DeSoto's Army Escapes
by Donald E. SheppardDeSoto's First Officer says, "They abandoned 500 Indians (slaves)... among whom were many boys and girls who spoke and understood Spanish... three hundred and twenty-two Spaniards left Aminoya (near Pine Bluff, Arkansas) in 7 brigantines... on the 2nd day of July, 1543..." the day before the darkness of New Moon, having spent several days making adjustments as they slowly drifted downstream to a point near Dumas on the Arkansas River, the end of Aminoya Province. "The day they left Aminoya, they passed Guachoya (Province) where the Indians were awaiting them in canoes on the river (near Arkansas Post)... the Indians accompanied the governor's ship in their canoes. Coming to where an arm of the river led off to the right (at the flooded White River junction), they said the province of Quigualtam (Mississippi) lay nearby. They importuned the governor to go make war on them, and said that they would aid them. But since they said that Quigaltam lay three days' journey below (given the slow rate of the Spanish ships), it seemed to the governor that the Indians had planned some treachery against him. There he took leave of them and proceeded on his voyage where the force of the water was greater (in the Mississippi River). The current was very powerful and, aided by rowing, they journeyed at a good rate (away from the backwaters of the White and Arkansas Rivers)."© Univ. of Alabama Press
The first officer continued, "The first day (along the Mississippi River) they landed (to feed themselves and the horses) in a wood on the left side of the river (in Bolivar County, Mississippi) and at night they slept in the (moored) brigantines. Next day they came to a town (today's Mound Landing) where they landed, but the people there did not dare await them." Supplies were found in Quigaltam Province, the land surrounding Greenville, Mississippi, along with hundreds of hostile Indians, of which they had been warned, during that week near Chief Quigaltam's Province. The river split just below Greenville at that time. The Spaniards chose the left, or southerly fork, to hasten their departure and thereby bypassed Lake Village all together, the place where DeSoto's body had been placed in the Mississippi River the year before. It would take the Spaniards 17 days to reach the mouth of the Mississippi River, averaging just under 40 miles per day, from the time they entered it above Greenville. Their struggles near Quigaltam slowed their progress, however. The Indians, "going ahead of them (in canoes), when they reached a town (Vicksburg) near a bluff, they (the Indians) all united (with other tribes), as if to show that they were a mind to wait there (to attack the Spaniards)... Next day, the Indians got together one hundred canoes, some of which held sixty or seventy Indians, and the principal men with their awnings with white and colored plumes of feathers... and from that place, the Indians all came down upon the Spaniards..." who were also in canoes ahead of the brigantines. Eleven Spaniards were killed near Vicksburg; 25 others were wounded.
Indians, angered by Spain's behavior, attacked the "brigantines which they had not dared to before... twenty-five men were wounded. In this way they circulated from one (brigantine) to another... The Christians had brought (woven) mats... and the brigantines were hung with them (to block hostile Indian arrows)... they resolved to travel all that night, thinking that they would pass by the land of Quigualtam (Mississippi) and that the Indians would leave them..." but they did not, in fact, within a few days, the Indians of Natchez joined in the attacks.©University of Alabama Press
Upon entering Louisiana, "Those (Indians) of Quigualtam (Mississippi) returned to their own lands, and the others in fifty canoes continued to fight for a whole day and night... but, because of the slowness with which we sailed (with horses in tow on barges), the governor made up his mind to land and kill the horses. We loaded the meat into the brigantines after salting it but left five of the horses alive on the shore... the Indians went up to them after we had embarked. The horses were unused to them and began to neigh and run about in various directions, whereat the Indians jumped into the water for fear of them. Entering their canoes behind the brigantines (somewhere above Baton Rouge), they continued to shoot at them without any pity and followed us that afternoon (past Baton Rouge) and night until 10 o'clock the next morning, and then went back upstream (as the Spaniards entered the swamps). Soon seven canoes came out from a small town (possibly Donaldsonville) located near the river and followed them for a short distance down the river shooting at them... After that they had no trouble (passing through New Orleans), until they came almost to the sea... (where the river) divided into two branches, each of which was about a league and half (four miles) wide."
The Mississippi River Delta below New Orleans has changed dramatically in the five centuries since DeSoto's Army was there; more than any other shoreline in North America. Millions of acres of America's best soil have been deposited on the Mississippi River's giant Delta due to interior deforestation and intense agriculture along that river's feeders. The river flows through the soil deposits, called barrier islands, most of which are very near each other on the Delta. They are kept in check by the Corps of Engineers for ship navigation and flood control. DeSoto's people entered the Gulf of Mexico not far below New Orleans.
