Written by Donald E. Sheppard
Illustrated by Cheryl Lucente

INTRODUCTION   TO THIS POINT   Cabeza DeVaca
GEORGIA TRAILS    STATES INDEX    REFERENCES

THE GREAT UNKNOWN

The trail DeSoto used to leave Florida is still there today and is the most apparent segment of his entire route. It starts at Aute (near Panama City), where a good number of troops spent that winter. DeSoto's exit, however, started at Iviahica (Marianna) with Rangel, his personal secretary. His trail passed through large vegetable fields along Union Road (pictured above), as it does today, where his "army" was ordered to harvest and pack for the long journey ahead.

Sources of this information, from simple to detailed, by Conquistadors:
DeSoto's Florida Departure chronicled by:  Biedma,  Rangel,  Elvas,  Inca

DeSoto's destination was a land rich in pearls, gold and silver, toward the sun's rising. ^{E 74, R 267-8, I 248-9} His intelligence of that place came from a young captive, taken at Napituca.^{E 74} DeSoto planned to raid that place and return to Maldonado's port (Mobile Bay) the next winter and then settle with additional supplies and personnel brought from Havana.^{B 228, R 268} DeSoto had sent scouts out from Iviahica during the winter, but their reconnaissance was limited by hostile Apalachens once out of range of reinforcement.^{I 249-253} DeSoto would be the first white man into the next province, an unexplored territory.^{I 260}

Rangel tells us that DeSoto departed on Wednesday, March 3, 1540, and spent that night at the river Gaucuco, then arrived at a great river Capachequi early the following Friday.^{R 268-9} It took him two days plus part of a third to get to the great river. Elvas says it took his people four days^{E 74} to get there, while Biedma says he marched northward five days to get to the great river.^{B 228} Inca, who does not even mention a starting date or a great river as the others had,^{B 228, R 269} says his informant traveled three days to the north, camped on a high peninsula for three days, then marched two days to the provincial boundary.^{I 257-60} These four different statements deserve particular attention because they say so much about an army that has been so misunderstood for so long.

Less than four leagues NORTH of Iviahica is a peninsula pointing south at the confluence of two creeks: Marshall and Cowart's Creeks, which merge to become the Chipola River. That peninsula's very high ground, with many fertile fields beyond its trees and swamp on either side, is exactly as Inca described it today, with very deep mud around the point of a high peninsula.^{I 257} Maybe Desoto called that river Gaucuco (today's Chipola River), the first river he would come to after leaving Iviahica. To the north-east of Sills is the river basin's northern "natural bridge", located on today's Alabama-Florida border. That fording place and the trail to it are detailed on the border survey map of 1853 and are still there today.

Desoto marched from Iviahica to Sills the first day, crossing Marshall Creek. The next day he forded the river's branches on Cowart's Creek and rode into Alabama, where he camped just short of the Chattahoochee River. He arrived at that great river on the morning of the third day out of Iviahica. Elvas left Iviahica with DeSoto, but spent an extra day marching at a lesser rate while gathering food and herding pigs. He arrived at the great river the fourth day. Biedma departed from Aute, marched northward for three days to Sills (sixteen leagues), then into today's Alabama to camp, then to the great river; five days on the trail. This lends credence to Biedma's being at Aute when he made the observations mentioned earlier. Inca's informant also departed from Aute, but did so two days before Biedma, arriving at Sills the third day out and gathered food there for the next three days. Then he departed for Alabama, camped, and arrived at the provincial boundary on his eighth day out of Aute and six days after the others started their march. If this scenario is correct, the troops arrived at the great river, the provincial boundary, in this order: DeSoto's group on the third day, Elvas's the fourth day, Biedma's the fifth day, and the Inca's informant on the sixth.

The great river was the mighty Chattahoochee. It was so large and swift that Desoto's army had to cross it, in turn, on one large wooden raft.^{B 228, R 269} It took five days pulling chains for the entire army to cross. The horses were pulled across by ropes, some of them half-drowned during the effort. DeSoto had planned the army's arrival times at the great river for good reason; not one man would be idle for as much as a day during the process of moving his army into an unknown continent. That was DeSoto's genius. The chroniclers alluded to it and to their admiration of him throughout their journey. We, however, have misunderstood them and DeSoto all along. He has been America's "Great Unknown" for centuries.

EPILOGUE

Perhaps the biggest irony of our misunderstanding DeSoto for so long is that we believed the lies of the Indians that Biedma warned us about. He told us, at Napituca's Village, that those people told many great lies about the country further inland. Their descendants had told post-DeSoto Spanish Missionaries in Napituca Province many great lies about DeSoto and his army wintering in Tallahassee. Narvaez had believed their lies and was led to Aute and death. We believed their lies and were led to Tallahassee and ignorance. That tribe's enemy was DeSoto, its credibility and honor came from defeating a foolish Narvaez. Those Indians tricked us all except DeSoto; he had Juan Ortiz to sort it out.

