Hero Tales from History — De Soto, A Gold Hunter in Southern Swamps
DE SOTO, A GOLD HUNTER IN SOUTHERN SWAMPS
Hernando de Soto was the Spanish grandee, or noble, appointed governor of Cuba and “the Floridas” about twenty-five years after Florida was discovered.
It was Ponce de Leon who landed near the southern point of North America, on Easter Day, 1513, and named that lovely country Florida--Land of Flowers.
De Leon had heard a beautiful story that far inland in the heart of the wilderness there was a magic spring that would make young forever all who drank of its sparkling waters.
Though he searched long and eagerly, Ponce de Leon discovered no Fountain of Eternal Youth, but he did find endless swamps full of snakes and alligators.
De Soto, the new governor of Florida, made up his mind that Ponce de Leon was a very foolish old man.
He ought to have known that there are no such things nowadays as springs of eternal youth.
He, Hernando de Soto, was going to show his practical good sense by finding solid, yellow gold--for what good is youth without money to enjoy it with?
De Soto was already a very rich man, for he had served under Pizarro, the cruel conqueror of Peru, and he had gone home to Spain one of the wealthiest of its grandees, in those days of wonderful discoveries and marvelous fortunes.
Still Hernando de Soto was not satisfied.
He wanted to be like Pizarro or Cortes--to conquer a great country and capture from its dusky people gold mines and vast wealth.
Therefore on a bright July day he left Cuba in charge of a high official and sailed away.
He and his knights in armor stood on the decks of their nine ships, large and small, and waved farewells to the fair ladies who stood on the castle tower at Havana weeping bitterly, fearing that they would never see their brave lords and knights again.
Governor de Soto and his fleet came to anchor in the harbor now known as Tampa Bay.
During the night they were aroused by horrible yells and showers of arrows from the shore.
In the morning the Spaniards made a landing, though the natives fought hard to keep them back.
Before night they met a man who could be of great use to them.
He was a member of a party that, after De Leon’s discovery, had gone to Florida to find gold, but had been driven back.
This young man, Juan Ortiz, had been captured and kept by the Indians as a slave.
A member of De Soto’s scouting party tells how they met this poor fellow: “Towards sunset it pleased God that the soldiers descried at a distance some twenty Indians painted with a kind of red ointment that they put on when they go to war.
They wore many feathers and had their bows and arrows.
And when the Christians ran at them, the Indians fled to a hill, and one of them came forth into the path, lifting up his voice and saying in Spanish, “‘Sirs, for the love of God, slay not me!
For I am a Christian like yourselves.
I was born in Seville, and my name is Juan Ortiz.
’” The Spanish governor received Ortiz as if he were his own long-lost son.
He made himself very useful because he knew both the Spanish and the Indian language, and thus could help the Spaniards to talk to the natives.
De Soto now started inland leading a brilliant company of knights and private soldiers, all in bright armor.
Over the shining helmets were waving plumes, and many a mailed fist held aloft a rich and beautiful banner.
There were hundreds of horsemen and many more men marching on foot.
No more richly dressed men and horses ever started out on a Crusade to regain possession of the Holy City.
But the object of this Spanish quest was gold.
Spanish serving men drove along with this rich and gay procession four hundred fat hogs.
De Soto had decided not to risk being starved to death as so many explorers had been.
And gamekeepers held in leash, not falcons to catch and kill birds or beasts, but bloodhounds for hunting Indians.
Instead of mountains of rocks from which gold could be mined, De Soto’s men found swamps.
The weather was sultry and moist.
Insects got inside their knightly armor and stung them to madness, and venomous serpents coiled around their armored legs.
Indians shot poisoned arrows at them from the bushes.
Their coats of mail were so heavy that stout knights sank deep in the bogs.
They advanced very slowly; they wallowed rather than marched, and their days and nights were spent in weariness and torture.
The fame of the white men went on ahead of them.
As De Soto advanced he found the savages on the warpath ready to drive back the invaders.
All along their line of march they could hear savage threats in the distance.
Juan Ortiz told the Spaniards that the Indians were shouting: “Keep on, robbers and murderers!
In Apalachee you will get what you deserve.
No mercy will be shown to captives, who will be hung on the highest trees along the trail.
” After the Spaniards had marched through the lands of five different chiefs, they found a great chieftain who seemed to wish to make friends with the white men.
De Soto gladly accepted, but Juan Ortiz warned him to look out for treachery.
So the white men were secretly prepared; and when the traitor chief gave the signal to his men to attack, the Spaniards raised their battle cry, “_Santiago!
_” and thousands of the savages were killed by a few hundred Spaniards.
Hundreds of Indians took refuge in a lake.
There five good swimmers would lie side by side, on the surface like logs, forming a human raft on which the best archer would stand and shoot back at the white men.
The fight lasted all day and nearly all night.
Before morning all the Indians were killed or captured, put in chains, and divided among the Spaniards as slaves.
The Indians, who at first thought the white men were gods, were now sure they were devils.
The boasted village of Apalachee was only a few straw huts on a knoll in the center of a great swamp.
And the savages who defended it with bows and arrows were no match for armed Spaniards; the white men killed nearly all of them.
Cold weather came on, and the Spaniards went into winter quarters.
A
beautiful Indian girl-chief in that region came bringing pearls and gems to the Spanish chieftain.
But he demanded gold.
When she understood this she sent men to a far country for the yellow metal he desired so eagerly.
De Soto and his men now rejoiced, for they thought they had found the object of their long and painful search.
When the red messengers returned the stuff proved not to be gold.
It must have been copper ore or “fool’s gold.
” During the second year of their long march, the Spaniards were led southward to Mabila, which is believed to have stood on the shore of Mobile Bay.
This was a huge fortress, the greatest native town the white men had yet seen.
Within an immense stockade or wall of tree trunks on end stood a number of houses each of which would hold hundreds of Indians.
Tuscaloosa, the Mabile chief, set a trap for the Spaniards.
The battle which took place here was the worst of all.
The [Illustration: DE SOTO ON THE BANK OF THE MISSISSIPPI _From the drawing by H. L.
Stephens_] Spaniards lost seventy men and forty horses.
Then they set fire to the Indians’ houses, and the savages perished in the flames.
De Soto’s men were heartily sick of fighting.
They also despaired of finding gold in southern swamps.
The governor heard here that they were plotting to desert him at Mabila and return by boat to Havana.
So, instead of waiting for a ship to come from Cuba, he ordered them to march farther into the wilderness.
As the prospect of finding gold became more desperate, De Soto seemed to grow more cruel.
Indians were beheaded for small offenses; friendly scouts were tortured and sent back with insulting messages to their chiefs.
The farther west the Spaniards went the more bitterly the natives fought and the more successful they were in battle.
In one place the Indians burned nearly all the Spaniards’ hogs, and feasted on roast pork for many days.
After terrible wanderings, the few remaining Spaniards came to a wide stream at Chickasaw Bluff, a few miles above the present city of Vicksburg.
Though it is often stated that De Soto discovered the Mississippi, he was not the first Spaniard to see that wide and muddy stream.
The Great River meant nothing to him.
As he wandered up and down its banks he contracted malarial fever and died miserably.
Faithful friends placed the body in his heavy armor and wrapped that in blankets weighted with sand.
Then, on a dark night, they paddled out into the middle of the stream and sank it in a hundred feet of water, where the Indians could not find it and wreak their revenge upon De Soto’s remains.
His followers attempted to go farther west but became discouraged and descended the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
