to be free of the cramped quarters,
dashed off through the undergrowth to learn what lay ahead. They soon
discovered that the countryside, though sweet-smelling with flowers, was
a maze of bogs, meandering streams, and thick stands of mangroves and
oaks. Another tax on travel were small groups of tall, naked Indians,
probably Timucuans. The Indians eluded the horsemen by dodging nimbly
through swamps and behind trees, now and then letting an arrow flash out
from one of their bows. Fortunately one of the few captives the patrols
seized was Juan Ortiz, a former member of the ill-fated Narváez
expedition.
Ortiz had returned to Cuba with the explorer’s ships after they had
failed to make contact with the land party and then had been hired by
Narváez’s distraught wife to search for her husband in a pinnace she
provided. On visiting Narváez’s initial landing place at Tampa Bay,
Ortiz had been captured and had lived ever since with a group that
controlled part of the region around the bay. He knew the Timucuans’
language and could speak through interpreters to other Indian groups.
But in all that time he had never been far afield and could report only
rumors about distant places. Gold? There was none near at hand, but far
to the north was a powerful kingdom abounding in maize. Its inhabitants
might know of minerals.
A scouting party dispatched to investigate returned with a tantalizing
message that would be repeated over and over during the long trek: the
gold was somewhere else, this time at a place called Cale, where the
warriors wore golden helmets. De Soto nodded complacently. In a region
as vast as Florida, he told the Gentleman of Elvas, there were bound to
be riches.
Mindful still of the colony he was supposed to found, he left Pedro
Calderón near Tampa Bay with three small ships, their sailors, and a
hundred soldiers. They had two years’ supply of food and seed for
planting. If he found a better place to settle, he would let them know.
Meanwhile the other caravel and the five big ships were to return to
Havana for fresh supplies and new recruits.
Moving inland farther than Narváez had and marching in divisions, the
army moved north. Tough going. Rains were heavy that year. Bogs oozed;
lakes and streams rose. The wayfarers waded some streams and bridged
others. The men herded the pigs through the mud—the sows had farrowed
and there were about 300 now—grooming horses, setting up wet camps and
then, tired out, pulverizing, in curved log mortars, the grain they had
taken from Indian fields and storage cribs so they could boil it into
gruel. Discontent boiled up. There’d better be gold somewhere in this
hellhole.
There was none at Cale, but a little farther on.... They straggled
through the vicinity of today’s Gainesville and, inclining a little west
of north, reached a village called Aguacaliquen. There an advance party
captured several women, one of whom was the daughter of the cacique, or
chief. The father was told he could not get her back until he had guided
the Spaniards into the territory of the next tribe to the west. This he
did while several of his villagers followed, playing on bone flutes as a
sign of peace and begging that father and daughter be released.
When pleas produced nothing—De Soto feared being left in the wilderness
with no guides—the Indians decided to ambush the Spaniards at “a very
pleasant village” called Napituca, near today’s Live Oak, Florida. De
Soto’s interpreter, Juan Ortiz, discovered the plot and gave warning.
Spirits leaped. After two months of being harassed by Indian guerrillas,
the Spaniards could at last vent their frustration on a massed
army—about 400 Indians, as it turned out. Giving thanks to God, the
cavalry charged, lances thrusting, swords slashing. Bellow of
arquebuses, zings of crossbow darts, yells of “Santiago!” from
pike-wielding foot soldiers. Scores of Indians died; hundreds were
captured, including a remnant that fled into two nearby lakes and, by
hiding in the cold, night-shrouded waters, evaded capture until
morning—a brave stand that won both admiration and kind treatment from
the Spanish force.
Not all the captives were handled that generously. Their services were
needed. During marches males were linked by chains and iron collars and
forced to serve as porters for the army. Women, historian Garcilaso de
la Vega wrote after talking to participants in the adventure, served as
“domestics,” grinding the rations of maize, cooking the meals, and so
on. Rodrigo Ranjel, De Soto’s private secretary, was more specific: the
soldiers desired women for “foul use and lewdness.” Whenever the
conquerors seized a new village, its cacique was impressed as a hostage
and guide and released only after his subjects had served as bearers
over the next stretch of the journey. Rebels against the enslavement
received punishments designed to warn other recalcitrants. Some had a
hand or nose cut off, a few were tied to stakes and burned or shot to
death with arrows fired by Indian auxiliaries. Now and then one was torn
to pieces by the Spaniard’s war dogs. They accepted the ordeals with a
stoicism that won the grudging approval of the expedition’s chroniclers.
In October 1539, De Soto’s army entered the land of the Apalachees.
According to Ranjel, they found “much maize and beans and squash and
diverse fruits and many deer and a great diversity of birds and fish.”
Like Narváez before them, they decided to winter at the fruitful spot,
site of today’s Tallahassee.
They evicted the Indians of the main town, Anhaica, and settled down in
the log and straw houses. Taking advantage of a high wind, the Indians
burned most of the place. Later, the intense cold killed almost all of
the despondent Indian slaves captured at the battle of Napituca. In
spite of the misfortunes, De Soto decided to use Apalachee as a center
for future explorations. He sent Juan de Añasco and 30 cavalrymen south
through bogs and sniping Indians to Tampa Bay to bring up Calderón’s
hundred soldiers and the three small ships. When the vessels arrived at
the very harbor from which Narváez had sailed (as revealed by the
remnants of the forge and the grisly piles of horse bones) De Soto
dispatched the ships west under Francisco Maldonado to find a protected
bay to which the reinforcements waiting in Havana could be brought the
following summer.
Meanwhile another distraction arose. Working through a chain of
interpreters, Juan Ortiz learned from an Indian captive that a truly
rich country, Cofitachequi, lay to the northeast, in the vicinity of
what is now Camden, South Carolina. Promptly, De Soto decided to take
his regrouped army there.
They left on March 3, 1540. Because most of their captives had died, the
men again had to carry their own rations and prepare their own meals.
Spring-swollen streams blocked the way; one was so wide the men built a
ferry and hauled it back and forth with hawsers. The cacique of
Cofitachequi turned out to be a woman. Bedecked in furs, feathers, and
the freshwater pearls that were common in the mussels of the southeast,
she greeted them warmly. “Be this coming to these shores most happy,”
she said according to one chronicler. “My ability can in no way equal my
wishes, nor my services [equal] the merits of so great a prince;
nevertheless, good wishes are to be valued more than the treasures of
the earth without them. With sincerest and purest good will, I tender
you my person, my lands, my people, and make you these small gifts.”