Hernando de Soto

For the Peruvian economist, see Hernando de Soto (economist).

File:Desoto-hernando.jpg

Hernando de Soto.

Hernando de Soto (c.1496/1497–May 21, 1542) was a Spanish explorer and conquistador. Born in the Extremadura region of Spain, he participated, in his late teens, in the conquest of Central America at the side of Governor Pedrarias Dávila. He joined Francisco Pizarro in the early 1530's conquest of South America, and he became enormously wealthy from his share of the Incan booty.

In 1539, De Soto launched the largest of the early Spanish colonial expeditions. A vast undertaking, De Soto's expedition ranged throughout the southeastern United States searching for gold and a passage to China. De Soto died in 1542 on the banks of the Mississippi River at present-day Lake Village, Arkansas. Hernando de Soto was born to parents who were hidalgos of modest means in Extremadura, a region of poverty and hardship from which many young people looked for ways to seek their fortune elsewhere. Two towns—Badajoz and Jerez de los Caballeros—claim to be his birthplace. All that is known with certainty is that he spent time as a child at both places and he stipulated in his will that his body be interred at Jerez de los Caballeros, where other members of his family were also interred. The age of the Conquerors came on the heels of the Spanish reconquest of the Iberian penninsula from Islamic forces. Spain and Portugal were filled with young men begging for a chance to find military fame after the Moors were defeated. With discovery of new lands to the West (which seemed at the time to be far east Asia), the whispers of glory and wealth were too compelling for the poor Extremadurans.

De Soto sailed to the New World in 1514 with the first Governor of Panama, Pedrarias Dávila. Brave leadership, unwaivering loyalty, and clever schemes for the extortion of native villages for their captured chiefs, became De Soto's hallmark during the Conquest of Central America. He gained fame as an excellent horseman, fighter, and tactician, but was (from our modern perspective) notorious for extreme brutality.

During that time, Juan Ponce de León, who discovered North America, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, who discovered the Pacific (he called it the "South Sea" below Panama), and Ferdinand Magellan, who first sailed that ocean to the Orient, profoundly influenced De Soto's ambitions.

First expedition – South America

In 1528, De Soto became regidor of Leon, Guatemala, and led an expedition up the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula searching for passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in order to trade Spain's New World fortunes with the Orient, the richest market in the world. Failing that, and without means to further explore, De Soto, upon Governor Dávila's death, joined Francisco Pizarro in the Conquest of South America in 1532.

With a group of fifty men, De Soto followed the Inca road to Cuzco, Peru's capital of the Inca Empire, and became the first European to befriend the Inca Chief Atahualpa. The Conquest of South America ended with the execution of Atahualpa by Pizarro, despite fulfilling his promise to provide a Ransom Room filled with gold for the Spaniards. The King would sentence Pizarro to death for killing Atahualpa after De Soto departed Peru in 1536.

Return to Spain

De Soto returned to Spain with an enormous share of the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire. Famous for being the hero of that conquest, he was admitted into the prestigious Order of Santiago. He married Isabel de Bobadilla, daughter of Pedrarias Dávila and a relative of a confidante of Queen Isabella. De Soto petitioned The King for the government of Guatemala, "with permission to make discovery in the South Sea," but was granted the governorship of Cuba, instead. De Soto was expected to colonize the North American continent for Spain within four years, for which his family would be given a huge piece of it forever.

Fascinated by the stories of Cabeza de Vaca, Spain's just returned North American explorer, De Soto selected 620 eager Spanish and Portuguese volunteers, some of African descent, for the government of Cuba and Conquest of North America. Averaging 24 years of age, they eventually embarked from Havana on seven of the King's ships and two of De Soto's. With tons of heavy armour and equipment, the livestock count came to over 500, including 237 horses and 200 pigs.

De Soto planned to explore America for a passage to the Orient. His men, lured by Cabeza de Vaca's stories of gold to found, would need to provide themselves with food and shelter during their four year continental search. Tens-of-thousands of natives would die as a result.

