De Soto And The Father Of Waters
America was to the Spaniards the land of gold. Everywhere they looked
for the yellow metal, more precious in their eyes than anything else the
earth yields. The wonderful adventures of Cortez in Mexico and of
Pizarro in Peru, and the vast wealth in gold found by those sons of
fame, filled their people with hope and avarice, and men of enterprise
began to look elsewhere for great and rich Indian nations to subdue and
pl
nder.
North of the Gulf of Mexico lay a vast, mysterious region, which in time
to come was to be the seat of a great and mighty nation. To the
Spaniards it was a land of enchantment, the mystic realm of the unknown,
perhaps rich in marvels and wealthy beyond their dreams. It was fabled
to contain the magic fountain of youth, the hope to bathe in whose
pellucid waters lured Ponce de Leon to his death. Another explorer, De
Ayllon, sailed north of Florida, seeking a sacred stream which was said
to possess the same enchanted powers. A third, De Narvaez, went far into
the country, with more men than Cortez led to the conquest of Mexico,
but after months of wandering only a handful of his men returned, and
not a grain of gold was found to pay for their suffering.
But these failures only stirred the cavaliers of Spain to new thirst
for adventure and gain. They had been told of fertile plains, of
splendid tropical forests, of the beauty of the Indian maidens, of
romantic incidents and hair-breadth escapes, of the wonderful influence
exercised by a white man on tribes of dusky warriors, and who knew what
fairy marvels or unimagined wealth might be found in the deep interior
of this land of hope and mystery. Thus when Hernando de Soto, who had
been with Pizarro in Peru and seen its gold-plated temples, called for
volunteers to explore and conquer the unknown northland, hundreds of
aspiring warriors flocked to his standard, burning with love of
adventure and filled with thirst for gold.
On the 30th of May, 1539, De Soto, with nine vessels and six or seven
hundred well-armed followers, sailed into Tampa Bay, on the Gulf coast
of Florida. Here they at once landed and marched inland, greedy to reach
and grasp the spectral image of gold which floated before their eyes. A
daring but a cruel man was this new adventurer. He brought with him
blood-hounds to hunt the Indians and chains to fetter them. A drove of
hogs was brought to supply the soldiers with fresh meat. They were
provided with horses, with fire-arms, with cannon, with steel armor,
with everything to overawe and overcome the woodland savages. Yet two
things they needed; these were judgment and discretion. It would have
been wise to make friends of the Indians. Instead, by their cruelty,
they turned them into bitter and relentless enemies. So wherever they
went they had bold and fierce foes to fight, and wounds and death marked
their pathway across the land.
Let us follow De Soto and his men into the realm of the unknown. They
had not gone far before a strange thing happened. Out of a crowd of
dusky Indians a white man rode on horseback to join them, making
gestures of delight. He was a Spaniard, Juan Ortiz by name, one of the
Narvaez band, who had been held in captivity among the Indians for ten
years. He knew the Indian language well and offered himself as an
interpreter and guide. Heaven seemed to have sent him, for he was worth
a regiment to the Spaniards.
Juan Ortiz had a strange story to tell. Once his captors had sought to
burn him alive by a slow fire as a sacrifice to the evil spirit. Bound
hand and foot, he was laid on a wooden stage and a fire kindled under
him. But at this moment of frightful peril the daughter of the chieftain
begged for his life, and her father listened to her prayer. Three years
later the savage captors again decided to burn him, and again the dusky
maiden saved his life. She warned him of his danger and led him to the
camp of another chief. Here he stayed till the Spaniards came. What
became of the warm-hearted maiden we are not told. She did not win the
fame of the Pocahontas of a later day.
Many and strange were the adventures of the Spaniards as they went
deeper and deeper into the new land of promise. Misfortune tracked
their footsteps and there was no glitter of gold to cheer their hearts.
A year passed over their heads and still the land of gold lay far away.
An Indian offered to lead them to a distant country, governed by a
woman, telling them that there they would find abundance of a yellow
metal. Inspired by hope, they now pushed eagerly forward, but the yellow
metal proved to be copper instead of gold, and their high hopes were
followed by the gloom of disappointment and despair. But wherever they
went their trail was marked by blood and pillage, and the story of their
ruthless deeds stirred up the Indians in advance to bitter hostility.
