DeSoto's Western Trails
by Donald E. SheppardHernando de Soto returned to Arkansas under the Full Moon of October 5, 1541. He had traveled to Harrison the week before from Forsyth, Missouri, with a scouting party to Tula, the name of the very hostile Wichita (Caddoan) Tribe which lived in Northwest Arkansas at the time. It took three days for DeSoto's army of over 500 men and 100 horses to march 36 miles from Forsyth. They followed Turkey Creek Ravine from Hollister, near Branson, to the flats of Harrison. The army would stay there for two weeks; DeSoto would die in Arkansas at Springtime.
DeSoto's Secretary reported, "On Wednesday, the fifth of October, they left from the site of Tanico or Cayase (Forsyth, Missouri) and arrived on Friday at Tula (Harrison, Arkansas, having camped on the clearings of Hollister, on the White River across from Branson, and at the top of the mountain pass at Cricket), and they found the people (of Tula) gone; but they found many supplies. And on Saturday in the morning the Indians came to give them a surprise attack or battle. They brought long poles like lances, the points fire-hardened, and these were the best warriors that the Christians came upon (in North America); and they fought like desperate men, with the greatest courage in the world..." © Univ. of Alabama Press
Another of DeSoto's Officer's reported, "As soon as the Indians were perceived, both those of horse and those of foot sallied out against them and there many Indians were killed, and some Christians and horses wounded. Some Indians were captured, six of whom the governor sent to the chief with their right hands and their noses cut off. He ordered them to tell him that if he did not come to make his excuses and obey him, he would go to get him; and that he would do to him and to as many of his men as he found what he had done to those he sent to him. He gave him the space of three days in which to come. This he gave them to understand the best he could by signs as he had no interpreter (who could understand that strange Indian language). After three days came an Indian whom the chief sent laden with cowhides (probably buffalo skins). He came weeping bitterly, and coming to the governor cast himself to his feet. The governor raised him up, and he made him talk, but no one could understand him (this was the first time DeSoto was completely stymied by speech in North America; every other tribe he had visited could produce an interpreter for the next tribe along his way). The governor told him by signs that he should return and tell the chief to send him an interpreter whom the people of Cayas (Southwest Missouri) could understand. Next day, three Indians came laden with cowhides and three days after that twenty Indians came. Among them was one who understood those of Cayas. After a long discourse of excuses from the chief and praises of the governor, he concluded by saying that he and the others were come thither on behalf of the chief to see what his lordship ordered; and that he was ready to serve him. The governor and all the men were very glad, for they could in no wise travel (as they had elsewhere in America) without an interpreter. The governor ordered him under guard and told him to tell the Indians who had come with him to return to the chief and tell him that he pardoned him for the past and that he thanked him greatly for his gifts and for the interpreter whom he had sent him and that he would be glad to see him and for him to come next day to see him. The chief came after three days and eighty Indians with him. Both he and his men entered the camp weeping in token of obedience and repentance for the past mistake, after the manner of that land. He brought many cowhides as a gift, which were useful because it was a cold land, and were serviceable for coverlets as they were very soft and the wool like that of sheep. Nearby to the north (of Harrison, well out the White River, the provincial boundary) were many cattle (buffalo). The Christians did not see them nor enter their land (Oklahoma), for the land was poorly settled where they (the buffalo) were, and had little corn. The chief of Tulla made his address to the governor which he excused himself and offered him his land and vassals and person (thereby allowing the chiefs of Missouri to return home with their people). No orator could more elegantly express the message or address both of that chief and of all those who came to the governor in their behalf (probably owing more to poor language translation than anything Chief Tula meant to say)."
Some of DeSoto's men reported to a later historian that, "In the village our men found many cowhides tanned and dressed with the hair on them, which served as blankets on the beds. They found many other rawhides, not yet tanned. They also found beef, but they saw no cattle in the country, nor did they learn from where they had brought the hides. The Indians of this province of Tula are different from all the other Indians whom our Spaniards had encountered hitherto, for we have said that the others are handsome and graceful in person. These, however, both men and women, have ugly faces, and though they are well-proportioned, they deform themselves by deliberate distortion of themselves. Their heads are incredibly long and tapering on top, being made thus artificially by binding them up from birth to the age of nine or ten years. They prick their faces with flint needles, especially the lips, inside and out, and color them black, thereby making themselves extremely and abominably ugly. The hideous aspect of their faces corresponds to their bad dispositions... Their neighbors said that they deformed their heads... and painted their faces and mouths, inside and out, to make themselves uglier than they were already, so that their faces would be as forbidding as their bad dispositions and fierce natures, for they were the most inhuman in every way."
The Officer mentioned above continued, "The governor informed himself of the land in all directions and learned that there was a scattering of population toward the west (in Oklahoma) and large towns toward the southeast, especially in a province called Autiamque (the Batesville-Newport area of Arkansas near the fertile Mississippi River Delta), ten days journey from Tulla... and that it was a land abounding in corn. Since winter had already come and on account of the cold, rains, and snows, they could not travel during two or three months of the year (it was almost November on our Gregorian Calendar); fearing lest they could not feed themselves for so long a time because of its scattered population; also because the Indians said there was a large body of water near Autiamque (the Mississippi River's Delta was described as an ocean, just like Lake Michigan had been by the Indians) - and according to what they said, the governor believed it to be an arm of the sea (the Gulf of Mexico) - and because he now wished to give information of himself in Cuba, for it was three years and over since Donna Isabel (DeSoto's wife), who was in Havana, or any other person in a Christian land, had heard of him, and now two hundred and fifty men (twice that, according to the others) and one hundred and fifty horses were wanting: he determined to go to winter at Autiamque, and in the following Summer to reach the sea and build two brigantines and send one of them to Cuba and the other to New Spain (Mexico), so that the one which should go safely might give news of him; hoping from his prosperity in Cuba (DeSoto was still the Governor of Cuba and, thereby, its Tax Collector) to refit (his army) to take up his expedition again and explore and conquer (North America) farther west than he had yet reached, whither Cabeza de Vaca (who had wandered through Texas from an earlier Spanish coastal expedition) had gone." Cabeza de Vaca had met DeSoto in Spain with wild tails of North American Indian legend, including those of a great northern sea - Lake Michigan - and of a tremendous inner bay in America - the flooded Mississippi Valley. Coupled with what the Indians told him in Arkansas, DeSoto set out to find that bay.
Another Officer says, "They asked us what people we were and what we were looking for. We asked them about some large provinces where there would be much food, because already the cold of the winter was greatly menacing us. They told us that the way we were going (southwest) they knew of not one large village. They pointed out to us that if we wanted to turn east and southeast (down today's Arkansas Highway 65 through the Ozark Mountains to the Batesville-Newport area) or northwest (to the Kansas City area) that we would find large villages.