DeSoto's Midwestern Trail
by Donald E. Sheppard"From the time Governor DeSoto entered Florida until leaving the battlegrounds of Mavilla, one hundred and two Christians had died, some of their illness and others being killed by the Indians. He remained in Mavilla (with 540 soldiers plus women and slaves, 200 horses and 300 pigs) for twenty-eight days (one moon cycle) because of the wounded, during which time he was always in the open fields (so no one could escape to the ships). It was a very populous and fertile land. There were some large enclosed towns and a considerable population scattered about over the field, the houses being separated from one another one or two crossbow flights (in today's Dallas and Perry Counties; that huge pasture is strewn with evidence of long-term Native occupation)." ©University of Alabama Press
"On Sunday, the fourteenth of November of 1540 (on the Full Moon), the governor left Mabila, and the following Wednesday he arrived at a very good river (the Black Warrior River, having marched north to Greensboro and down Big Brush Creek to the river)... and on Thursday they went across bad crossings and swamps (Black Warrior River's east bank; a flood prone pasture) and found a town with corn, which was called Talicpacana (Moundville)."
(During their 2 day rest, having marched 60 miles from Mabila in 5 days) "The Christians (scouts on horseback) had discovered, on the other side of the river, a town (Northport, just upstream of Moundville near today's Tuscaloosa Airport) that seemed good to them from a distance (from the east bank of Black Warrior River), and well situated, and on Sunday, the 21st of November, Vasco Gonzalez found a town, a half-league (one-and-a-quarter miles) from it which is called Mosulixa (Tuscaloosa), from which they had transferred all the corn to the other side of the river, and they had it in heaps, covered with mats, and the Indians were on the other side of the water (with the corn), making threats. (The army moved up stream from Moundville, through the swamps) A raft of logs was made ("in four days"), which was finished on the twenty-ninth of the month (a week after the army arrived at the large pastures on the river's bank just southwest of today's Tuscaloosa, directly opposite the Indians at today's airport), and they made a large cart to carry the raft up to Mosulixa ("transported one night a half league up river" from the pastures west of Tuscaloosa), and having launched it in the water, sixty (armored) soldiers entered in it... (DeSoto used this tactic to surprise the Natives who had watched the barge being constructed; the natives massed their forces on the west bank of the river directly opposite the army during that week, but DeSoto fooled them by launching the barge well up river during the darkness of New Moon on the 29th of November, 1540)... The Indians shot innumerable arrows; but this great barge landed, the Indians fled and did not wound but three of four Christians, who took the land easily and found plenty of corn."
"The next day, Wednesday, all the army went to a town that is called Zabusta (Northport; directly opposite today's Tuscaloosa - "The Christians (had) mounted their horses and went upstream to assure the crossing where the governor, with all those who remained with him...")...crossed the river in the barge (which had been brought to, and launched at, today's Tuscaloosa) and with some canoes (which had been abandoned on the river's west bank during the dawn raid on Northport); and they went to take lodging in another town on the other end (of Northport's enormous Western pasture - the Tuscaloosa Airport is built there today), because up river (up Sipsey River Valley, which lies a day's march northwest of Tuscaloosa's airport) they found another good town (the horsemen found it; we call it Fayette) and took its lord, who was named Apafalaya, and brought him as guide and interpreter, and that bank was called the river of Apafalaya (Sipsey River - DeSoto's army pillaged that valley, the richest in Western Alabama, for the next week while marching through it. Apafalaya may have helped the Natives of Tuscaloosa and Northport to oppose DeSoto's crossing of Black Warrior River; he lived in Fayette, however, at the center of his valley kingdom)."
"From this river and province (the Sipsey River Valley - fifty miles of it) the Governor and his people left (the north end of the valley) in search of Chicasa on Thursday, the ninth of December, and they (the horsemen) arrived the following Tuesday (six days up the trail - 70 miles through "an unpopulated region" on the nearly Full Moon) at the River of Chicasa (the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals - the Indian trails from Sipsey River went through Natural Bridge, at the north end of that river, and led to Muscle Shoals, as do the roads and railroads today), having passed many bad crossings and swamps and rivers and cold weather (north of Natural Bridge; that land is broken and unfertile)."
