Hernando de Soto Expedition (1539-1543): Across the Southeast

The Hernando de Soto expedition was a Spanish military expedition that spent four years, from 1539 to 1543, marching through what is now the southeastern United States. Led by Hernando de Soto, a veteran of the conquest of Peru, it travelled through parts of ten modern states, fought the great Battle of Mabila and became the first European expedition known to have crossed the Mississippi River. It found no gold, but its chronicles are the only eyewitness descriptions of the powerful Mississippian chiefdoms before they collapsed.

Background: from Peru to La Florida

Hernando de Soto was born around 1500 in Extremadura, in western Spain. As a young man he served in Central America and then joined Francisco Pizarro in Peru, where he was among the horsemen present at the capture of the Inca ruler Atahualpa at the Battle of Cajamarca in 1532. He returned to Spain a very rich man.

In 1537 Emperor Charles V appointed him governor of Cuba and adelantado of La Florida, a vague Spanish name for all of North America north of the Gulf of Mexico. The title gave him the right to conquer and settle the region, but at his own cost. Earlier attempts had ended badly. Juan Ponce de León had been fatally wounded in Florida in 1521, and the expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez in 1527–1528 had been almost wiped out, as described in our article on the Narváez expedition and Cabeza de Vaca.

Cabeza de Vaca’s return to Spain in 1537 encouraged rumours that the interior held great riches. De Soto hoped to find another Peru. He invested his fortune and recruited hundreds of men, many of them attracted by the prospect of becoming lords over native towns.

The march (1539–1541)

The landing and the first winter

The fleet sailed from Havana on 18 May 1539 and reached the west coast of Florida later that month, landing at a bay the Spaniards named Espíritu Santo, usually identified with the Tampa Bay area. The force numbered roughly 600 to 700 people, mostly soldiers, with more than 200 horses, a herd of pigs kept as a walking food supply, war dogs, priests, craftsmen and a few women.

Near the coast the Spaniards found Juan Ortiz, a survivor of the Narváez venture who had lived among the local people for about a decade. He became the expedition’s chief interpreter until his death in 1542. From the start de Soto relied on a brutal method: he seized chiefs as hostages and forced their towns to provide food, guides and porters, many of whom were chained by the neck.

The army moved north through Florida, fighting several times, and spent its first winter at Anhaica, the main town of the Apalachee people, at present-day Tallahassee. Archaeologists located this camp in 1987 at what is now called the Governor Martin site, one of the few places where the expedition’s presence is proven by excavated Spanish objects.

Through the chiefdoms of the Southeast

In March 1540 the expedition headed northeast across Georgia towards Cofitachequi, a chiefdom in present-day South Carolina ruled by a woman whom the chronicles call the Lady of Cofitachequi. She received the Spaniards peacefully, but they found only freshwater pearls and copper, not gold. De Soto took her along as a hostage; she later escaped.

The army then crossed the southern Appalachian Mountains through western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee before turning south into Coosa, a large paramount chiefdom centred in northwest Georgia. Coosa’s people grew maize, lived in towns with platform mounds and were linked to other chiefdoms by tribute and alliance. Such societies belonged to the wider Mississippian culture also seen at Moundville in Alabama.

The Battle of Mabila

In October 1540 the expedition reached the lands of Tascaluza, a powerful chief in what is now Alabama, described by the Spaniards as unusually tall and dignified. De Soto took him hostage. Tascaluza led the Spaniards to Mabila, a palisaded town where warriors had gathered in secret.

On 18 October 1540 fighting broke out inside the town. After a day-long battle the Spaniards set Mabila on fire. Spanish accounts report about 20 to 22 Spaniards killed and well over a hundred wounded, many horses lost and nearly all their baggage burned, including the pearls and the supplies for celebrating Mass. Native losses were reported at roughly 2,500 to 3,000 dead; these figures come only from the Spanish side and may be exaggerated, but the battle was clearly a catastrophe for the region. The exact site of Mabila has never been confirmed.

Ships under Francisco Maldonado were waiting at Ochuse, probably Pensacola Bay, only a few days’ march away. De Soto concealed this news from his men and turned northwest instead, apparently unwilling to return without a success.

Reaching the Mississippi

The army spent the winter of 1540–1541 at Chicaza, a Chickasaw town in northeastern Mississippi. In March 1541 the Chickasaw attacked at night and burned the camp, killing a dozen or so Spaniards and many horses and pigs.