An expedition officer says, "A half a league (just over a mile) before they came to the sea (the Gulf of Mexico at Belize, on the Full Moon), they anchored for a day to rest because they were very tired from rowing (steering down the river) and greatly disheartened because of the many days during which they had eaten nothing but parched and boiled corn, which was doled out in a ration of a leveled-off helmet to each mess (group) of three (men). While we were there, seven canoes of Indians came to attack the Christians... The governor ordered armed men to enter the canoes (which had been brought down river) and go against the Indians and put them to flight. The Indians also came to attack us by land through a thicket and a swamp (the same way they did against Cabeza de Vaca, another Spanish coastal survivor, near the same place, a decade earlier). The Indians had clubs set with very sharp fish bones (the men say, "...an Indian the size of a Philistine... [had a]...dart, or long arrow, with three barbs in the place of one [at the tip]... The barb in the center was a handbreadth longer than the two on the sides... [like] harpoons and not smooth points.") This observation, the last of a very hostile Indian in America, may well have inspired today's "Devil" image which was born in Europe in the 1540's just after news of DeSoto's defeat arrived. We inherited that Devil image: a tall, slender, body hairless red man, with a three pronged spear in hand. According to Spaniards, North America was the Devil's domain, given its defeat of the Great Conquistador, Hernando de Soto.
The officer continues, "They stayed there for two days (during Full Moon). From thence they went to the place where the branch of the river flowed into the sea (through Balize Barrier Island)." They would spend the next fifty-five days making their way to a Spanish outpost in New Spain (Mexico). "They took soundings in the river near the sea and found a depth of forty fathoms (over 200 feet)... On July 18th, 1543, they put out to sea (along the coast) and undertook their voyage amid calm and fair weather." They sailed for three days in fresh water, all fed by the Great River's estuaries. "That night they saw some (Indian fires on the) keys on the right (East Island, where Cabeza de Vaca lived for six years the decade before), whither they went (for food and wood for fires)." The next four days they sailed off-shore over the shoals of Maringouin (part of which was in the fresh water discharge of the Atchafalaya River, at that time a major discharge of the Great River into the Gulf), out of sight of land but sounding for steerage, then were blown onto Pecan Island where they were forced to dig for fresh water. When the storm ceased, they sailed westward for two more days and entered a small creek (Calcasieu Pass). When they departed, they were caught in a storm which washed five of the seven brigantines ashore just east of Sabine Pass (below Port Arthor). When the sea calmed the next day, all reassembled in Sabine Lake, where they stayed for two days during the New Moon of July 31st, 1543, to careen their vessels on the Spring Tides and to gathering food and water.
"They sailed another two days (from Port Arthor and into Texas) and anchored at a bay or arm of the sea (Gilchrist) where they stayed two days. They sailed another two days and anchored at a bay or arm of the sea (Galveston Bay) where they stayed (behind the island) for two days... six men went up the bay in a canoe but did not come to its head. They left there with a south wind which was against them (through San Louis Pass), but since it was light and their desire to shorten their voyage great, they went out by going into the sea, and journeyed for two days... with great toil, a very little distance, and entered behind and islet (San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge) by means of a branch of the sea (Matagorda Bay) which surrounded it. There was an abundance of fish there." The Colorado River empties into that bay; a natural spawning ground for hundreds of species.
The men say that on their 23rd day at sea (the day they reached Matagorda Bay), they entered behind a series of four or five islets close to the mainland (from there to Mexico: behind East and West Matagorda, San Jose, Mustang and Padre Islands; about two hundred and fifty miles of sandy islands). They pitched their boats for eight days (under the Full Moon, for the protection it offered, just inside San Bernard). Friendly Indians visited them several times, probably from up the Colorado River. When the Spaniards departed they sailed for thirteen days from point to point on the Texas mainland for protection from the strong north winds and for water and fire wood, resting for three days along their intercoastal journey (they averaged 25 miles per day sailing). They drifted out Brazos Santiago Pass, at the south end of Padre Island and into the open sea, on the Spring Tides of August 31th; thereby missing the Rio Grande altogether. They departed Texas on September 1, 1543.
An officer says they sailed within sight of land on strong winds for six days (along the Mexican shoreline), probably stopping for water, food and wood for several days along that coast. They saw mountains and palm trees by noon of the seventh sailing day, September 10th, 1543 (Full Moon), with muddy water in the sea. The River of Panuco, a known Spanish possession, was breaking over the sandy shoals. They put in before reaching the river's mouth. Several of the ships overshot the river the night before and had to return overland. The lead boats found friendly Indians who spoke Spanish and were informed that they were home at last.