Fear alone made any of the natives meet them with a show of peace, and
this they repaid by brutal deeds. One of their visitors was an Indian
queen--as they called her--the woman chief of a tribe of the South. When
the Spaniards came near her domain she hastened to welcome them, hoping
by this means to make friends of her dreaded visitors. Borne in a litter
by four of her subjects, the dusky princess alighted before De Soto and
came forward with gestures of pleasure, as if delighted to welcome her
guests. Taking from her neck a heavy double string of pearls, she hung
it on that of the Spanish leader. De Soto accepted it with the courtly
grace of a cavalier, and pretended friendship while he questioned his
hostess.
But he no sooner obtained the information he wanted than he made her a
prisoner, and at once began to rob her and her people of all the
valuables they possessed. Chief among these were large numbers of
pearls, most of them found in the graves of the distinguished men of the
tribe. But the plunderers did not gain all they hoped for by their act
of vandalism, for the poor queen managed to escape from her guards, and
in her flight took with her a box of the most valuable of the pearls.
They were those which De Soto had most prized and he was bitterly stung
by their loss.
The adventurers were now near the Atlantic, on ground which had been
trodden by whites before, and they decided to turn inland and explore
the country to the west. After months more of wandering, and the loss of
many men through their battles with the Indians, they found themselves
in the autumn of 1540 at a large village called Mavilla. It stood where
stands to-day the city of Mobile. Here a large force of Indians was
gathered.
The Indian chief or cacique met De Soto with a show of friendship, and
induced him and a few of his men to follow him within the palisades
which surrounded the village. No sooner had they got there than the
chief shouted some words of insult in his own tongue and darted into one
of the houses. A minor chief got into a dispute with a Spanish soldier,
who, in the usual Spanish fashion, carried forward the argument with a
blow from his sword. This served as a signal for hostilities. In an
instant clouds of arrows poured from the houses, and before the
Spaniards could escape nearly the whole of them were slain. Only De
Soto and a few others got out with their lives from the trap into which
they had been beguiled.
Filled with revengeful rage, the Spanish forces now invested and
assailed the town, and a furious conflict began, lasting for nine hours.
In the end the whites, from their superior weapons and organization, won
the victory. But theirs was a costly triumph, for many of them had
fallen and nearly all their property had been destroyed. Mavilla was
burned and hosts of the Indians were killed, but the Spaniards were in a
terrible situation, far from their ships, without medicine or food, and
surrounded by brave and furious enemies.
The soldiers felt that they had had enough adventure of this kind, and
clamored to be led back to their ships. De Soto had been advised that
the ships were then in the Bay of Pensacola, only six days' journey from
Mavilla, but he kept this a secret from his men, for hopes of fame and
wealth still filled his soul. In the end, despite their entreaties, he
led the men to the north, spending the winter in a small village of the
Chickasaw Indians.
When spring opened the adventurers resumed their journey into the
unknown. In his usual forcible fashion De Soto seized on Indians to
carry his baggage, and in this way he brought on a violent battle, in
which the whites met with a serious defeat and were in imminent danger
of annihilation. Not a man of them would have lived to tell the tale if
the savages had not been so scared at their own success that they drew
back just when they had the hated Spaniards in their power.
A strange-looking army was that which the indomitable De Soto led
forward from this place. Many of the uniforms of the men had been
carried off by the enemy, and these were replaced with skins and mats
made of ivy-leaves, so that the adventurers looked more like forest
braves than Christian warriors. But onward still they trudged, sick at
heart many of them, but obeying the orders of their resolute chief, and
in the blossoming month of May they made that famous discovery by which
the name of Hernando de Soto has ever since been known. For they stood
on the banks of one of the mightiest rivers of the earth, the great
Father of Waters, the grand Mississippi. From thousands of miles to the
north had come the waters which now rolled onward in a mighty volume
before their eyes, hastening downward to bury themselves in the still
distant Gulf.