On 8 May 1541, according to the chronicles, the expedition reached the Mississippi River, probably in northwestern Mississippi, south of present-day Memphis. The chroniclers called it simply the Río Grande, the “great river”; on Spanish maps its mouth already appeared as the Río del Espíritu Santo. They built barges and crossed in June 1541 into Arkansas, where they met large chiefdoms such as Casqui and Pacaha, which were at war with each other. Further wanderings took them west towards the Ozark and Ouachita regions, and they wintered in 1541–1542 at Autiamque, on the Arkansas River.

The death of de Soto and the retreat

By spring 1542 the expedition had lost perhaps half its men, and Juan Ortiz had died. De Soto returned to the Mississippi, intending to build boats and send for help. At Guachoya, on the river’s west bank, he fell ill with a fever and died on 21 May 1542. Before his death he ordered a massacre at nearby Anilco to frighten the region. His men buried him secretly and then sank his body in the Mississippi, because he had told local people he was an immortal “child of the sun”.

His successor, Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, led the survivors west across Arkansas into eastern Texas, hoping to reach New Spain by land. Finding only scattered peoples and little maize, they turned back to the Mississippi. Over the winter of 1542–1543 they built seven brigantines at Aminoya. In July 1543 they floated down the river under attack from canoe fleets, entered the Gulf of Mexico and followed the coast west. About 300 survivors, commonly given as 311, reached the Spanish town of Pánuco in Mexico on 10 September 1543.

Key people

• Hernando de Soto (c. 1500–1542), governor of Cuba and adelantado of La Florida.
• Luis de Moscoso Alvarado, de Soto’s field commander and successor, who brought the survivors to Mexico.
• Juan Ortiz, Spanish survivor of the Narváez expedition and interpreter.
• Tascaluza, paramount chief who confronted the Spaniards at Mabila.
• The Lady of Cofitachequi, ruler of a chiefdom in South Carolina.

Effects on native societies

The expedition’s direct violence was severe: hostage-taking, enslavement of porters, burning of towns and pitched battles. Its longer impact is more debated. When French explorers travelled down the Mississippi in the 1670s and La Salle reached its mouth in 1682, many of the populous towns described in the de Soto chronicles had disappeared, and peoples such as the Choctaw, Creek and Chickasaw had formed from the remnants of older chiefdoms.

Many historians, notably Charles Hudson, argue that epidemic diseases introduced by Europeans, combined with the disruption of food stores and political networks, caused this collapse. Others point out that direct evidence of epidemics during the expedition itself is limited, that some chiefdoms were already in decline, and that the later Indian slave trade of the late 17th century also caused great upheaval. Most scholars agree that the expedition marked the beginning of a profound transformation of the Southeast.

Myths and facts

• Myth: De Soto discovered the Mississippi. Fact: He led the first recorded European crossing of the river inland. Spanish sailors had probably seen its mouth earlier, and Native peoples had lived along it for millennia.
• Myth: Hernando de Soto was looking for the Fountain of Youth. Fact: That legend is associated, inaccurately, with Ponce de León; de Soto sought gold and a wealthy kingdom to conquer.
• Myth: The famous painting in the US Capitol shows the scene as it happened. Fact: William H. Powell’s canvas, installed in the Rotunda in 1855, is a romantic image made three centuries later.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1537: Charles V names de Soto governor of Cuba and adelantado of La Florida.
• 1539, 18 May: The fleet sails from Havana.
• 1539, late May: Landing on the Gulf coast of Florida, probably near Tampa Bay.
• 1539–1540, winter: Camp at Anhaica, the Apalachee capital (Tallahassee).
• 1540, 18 October: Battle of Mabila in present-day Alabama.
• 1541, March: Chickasaw attack on the Spanish camp at Chicaza.
• 1541, 8 May: The expedition reaches the Mississippi River.
• 1542, 21 May: De Soto dies at Guachoya.
• 1543, July: Survivors sail down the Mississippi in seven brigantines.
• 1543, 10 September: About 300 survivors reach Pánuco, Mexico.

Why it matters

The de Soto expedition was the largest European venture into the North American interior in the 16th century, running parallel to the Coronado expedition in the Southwest. Its accounts offer a unique, if biased, view of societies that soon vanished, and its failure discouraged Spanish settlement in the interior Southeast for generations.