Georgia Conquest Trails

---

Acknowledgements

I shall be forever grateful to my uncle, William Goza of Gainesville, for introducing me to stories of Hernando de Soto and the "The Ride of the Thirty Lancers" 40 years ago; To Dr. Brent Weisman for showing me, in the fields of Florida, the importance of archaeology, and for his insistence that I write my findings; To Mr. Lee Sultzman of Arizona for sharing his profound knowledge of Southern and Midwestern Native American cultural groups; To Jeremiah Wolfe of the Eastern Band of Cherokee for translating Cherokee linguistics from original Spanish documents; To Dr. Douglas E. Jones of Huntsville for explaining Alabama's geography and resources while in those fields; To Dr. Lawrence A. Clayton of Tuscaloosa for his wonderful friendship and for sharing his knowledge of DeSoto's activity in Peru; To the late Dr. Frederick P. Bowser of Stanford, and Dr. Thomas J. Nechyba of Duke, who both painstakingly criticized my work, corrected my grammar and encouraged me to proceed; To Doctors Jeffrey P. Brain of Harvard, Vernon J. Knight, Jr., and Ian W. Brown, of the University of Alabama, for personally defining realistic considerations for me to keep in mind while tracking DeSoto; To Doctors Francis G. Crowley of Missouri, James J. Miller of the Museum of Florida History, Tallahassee, Lynda Norene Shaffer of Boston, and Jose Fernandez of Orlando who listened, read my manuscripts and provided me with practical constraint and realistic insight; To Gary Kunkel of Waynesville, North Carolina, who painstakingly hauled and canoed me through Great Smokey Mountain Valleys; To Mr. James M. Cooper, my friend in Tampa who cheerfully edited my work; To Mz. Cheryl Lucente, who drew most of the black and white images on these pages; and to those wonderful pioneers who recorded, transported, transcribed, published, translated, annotated, and preserved the DeSoto Chronicles in our libraries; and to the fishermen, firemen, hunters, landowners and common people everywhere who showed me places I could never have otherwise seen or put into perspective with DeSoto's extraordinary journey across this wonderful country.

---

An early draft of this article appeared in The Florida Anthropologist under different title.

Suggested References

CLAYTON, LAWRENCE A., VERNON JAMES KNIGHT, Jr., and EDWARD MOORE, PhD's

  1993     THE DE SOTO CHRONICLES, the Expedition of Hernando De Soto to
	   North America in 1539-1543, 2 Volumes, The Univ. of Alabama Press.

  These two volumes contain all known records of the Expedition of Hernando
DeSoto and his Army through North America circa 1540. Extensive records
were kept by three officers of that expedition; all are translated therein,
along with all communications between that Army, DeSoto and the King of
Spain known to exist in 1993. Other eyewitness accounts are also presented.

The DeSoto Chronicles Are Now Online

DOCTOR LYNDA NORENE SHAFFER, PhD, Historian, Tufts University, Boston

  1992     NATIVE AMERICA BEFORE 1492, the Moundbuilding Centers of the
	   Eastern Woodlands, M.E. Sharp Press, Armonk, N.Y.

Black, Glenn A.

  1967     ANGEL SITE, an Archaeological, Historical and Ethnological Study,
	   Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis

Blake, Alan

  1988     Legua Legal of Legua Comun: A Discussion, DeSoto Working Paper #5,
           University of Alabama, W.S. Hoole Special Collection, Tusc.

Bolton, Herbert Eugene

  1920     The Colonization of North America, MacMillan Co, N.Y.

Bourne, Edward G.

  1904     Narratives of the Career of Hernando de Soto, Volume I, in Trail
           Makers Series, A.S.	Barnes & Co., N.Y.

Brain, Jeffrey P.

  1985     Introduction: Update of the De Soto Studies Since the United 
           States De Soto Commission Report in the Reprint of the Final
	   Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission, 76th. 
           Congress, 1st. Session, House Document, no. 71, Government 
           Printing Office, Wash. DC

Bullen, Ripley P.

  1951     The Terra Ceia Site, Manatee County, Florida, in Florida 
           Anthropological Society Publications, No. 3, p. 37, Gnv.

  1952     DeSoto's Ucita and the Terra Ceia Site, in Florida Historical 
           Quarterly, Volume 30, no. 4, pp. 317- 323.

Chardon, Ronald

  1980     The Elusive Spanish League: A Problem of Measurement in Sixteenth-
           Century New Spain, in Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 60, 
           no. 2, Duke University Press.

Clayton, Lawrence A., Vernon James Knight, Jr., and Edward Moore (Editors)

  1993     THE DeSOTO CHRONICLES, the Expedition of Hernando De Soto to 
           North America in 1539-1543, Volumes I and II Univ. of Alabama Press.