De Soto's exploration of North America

Historiography

The exact course of de Soto's expedition is subject to discussions and controversy among historians and local politicians. The most widely used version of De Soto's Trail comes from the Congress of the United States. A committee chaired by the anthropologist John R. Swanton published "The Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission" in 1939. While the first part of the expedition's course (until De Soto's Mabila battle in Alabama) is only disputed in detail today, De Soto's Trail beyond Mabila is contested. Congress' De Soto Trail runs from there through Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas. Other theories argue for a northern route through Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana from Mabila.

Archeological reconstructions and the oral history of the natives have only lately been considered. However, this bears the handicap that most historical places have been overbuilt and more than 450 years of history have passed between the incidence and its narration. The only site definitively associated with de Soto's expedition is the Governor Martin Site at the Apalachee village of Anhaica, located about a mile east of the present Florida Capitol building in Tallahassee, Florida. It was found by archaeologist B. Calvin Jones in March of 1987.

The latest theory applies two journals of De Soto Exploration survivors: De Soto's Secretary, Rodrigo Ranjel, and The King's Agent with De Soto, Luys Hernández de Biedma. Between them they described De Soto's Trail in relation to Havana, Cuba, from which they sailed, the Gulf of Mexico, which they skirted inland (then later headed back toward), the Atlantic Ocean, which they approached during their second year, high mountains, which they traversed immediately thereafter, and dozens of other geographic features along their way - large rivers and swamps - at recorded intervals. Given that earth's natural geography has not changed since De Soto's time, those journals, analyzed with modern topographic intelligence, render a more precise De Soto Trail.

1539 to early-1540 in Florida

Library of Congress' image of Hernando de Soto

In May 1539, De Soto landed nine ships with over 620 men and 220 surviving horses at Charlotte Harbor, Florida. He named it Espíritu Santo after the Holy Spirit. The ships brought priests, craftsmen, engineers, farmers, and merchants; some with their families, some from Cuba, most from Europe and Africa. Few of them had ever traveled outside of Spain, or even their home villages.

A young Spaniard named Juan Ortiz, who had come to Florida in search of the lost Narváez Expedition and been held by an inland tribe, was sighted near DeSoto's port. Ortiz came to Florida in search of the earlier Narváez Expedition and was captured by the Uzica, a Calusa tribe. The daughter of Chief Hirrihigua of the Uzica arguably served as a precursor to Pocahontas by begging for Ortiz's life, as her father had ordered Ortiz to be roasted alive. Ortiz survived captivity and torture, and joined, at the first opportunity, the new de Soto Spanish expedition. Ortiz knew the countryside and also helped as an interpreter. As a lead guide for the de Soto expedition, Ortiz established a unique method for guiding the expedition and communicating with various tribal dialects. The "Paracoxi" guides were recruited from each tribe along the route. A chain of communication was established whereby a guide who had lived in close proximity to another tribal area was able to pass his information and language on to a guide from a neighboring area. Because Ortiz refused to dress and conduct himself as a hidalgo Spaniard, his motives and council to de Soto were held in suspicion by other officers. But Don Hernando remained loyal to Ortiz, thus allowing him freedom to dress and live among his tribal Paracoxi friends. Another important guide was the seventeen-year-old boy Perico, or Pedro, from modern-day Georgia, who spoke several of the local tribes' languages and could communicate with Ortiz. Perico was engaged as a guide in 1540 and treated better than the rest of the slaves, due to his value to the Spaniards.

De Soto left port and traveled north, exploring Floridas West Coast, enduring native ambushes and conflicts along the way. His first winter encampment was at Anhaica, the capital of the Apalachee. It is the only place on the entire De Soto route where archaeologists have found physical traces of De Soto's presence. It was described as being near the "Bay of Horses," where members of the preceeding Narváez expedition ate valued horseflesh while building boats for escape.

