Garcilaso de la Vega, the "Inca," was never in Florida, despite his remarkable record of Hernando de Soto's activity there. He was a sixteenth century historian born of a wealthy father and Incan mother in the New World then educated in Europe. He interviewed several DeSoto Expedition survivors, among them Captain Gonzalo Silvestre, one of DeSoto's Thirty Lancers, then published his findings in "Florida of the Inca" in 1605.

Inca described Florida's geography, which has not changed much since Desoto's visit, in remarkable detail. His record of Florida places is unmistakable to anyone with a sound knowledge of its landscape and resource exploitation history. Many Florida forests, fields, rivers and swamps have been cut, mined, channeled or drained in the last century. They "look" different today, but were, at one time, as Inca described them.

Inca used different names for places than those who were with DeSoto, confusing scholars for centuries. Given that Inca's chronology of DeSoto's activity agrees with the DeSoto Chroniclers, we are able to divine which place names the others used for his^* (map below), although the spelling of each varied among them.

^*Read Inca's record of The Ride of the Thirty Lancers to
  gain perspective of his concept of Florida's locales.



    This Florida Map Compares
   Place names used by Inca with the
   Place names used by Chroniclers
       Press place names on map for details



  About Inca's Vitachuco Province:
"Three brothers divided Vitachuco Province," according to Inca. "Vitachuco ruled over five parts out of ten." The second, who he later called Osachile, "owned three of the other five parts, and the youngest, Ochile, had the two remaining parts."

The other Chroniclers failed to mention this. They simply called each province by its most powerful village's chief's name within it. All of them named provinces at various intervals across America; all with boundaries at natural obstacles, most often at large rivers.


        DeSoto's Florida Trails