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De Soto Discovers The Mississippi 1541 | Desoto in Britannica

Soto, Hernando de

b. c. 1496, /97, Jerez de los Caballeros, Badajoz, Spain

d. May 21, 1542, along Mississippi River [in modern Louisiana, U.S.]

Hernando also spelled FERNANDO, Spanish explorer and

conquistador who participated in the conquests of Central America

and Peru and, in the course of exploring what was to become the

southeastern United States, discovered the Mississippi River.

Early years.

De Soto spent his youth in the family manor house at Jerez de los

Caballeros. His parents intended him to be a lawyer, but in 1514,

while still in his teens, he told his father of his desire to go to the

Indies, and he left for Seville. Despite his youth, de Soto's zeal and

his prowess as a horseman helped gain him a place on the 1514

expedition of Pedro Arias Dávila to the West Indies. In Panama, de

Soto quickly made his mark as a trader and expeditioner, reaping

high profits by his skill and daring. By 1520 he had accumulated

considerable capital through his slave trading in Nicaragua and on

the Isthmus of Panama, after successful partnerships with Hernán

Ponce de León and Francisco Campañón. In 1524-27 de Soto

defeated his archrival, Gil González de Ávila, in a struggle for

control of Nicaragua, and he subsequently expanded his trade in

Indian slaves. (See Latin America.)

In 1530 de Soto lent Francisco Pizarro two ships to investigate

reports of gold located south of Darién on the Pacific coast (now in

northwestern Colombia). After de Soto's patron, Dávila, died in

153l and Pizarro's expedition confirmed the reports of gold, de

Soto joined the new enterprise. In return for the use of his ships,

Pizarro named de Soto his chief lieutenant, and the conquest of Peru

began the next year (1532). De Soto, as the expedition's captain of

horse, was the driving force in the Spaniards' defeat of the Incas at

Cajamarca, and he was the first European to make contact with the

Inca emperor Atahuallpa.

Following the Spaniards' capture of Atahuallpa, de Soto seized

Cuzco, the Inca capital. For political reasons, he became the

emperor's friend and protector, but Pizarro, fearing Atahuallpa's

influence over his Inca subjects, had the emperor executed even

though the latter's subjects had raised an enormous ransom in gold

in order to ensure his release. Dissatisfied with Pizarro's leadership

and coveting a governorship of his own, de Soto returned to Spain

in 1536. The shares that he had accumulated in the sack of Peru,

though less than half of Pizarro's, made him one of the wealthiest of

the returning conquistadors.

In Spain de Soto married Isabel de Bobadillo, daughter of Dávila,

and was accepted into the prestigious Order of Santiago. He grew

restless in Spain, however, and in 1537 he sought special permission

to conquer Ecuador, with special rights to the Amazon River basin.

Instead, he was commissioned by the Spanish crown to conquer

what is now Florida. In addition, he was made governor of Cuba.

Exploration of southern North America.

In April 1538 de Soto embarked from the port of Sanlúcar de

Barrameda in command of 10 ships and 700 men. After a brief stop

in Cuba, the expedition landed in May 1539 on the coast of Florida,

at a point somewhere between modern Tampa Bay and Charlotte

Harbor. After spending the winter at the small Indian village of

Apalache (near present-day Tallahassee, Fla.), de Soto moved

northward and through present-day Georgia and then westward

through the Carolinas and Tennessee, led by native guides whom he

abducted along the way. Though he didn't find the gold he was

looking for, he did collect a valuable assortment of pearls at a place

called Cofitachequi, in present-day eastern Georgia. Near Lookout

Mountain, in southeastern Tennessee, de Soto and his men turned

southward into Alabama and headed toward Mobile Bay where

they expected to rendezvous with their ships. But at the fortified

Indian town of Mauvila (near present-day Mobile), a confederation

of Indians attacked the Spaniards in October 1540. The natives

were decimated, but the Spanish were also severely crippled, losing

most of their equipment and all their pearls. (See Native American.)

After a month's rest, de Soto decided to turn north once again and

head inland in search of treasure. This was a fateful decision that

was to have disastrous results. Moving northwest through Alabama

and then west through Mississippi, de Soto's party was attacked

relentlessly by Indians. On May 21, 1541, the Spaniards saw for

the first time the Mississippi River, the "Father of the Water" south

of what is now Memphis, Tenn. They crossed the river and made

their way through Arkansas and Louisiana. Then, early in 1542, de

Soto turned back to the Mississippi River. Overcome by fever, he

died in Louisiana, and his comrades buried his body in the

Mississippi. Luis de Moscoso, whom de Soto had named his

successor, led the expedition's remnants (half the original party)

down the Mississippi on rafts, and they reached Mexico in 1543.

The Mississippi River

The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto, commander of the first

European expedition to penetrate to the river, had high hopes of

plundering the southern tribes. In May 1541 his raiding force

reached the river at a point south of what is now Memphis, Tenn.

But the "Rio Grande," as the Spaniards called it, provided the

newcomers with small profit and much grief. The river Indians

launched repeated attacks; the Mississippi floods caught the Spanish

unawares; and, ironically, de Soto, the European discoverer of the

river, was buried in its waters, after which the rest of his

disappointed expedition retreated to the sea, their homemade boats

under a running fire from the Indians.

Bibliography

Miguel Albornoz, Hernando de Soto: Knight of the Americas

(1986), is an informative biography. Narratives of de Soto's Florida

expedition are found in modern translations of the original

conquistador histories, such as John Grier Varner and Jeannette

Johnson Varner (eds.), The Florida of the Inca (1951, reissued

1980), after Garcilaso de la Vega; James Alexander Robertson

(ed.), True Relation of the Hardships Suffered by Governor

Fernando de Soto (1932); and Edward Gaylord Bourne (ed.),

Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest

of Florida, 2 vol. (1904, reissued 1974). Miscellaneous documents

and essays, with an attempt to trace de Soto's North American

route, are presented in John R. Swanton (ed.), Final Report of the

United States De Soto Expedition Commission (1939, reprinted

1985).

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