A discovery such as this might have been enough to satisfy the cravings
of any ordinary man, but De Soto, in his insatiable greed for gold, saw
in the glorious stream only an obstacle to his course, "half a league
over." To build boats and cross the stream was the one purpose that
filled his mind, and with much labor they succeeded in getting across
the great stream themselves and the few of their horses that remained.
At once the old story began again. The Indians beyond the Mississippi
had heard of the Spaniards and their methods, and met them with
relentless hostility. They had hardly landed on the opposite shore
before new battles began. As for the Indian empire, with great cities,
civilized inhabitants, and heaps of gold, which Be Soto so ardently
sought, it seemed as far off as ever, and he was a sadly disappointed
man as he led the miserable remnant of his once well-equipped and
hopeful followers up the left bank of the great stream, dreams of wealth
and renown not yet quite driven from his mind.
At length they reached the region of the present State of Missouri. Here
the simple-minded people took the white strangers to be children of the
Sun, the god of their worship, and they brought out their blind, hoping
to have them restored to sight by a touch from the healing hands of
these divine visitors. Leaving after a time these superstitious tribes,
De Soto led his men to the west, lured on still by the phantom of a
wealthy Indian realm, and the next winter was passed near where Little
Rock, Arkansas, is now built.
Spring returned at length, and the weary wanderings of the devoted band
were resumed. Depressed, worn-out, hopeless, they trudged onward, hardly
a man among them looking for aught but death in those forest wilds. Juan
Ortiz, the most useful man in the band, died, and left the enterprise
still more hopeless. But De Soto, worn, sick, emaciated, was indomitable
still and the dream of a brilliant success lingered as ever in his
brain. He tried now to win over the Indians by pretending to be
immortal and to be gifted with supernatural powers, but it was too late
to make them credit any such fantastic notion.
The band encamped in an unhealthy spot near the great river. Here
disease attacked the men; scouts were sent out to seek a better place,
but they found only trackless woods and rumors of Indian bands creeping
stealthily up on all sides to destroy what remained of the little army
of whites.
Almost for the first time De Soto's resolute mind now gave way. Broken
down by his many labors and cares, perhaps assailed by the disease that
was attacking his men, he felt that death was near at hand. Calling
around him the sparse remnant of his once gallant company, he humbly
begged their pardon for the sufferings and evils he had brought upon
them, and named Luis de Alvaredo to succeed him in command. The next
day, May 21, 1542, the unfortunate hero died. Thus passed away one of
the three greatest Spanish explorers of the New World, a man as great in
his way and as indomitable in his efforts as his rivals, Cortez and
Pizarro, though not so fortunate in his results. For three years he had
led his little band through a primitive wilderness, fighting his way
steadily through hosts of savage foes, and never yielding until the hand
of death was laid upon his limbs.
Fearing a fierce attack from the savages if they should learn that the
"immortal" chief of the whites was dead, Alvaredo had him buried
secretly outside the walls of the camp. But the new-made grave was
suspicious. The prowling Indians might dig it up and discover the noted
form it held. To prevent this, Alvaredo had the body of De Soto dug up
in the night, wrapped it in cloths filled with sand, and dropped it into
the Mississippi, to whose bottom it immediately sank. Thus was the great
river he had discovered made the famous explorer's final resting-place.
With the death of De Soto the work of the explorers was practically at
an end. To the Indians who asked what had become of the Child of the
Sun, Alvaredo answered that he had gone to heaven for a visit, but would
soon return. Then, while the Indians waited this return of the chief,
the camp was broken up and the band set out again on a westward course,
hoping to reach the Pacific coast, whose distance they did not dream.
Months more passed by in hopeless wandering, then back to the great
river they came and spent six months more in building boats, as their
last hope of escape.
On the 2d of July, 1543, the scanty remnant of the once powerful band
embarked on the waters of the great river, and for seventeen days
floated downward, while the Indians on the bank poured arrows on them
incessantly as they passed. Fifty days later a few haggard, half-naked
survivors of De Soto's great expedition landed at the Spanish settlement
of Panuco in Mexico. They had long been given up as lost, and were
received as men risen from the grave.