Davis, T.  Frederick

  1935     History of Juan Ponce de Leon's Voyages to Florida, Monographs 
           on Subjects of Florida History, Jaks.

Goza, William

  1963     The Fort King Road, in The Florida Historical Quarterly, Volume 
           XLIII, no. 1, pp. 52-70

  1984     Florida and Spain in the New World: The Peruvian Connection.  
           Paper presented at the Conference on the Remains of Pizarro at
           the Florida State Museum, University of Florida, Gnv.

Hemming, John

  1973     The Conquest of the Incas,Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, N.Y.

Hodge, Frederick W.

  1907     Spanish Explorers in the United States, in Original Narratives 
           of Early American History, Charles Scribner's Sons, N.Y.

Hoffman, Paul

  1990     A New Andalucia and a Way to the Orient, Louisiana State 
           University Press.

Katzeff, Paul

  1981    Full Moons, Citadel Press, Secaucus, N.J.

King, Anthony

  1990     Roman Gaul and Germans, University of California Press.

Laumer, Frank

  1968     Massacre, University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

  1995     Dade's Last Command, University of Florida Press, Gnv.

Lawson, Edward

  1946     The Discovery of Florida and its Discoverer Juan Ponce de Leon,
           Edward W. Lawson Press, St. Aug.

Lewis, Thomas M.N. and Madeline Kneberg

  1939     Hiwassee Island, An Archaeological Account of Four Tennessee
           Indian Peoples, University of Tennessee Press, Knxvl.

Lockhart, James

  1972     The Men of Cajamarca, University of Texas Press.

Mahon, John K.

  1967     History of the Second Seminole War 1835-1842, University of 
           Florida Press, Gnv.

Mammana, Dennis L.

  1994     Lunar Circumstances Search Report, unpublished, from the Reuben 
           H. Fleet Space and Science Center, Balboa Park, San Diego, Calif.

Manchester, William

  1992     A World Lit Only by Fire, The Midieval Mind and the Renaissance,
	   Portrait of an Age, Little, Brown and Company, N.Y.

Morison, Samuel Eliot

  1974     The European Discovery of America, The Southern Voyages AD 
           1492-1616, Oxford University Press, N.Y.

Prescott, William H.

  1847     History of the Conquest of Peru, The Modern Library (1936), N.Y.
	   ...see DeSoto's Conquest of Quizquiz at Cuzco, therein...

Russell, Jeffrey B.

  1977     The Devil, Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive
	   Christianity, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.

Schell, Rolph F.

  1966     DeSoto Didn't Land at Tampa, Island Press, Ft. MyersBeach,
           Florida.

Schoolcraft, Henry R.

  1857     Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History,
           Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States,
           Philadelphia, 6 Parts; Plate XLIV, Volume III and pp 58-68 Volume VI.
           (DeSoto's Trail plotted in relation to 1800's Tribal names)

Shaffer, Lynda Norene

  1992     Native America Before 1492, the Moundbuilding Centers of the
           Eastern Woodlands, M.E. Sharp Press, Armonk, N.Y.

Smith, Buckingham

  1866     The Career of Hernando de Soto in the Conquest of Florida, from
	   Theodore H. Lewis, Editor, Spanish Explorers in the United States,
	   1528 - 1543, Barnes & Noble, Inc, Reprint 1965.

Sprague, John T.

  1964     The Origin, Progress and Conclusion of the Florida War, 
           a reprint of the 1848 publication,introduction by John K. Mahon,
           University of Florida Press, Gnv.

Stone, George C.

  1934     A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of 
           Arms and Armor in All Countries and in All Times, Jack Brussel
           Publisher, N.Y.

Swanton, John R.

  1939     Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission,
           76th. Congress, 1st Session, House Document, no. 71, Government 
           Printing Office, Wash. DC

  1946     The Indians of the Southeastern United States, U.S. Government
           Printing Office, Wash. DC

Thomas, Hugh

  1993     Conquest; Montezuma, Cortes and the Fall of Old Mexico, Simon &
	   Schuster, N.Y.

Wiecknieski, Jerome (Father Jerome)

  1962     Juan Ponce de Leon, Abbey Press, Saint Leo, Fla.

Wilkinson, Warren H.

  1960     Opening the Case Against the U.S. DeSoto Commission's Report,
           Papers of the Alliance for the Preservation of Florida Antiquities, 
           Vol. 1, no. 1, Jaxs Beach, Fla.

Williams, Lindsey W.

  1986     Boldly Onward, Precision Publications Co., Chrltte Harbor, Fla.


DeSoto's Lunar Activity, Moon Phase Table
Internet Links to Relevant Articles
Maps (U.S.G.S.) Used for Field Study
University of Georgia Map Collection
Excellent Maps from the Internet

Midwestern Conquest Trails            Site Search
DeSoto's Other Trails, by State