"And so that you know, reader, what life those Spaniards led, Rodrigo Ranjel, as an eyewitness, says that among many other needs of men that were experienced in this enterprise, he saw a nobleman named Don Antonio Osario, brother of the Lord Marquis of Astorga, with a doublet of blankets of that land, torn on the sides, his flesh exposed, without a hat, bare-headed, bare-footed, without hose or shoes, a shield at his back, a sword without a scabbard, the snows and cold very great; and being such a man, and of such illustrious lineage, made him suffer his hardship and not lament, like many others, since there was no one who might aid him, being who he was, and having had in Spain two thousand ducats of income through the Church; and the day that this gentleman saw him thus, he believed that he had not eaten a mouthful and had to look for his supper with his fingernails. I could not help laughing when I heard him say that noblemen had left the Church and the aforementioned income in order to go to look for this life at the sound of the words of DeSoto. Because I knew Soto very well, and although he was a man of words, I did not believe that he would be able with such sweet talk or cunning to delude such persons. What did such a man wish, from an unfamiliar and unknown land? Nor did the Captain who led him know more of it than Juan Ponce de Leon and the licenciado Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon and Panfilo de Navarez, and others more skillful than Hernando de Soto, had been lost in it. And those who follow such guides go from some necessity, since they find places where they could settle or rest, and little by little penetrate and understand and find out all about the land. But let us go on; small is the hardship of this nobleman compared to those who die, if they do not win salvation."
"They found that the river of Chicasa (the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals) was flowing out of its bed (not over its banks), and the Indians on the other side were up in arms, with many white banners. Orders were given to make a barge (while the army caught up to the horsemen who built it), and the Governor sent Baltasar de Gallegos (soon to be DeSoto's most trusted Camp Master) with thirty swimmers on horseback to go to look upriver (under the still Full Moon) for a place where they could cross and attack suddenly upon the Indians (as they had done two weeks before at Tuscaloosa with No Moon); but he was detected, and so they abandoned the crossing (upriver of the gathering army), and they crossed very well in a barge on Thursday, the sixteenth of the month (one week after the army left Sipsey River Valley - 70 miles in rain and snow; they probably marched every day). And the Governor advanced with some on horseback (through Florence and up Shoal Creek, under the nearly full moon, into Tennessee while the army crossed the river), and they (with Desoto, under the Full Moon) arrived very late at night at the town of the lord (Lawrenceburg, 40 miles from the Tennessee River crossing place; DeSoto's mounted Thirty Lancers covered that same distance in Florida during a similar phase of the moon), and all the people were gone. The next day Baltasar de Gallegos arrived with the thirty (horsemen) who went with him (well ahead of the army). They were (all) there in Chicasa that Christmas (once the entire army crossed the Tennessee River and trickled up the trail to Lawrenceburg during the week before Christmas)."
DeSoto's isolation of his army, above the Tennessee River, precluded any thought of their escape back to the waiting ships at Mobile Bay. The Tennessee River flows north from where DeSoto crossed it, into what he believed was the South Sea (the Pacific Ocean) on the north shore of this "Island of Florida". His calculated isolation of his army beyond what he perceived to be the center of this island would encourage them to march northward in the Spring, toward his intended route to China; not southward, back toward his ships.
The Tennessee River crossing at Muscle Shoals ("The first village of this province that our men reached..." coming from Mabila) was described by an historian of that century from testimonies of those who were with DeSoto: "The village was on the side of the river from which the Spaniards approached... and was situated on the edge of a large and deep river having very high banks (as Muscle Shoals still is; the Tennessee River looks the same there today)... However silently the Spaniards attempted to launch the barges in the river (at night) and go aboard them, they could not avoid being heard by 500 Indians who were patrolling the opposite bank of the river... fearing that still more enemies would come, the Spaniards embarked as hastily as possible... One of the barges struck the landing squarely and the other fell downstream from it, and because of the high bluffs along the river, the men could not land. Thus they were forced to row hard (against the river's current) to get up to the landing... Governor DeSoto went across on the second trip... and the Indians saw that their enemies were numerous and that they could not resist them, and they retreated to some woods that were not far from the village (today's Florence)..." The memory of those hostile Tennessee River people would linger in the minds of Desoto's soldiers that Winter; none of them would attempt to escape to the ships.
Historians have failed to track DeSoto to and across the Tennessee River; they suppose DeSoto crossed the Tombigbee River, wintered in Mississippi then proceeded west. The Tombigbee River may have been large at that time, almost a lake, but it could NOT have had the flow which the Spaniards described given the close proximity of its headwaters. Besides, DeSoto's isolation of his army, well away from his ships at port in Mobile Bay was critical to his primary mission of attracting settlers to North America. Had DeSoto needed only food and shelter that Winter he would have halted his army on Black Warrior River or in Sipsey River Valley, given that food and housing were plentiful at both. Containing his army on either of those rivers, however, would have been nearly impossible given that both flow into Mobile Bay, as does the Tombigbee River. Had DeSoto been seeking only food and shelter for Winter he would never have passed Northport, much less Sipsey River Valley. He crossed the Tennessee River, instead, to isolate his army in America's Interior.