1540 – Through Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama

From their winter location in the western panhandle of Florida, having heard of gold being mined "toward the sun's rising," the expedition turned north-east through Georgia and South Carolina to (present day) Columbia. Received there by a friendly female chief, she turned over her tribe's pearls, food and anything else the Spaniards wanted. No gold, however, other than pieces from an earlier Spanish coastal expedition, could be found.

De Soto headed north into the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina where he spent one month resting the horses while his men searched for gold. De Soto then entered Tennessee and Northern Georgia, where he spent another month eating native foods, then turned south toward the Gulf of Mexico to meet his two ships bearing fresh supplies from Havana.

Along his way, in central Alabama, De Soto was led into Mauvila (or Mabila), a fortified city. The Choctaw tribe, under Chief Tascalusa, ambushed De Soto's army. The Spaniards managed to fight their way out then attack and burn the city to the ground. During that nine hour encounter, twenty Spaniards died, most were wounded, and twenty more died during the next few weeks. Choctaw warriors of that area - between 2,000 and 6,000 of them - died fighting in the fields, by fire in the city, or suicide.

Even though the Spaniards "won" the battle, they lost most of their possessions and forty horses. The Spaniards were wounded, sickened, surrounded by enemies and without equipment in an unknown territory. Fearing that word of this would reach Spain if his men reached the ships at Mobile Bay, De Soto led them due north, into Tennessee, where they spent the winter.

1541 – To the west, demoralised

Discovery of the Mississippi by William H. Powell (1823–1879) is a Romantic depiction of de Soto seeing the Mississippi River for the first time. It hangs in the United States Capitol rotunda.

The expedition returned upcountry to the north, where they met the Chickasaw tribe. De Soto demanded 200 men as porters from the Chickasaw. They denied his claim and attacked the Spanish camp during the night. The Spaniards lost about forty men and the remainder of their equipment. According to participating chroniclers, the expedition could have been destroyed. Luckily for the expedition, the Chickasaw let them go, intimidated by their own success.

On May 8, 1541, de Soto's troops reached the Mississippi River. It is unclear whether he, as it is claimed, was the first European to see the great river. However, he is the first to document this fact in official reports.

De Soto was less interested in this discovery though, recognizing it, first of all, as an obstacle to his mission. He and 400 men had to cross the broad river, which was constantly patrolled by hostile natives. After about one month, and the construction of several floats, they finally crossed the Mississippi and continued their travels westwards through modern-day Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. They wintered in Autiamique, on the Arkansas River.

After a harsh winter, the Spanish expedition decamped and moved on more and more erratically. Their faithful interpreter, Juan Ortiz, had died, making it more difficult to find directions, food sources and communicate with the Indians in general. The expedition went as far inward as the Caddo River, where they clashed with a militant Native American tribe called the Tula, who the Spaniards considered to be the most skilled and dangerous warriors they had ever encountered. This possibly happened in the area of present day Caddo Gap, Arkansas (a monument stands in that community). Eventually, the Spaniards returned to the Mississippi River.

De Soto's death

On the western banks of the Mississippi, in the Indian village of Guachoya (near present-day McArthur, Arkansas ) de Soto died on May 21, 1542 of a fever. Since de Soto had propagated among the local natives that he was an immortal sun god (as a ploy to gain their submission without conflict), his men had to conceal his death. They hid his corpse in blankets weighted with sand and sank it in the middle of the Mississippi river during the night (although the Indians were clever enough to see through the ploy).

Return of the expedition to Mexico City

De Soto's expedition had explored La Florida for three years without finding the expected treasures or a hospitable site for their colonization efforts. They had lost nearly half their men, most of the horses had been killed (their main tactical fighting advantage), they were wearing animal skins for clothes and many were injured and in poor health. Upon consensus (although not total) it was decided to abort the expedition and try to find a way home, either down the Mississippi river, or overland across Texas to the Spanish colony of Mexico City.

