De Soto was seeking another Peru in Florida. But after three years and
thousands of miles, his futile quest ended in a watery grave in the
Mississippi. For natives of the Southeast, the _entrada_ was also
tragic. The warfare weakened chiefdoms, and Old World diseases ravaged
populations. By the time the English and French began their invasions
in the a 17th century, the complex mound-building chiefdoms of the
region had vanished. They were replaced by the historic tribes whose
diminished numbers were no match for westward-expanding Americans.
[Illustration: Route of De Soto]
In his swing across the Southeast, De Soto’s men traveled over
Indian trails and were sustained by Indian supplies. Without native
help it is unlikely the expedition could have progressed much beyond
the Florida interior. The encounters with native
societies—chronicled by several participants—give the expedition
significance beyond its own time. The journals combined with
archeological and ethnographic data have enabled scholars to map
much of the route and to rediscover the lost world of the once
mighty chiefdoms of the Apalachee, Ichisi, Ocute, Coosa, Pacaha, and
other groups.
This version of the route is based on the work of Professor Charles
Hudson and others who have attempted to reconstruct the entire route.
There is good scholarly consensus for some segments, but other parts of
the route will remain in dispute unless new archeological evidence is
forthcoming.
De Soto Expedition. Dashed line indicates uncertain route.
*Known site, possibly visited by De Soto
·Uncertain Site
From Havana, Cuba
De Soto National Monument
*Ucita
·Cale
*Aguacaliquen
·Napituca 15 Sept 1539
Spaniards route Timacua Indians, take 200 prisoners
*Auta
*Anhaica
Winter camp 1539-40
·Toa
*Ichisi
Ocmulgee National Monument
*Cofitachequl
May 1540 Encounter with female ruler
·Xuala
*Chiaha
*Coosa
Political center of an important Indian chiefdom
·Itaba
Etowah Indian Mounds State Historic Site
*Piachi
·Mabila?
19 Oct 1540 Major battle with Chief Tasculuza and his allies
*Apafalaya
Mound State Monument
·Chicaza
Winter camp 1540-41
Spaniards beat off Indian attack in spring
·Alibamu
*Quizquiz
*Aquixo
*Casqui
Parkin Archeological State Park
*Pacaha
Scouting parties
*Coligua
*Calpista
*Tanico
·Tula
·Autiempque
Winter camp 1541-42
*Anilco
·Amihoya
Winter camp 1542-43
Spaniards build boats to take them down the Mississippi
·Guachoya
21 May 1542 Death of De Soto
Scouting parties
Expedition continues under Moscoso after De Soto’s death
*Chaguate
*Naguatex
·Nondacao
·Aays
·Guasco
Scouting parties
It was a disaster, nevertheless. Twelve soldiers and a white woman still
with the army—she was pregnant—were dead as were several score pigs and
57 horses, the latter mourned as deeply as the men, for they were the
army’s true strength. But once again, they rallied, improvised forges
for retempering their weapons, replaced the shafts of their lances, and
learned to patch their clothing with woven grasses, pounded bark, and
pieces of Indian blankets.
On May 9 or so, 1541, after more battles, they reached the Mississippi
at—no one knows, but it seems to have been south of Memphis. While they
were marveling at the river’s size (this is from Elvas), 200 dugout
canoes approached in perfect order. In each canoe warriors, painted with
ochre and bedecked with plumes of many colors, stood erect, protecting
the oarsmen with feathered shields and bows and arrows. The chief man of
the fleet sat in his canoe underneath an awning and likewise each lesser
chief in his canoe. The Spaniards had seen panoply before—bearers
carrying their caciques on feathered litters while flute players marched
beside—but nothing like this. Misunderstood stories of such spectacles,
as we will see later, caused considerable trouble for the expedition
Mendoza sent north under Coronado during this same period.
[Illustration: The Indians valued the brass bells and brightly
colored glass beads given them by the Spaniards. Where found, they
help authenticate Spanish presence in the 16th century. These
examples were excavated in Florida.]
A brief parley between the cacique and De Soto ended when nervous
crossbowmen, misreading what was going on, shot five or six of the
Indians. At once the fleet withdrew, still in perfect order, “like a
famous armada of galleys,” wrote Elvas. What follows passes
understanding. In spite of clear warnings not to proceed, De Soto
decided to go ahead. During the next hot, humid month, the men felled
trees, sawed them into planks, and constructed barges. To avoid
detection, they crossed the river, with the horses aboard, in the
pre-dawn darkness of June 18 and moved northwest.
They spent most of the summer and fall wandering around western
Arkansas. Many scholars believe they may have traveled up the Arkansas
River almost to eastern Oklahoma before going into their 1541-42 winter
quarters in a town (Autiamque) once again commandeered from the Indians.
Though the weather was severe, the men stayed fairly snug. Their slaves
built a strong stockade around the camp and dragged in ample supplies of
firewood. Local Indians provided them with buffalo robes to use as
overcoats and to sleep on, and showed them how to snare the rabbits that
frequented the nearby cornfields.
During the long days inside the stockade, De Soto at last faced up to
his situation. He had lost half his force. Not all had died in battle. A
few, despairing of seeing the end of the quest, had deserted to live
with the Indians, and the number would increase if he persisted in
wandering as he had been doing. Of the original 223 horses, only 40
remained, most of them lame for want of shoes. The death of Juan Ortiz
that winter deprived him of his best, if very uncertain, means of
communication with the Indians. Reluctantly he decided to turn back to
Mississippi. There he intended to build two brigantines and, manning
them with his most trustworthy men, send one to Havana and one to Pánuco
in hope that one would be able to lead reinforcements back to those who
would wait for them at the river.
They reached the roily Mississippi somewhere near the mouth of the
Arkansas River. By that time a deadly fever, perhaps malaria, was
gnawing at De Soto. Knowing death was near and bitterly resenting the
arrogant hostility of the Indians with whom he tried to treat in his
extremity, he ordered two of his captains to go out with lancers and
infantry and make an example of the nearby town of Anilco. Not expecting
an attack, for they had not been among those taking the lead in defying
the Spaniards, the unarmed townspeople clustered about in curiosity. A
wanton butchery followed. “About one hundred men were slain,” wrote
Elvas. “Many were allowed to get away badly wounded, that they might
strike terror into those who were absent.” Eighty women and children
were taken prisoner.
[Illustration: This effigy from a gourd-shaped ceramic vessel was
discovered in a burial at Ocmulgee National Monument in central
Georgia. De Soto’s expedition passed near this site.]
By the time the bloodletting was over, De Soto could not rise from his
bed. After confessing his sins and making his will, he named Luis de
Moscoso as his successor. On May 21, 1542, he died.
To keep the Indians from knowing the fate of the great Child of the Sun,
as he had been describing himself to them, his followers buried him near
the entrance to the town and rode horses back and forth to destroy signs
of the digging. The Indians were suspicious, however, and so Moscoso had
the corpse disinterred, lest the Indians dig it up and mutilate it. A
handful of men then stealthily wrapped the body in a shroud, weighted
the burden with sand, and in the darkness of the night rowed out onto
the river and dumped it overboard.
De Soto’s plan to build boats for bringing in reinforcements died with
him. The men’s one desire now was to leave this country that had brought
them only misery. But how? Remembering Narváez’s fate, they were
reluctant to try to build enough boats to carry them home by sea.
Instead they decided to march overland to Pánuco in northern Mexico.
They clung to the decision for four months, fighting off Indians when
they had to and living off the country as they had been doing ever since
the landing at Tampa Bay. Then, as the subtropical growth began to give
way to the desert scrub of south central Texas, they encountered, in a
village of poor huts, a woman who said, or they thought she said, that
she had seen Christians at a place nine days’ travel away and that “she
had been in their hands, but had escaped.” Moscoso sent a squad of
cavalrymen with her in the direction she indicated, but when she
contradicted herself, or they thought she did, they abandoned the quest.
The Spaniards were losing heart. They could not live off this land of
semi-nomadic Indians where little maize grew. As winter approached, the
idea of travel by sea no longer seemed so forbidding. Wheeling around,
they regained the Mississippi in two months of hard travel over the same
trails they had come and in December seized, for use as their fourth
winter quarters (1542-43), an Indian town (Aminoya) a little upstream of
the one which they had destroyed seven months before.
[Illustration: Mississippian culture in the Southeast (AD 1000-1600)
evolved a rich artistic tradition. The items on these pages come
from the area De Soto marched through. The effigy vessel (7.5 inches
high) and the stone axe (13 inches long) are representative of this
culture in Arkansas. The axe, which is carved from a single piece of
stone, was probably a badge of office.]
[Illustration: Stone Axe]
Good timber surrounded the village, and the few artisans still alive had
clung to their tools. They made more nails out of their meager supply of
horseshoes and other iron, contrived ropes out of bark, and sails out of
shawls collected from the Indians. To escape a flood that sent the river
out of its banks, they put their horses on anchored rafts and saved
themselves by climbing to the tops of their huts. Indians kept paddling
around their refuge in canoes. Suspicious of their intent, Moscoso had
one of his men seize a native. Under torture the fellow said that 20
chiefs of the surrounding tribes were conspiring to attack the invaders.
A sign would be the approach of Indians bearing gifts of fish to lull
the camp into relaxing its guard. When the native chiefs showed up with
fish as predicted, the Spanish laid hold of them, cut off each man’s
right hand, and sent the victims back to their villages to report that
their scheme was known. Although some of the chiefs persisted in their
intrigues, Moscoso, very much on guard now, was able to outwit them,
force submission, and acquire through it all more heaps of shawls out of
which to make sails.
By July the fleet was ready—seven brigantines and several Indian-style
war canoes lashed side by side. They loaded the vessels with casks of
fresh water and several hundred bushels of corn scoured from a
countryside that could ill afford the loss. During the last days of work
they killed and ate the poorest of the horses. The soundest, 22 all
told, were put aboard, as were a hundred slaves. The rest of the Indians
they had dragged along with them were turned loose in this country where
the tribes were hostile to them.
The river journey was a series of violent, if intermittent, battles.
Indians from towns they passed swarmed after them in canoes, raining
arrows on them. Ten Spaniards and an unknown number of slaves died, and
because the horses were slowing their flight, Moscoso at last put ashore
at a defensible spot, killed them, and dried the meat.
After 17 days they reached the Gulf, turned west, and on September 10,
1543, after weeks of combatting fretful seas, contrary winds, thirst and
hunger, 311 survivors (again not counting captive Indians) reached the
Pánuco River. Said Elvas: “Many, leaping ashore, kissed the ground; and
all, on bended knees, with hands raised above them and their eyes to
Heaven, remained untiring in giving thanks to God.”
[Illustration: The artist’s stone palette (12.5 inches in diameter)
was found at Etowah Mounds State Historic Site, Georgia. The
engraving has been interpreted as snake emissaries of the sun god,
which is represented by the eye.]
One of the most extraordinary marches in the annals of the New—or
Old—World had come to a profitless end.