It was decided that building boats would be too difficult and time consuming, and that navigating the Gulf of Mexico too risky - so they headed overland to the south-west. Eventually they reached a region in present-day Texas that was dry and the native populations thinned out to subsistence hunger-gatherers - this presented a serious problem as there were no villages to raid for food and the army was too large to live off the land. They were forced to backtrack to the more civilized regions along the Mississippi, and there began building boats. They melted down all the iron they had, including horse tackle and slave shackles, to make nails for the boats. Winter came and went and the spring floods delayed another two months, but by July they set off down the Mississippi for the coast. Taking about 2 weeks to make the journey, they encountered hostile tribes along the whole course who would follow the boats in canoes harassing with arrows sometimes for days on end as they drifted through their territory - the Spanish had no effective offensive weapons on the water as their cross-bows had long ceased working, and so they could only rely on armor and sleeping mats to block the arrows. About 11 Spaniards were killed along this stretch and many more wounded.

On reaching the mouth of the Mississippi the boats stayed close to the Gulf shore heading south and west, and after about 50 days they made it to the Pánuco River and the Spanish frontier town of Pánuco. There they rested for about a month, during which time many of the Spaniards, having safely returned and on reflection of their accomplishments, discontented factions arose believing they had left La Florida too soon without founding a settlement, leading to fights and some deaths. However, after they continued on to Mexico City and Viceroy Don Antonio de Mendoza offered to lead another expedition back to La Florida, few volunteered. Out of the initial 700 participants, somewhere between 300 and 350 survived (311 a commonly accepted figure) - most eventually stayed in the New World, settling in Mexico, Peru, Cuba and other Spanish colonies.

After-effects

De Soto's excursion to Florida was, from his view and the view of his men, a deadly disaster. They acquired neither gold nor prosperity and founded no colonies. The reputation of the expedition, at the time, was more like that of the later Don Quixote than that of Hernán Cortés. Nonetheless, it had several consequences.

On one hand, the expedition left its traces in the travelled areas themselves. Some of the horses that escaped or were stolen helped establish the first populations of mustangs in western North America and the swine de Soto brought introduced pork into the south. De Soto was instrumental in forming the aggressive and hostile relationship between the Natives and Europeans. On several occasions they encountered hostile Natives to the new lands, and more times than not his expedition instigated the clashes. More devastating than the gory battles, however, were the diseases carried by the members of the expedition. Several areas the expedition crossed were basically depopulated. Many of the natives fled the populated areas struck by the illnesses towards the surrounding hills and swamps. The social structures of the population at the time were fundamentally changed.

On the other hand, the records of the expedition contributed in large part to geographic, biological, and ethnological knowledge in Europe. The de Soto expedition's descriptions of the North American natives are the earliest known source of knowledge on the societies in the southeastern North Americas. They are, in fact, the only European description of North American native habits before the natives encountered other Europeans. De Soto's men were, at the same time, the first and the last Europeans to experience the prime of the Mississippian culture.

De Soto's expedition also led the Spanish crown to reconsider Spain's attitude towards its colonies north of Mexico. He created a claim on large parts of the North Americas for the Spaniards, with their missions concentrated mainly on the state of Florida and the Pacific coast.

De Soto County, Mississippi (where he allegedly died), the county seat Hernando, De Soto Parish, Louisiana, and Hernando County, Florida are named after Hernando de Soto. The place of his disembarkation, Espiritu Santo, is marked by the De Soto National Memorial west of Bradenton, Florida. Several other cities and a car model are named after him.

Sources

• Clayton, Lawrence A. Clayton, Vernon J. Knight and Edward C. Moore (Editor): The de Soto Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in 1539-1543; University of Alabama Press 1996. ISBN 0-8173-0824-5
• Duncan, David Ewing: Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas; University of Oklahoma Press 1997. ISBN 0-8061-2977-8
• Hudson, Charles M., Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms, University of Georgia Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8203-1888-4

External links

• Hernando de Soto's Conquest of North America
• Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of South America
• Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Central America
• Details of Hernando de Soto's Trail thru the United States
• Detailed Maps of Hernando de Soto's United States Trail
• Research to Reconstruct the Route of the Expedition
• Brief Biography of Hernando de Soto
• De Soto Memorial in Florida Template:Link FATemplate:Link FA