by Donald E. SheppardThe study of DeSoto's conquest is inseparable from that of Panphilo de Narvaez. Both were Spanish conquistadors who are known to have entered and exited Florida near the same locations, within a dozen years of each other. Narvaez failed utterly. DeSoto followed and partially succeeded here. DeSoto's army became aware of native aversion to Spaniards, provoked by Narvaez and coastal slave hunters, shortly after landing. Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca provides us with the only extant Narrative of the Narvaez Expedition, which was poorly executed and scantily recorded. DeSoto's chroniclers, who wrote their perceptions of Narvaez and described the place where he built his boats for escape, are relied upon here for additional intelligence of his "conquest."
Once DeSoto marched to North Florida and established his winter quarters, he dispatched his "Thirty Lancers" to ride back down his trail to advance the troops and ships left behind at port. The Lancer's journal, questionably understood but factually related by Inca, is used here to establish distances between places which the chroniclers failed to record in their personal journals when they blazed that trail. Inca's account of the Thirty Lancers journey will, therefore, be discussed, at times, before we discuss DeSoto's arrival in North Florida. I know of no other way to substantiate this incredible journey as it unfolds.
As a young Spaniard in Central America, DeSoto was profoundly influenced by three men: Juan Ponce de Leon, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and Ferdinand Magellan. The first two became famous for exploring the new world: Juan Ponce for discovering Florida (a title used by the Spaniards for ALL of America north of Mexico, which they called New Spain), and Balboa for discovering the Pacific Ocean beyond Panama. Magellan would sail that ocean to the Orient. DeSoto's ambitions in life would be governed, to a large extent, by his envy of their discoveries.
Born in 1500 of a noble family in Spain, and raised in the new colony of Panama, DeSoto became acutely aware of possession, land title, and legal remedy (Hoffman in Clayton:I:421-446). Ponce de Leon, who first came to America with Columbus, and Balboa made their discoveries, North America and the Pacific Ocean, when DeSoto was thirteen years old (Lockhart 1972; Goza 1984:2). DeSoto learned the cunning of his mentors, shortly thereafter, while on "missions" with Balboa in Nicaragua. Vicious dogs, fast horses, and extortion became his hallmark. He enjoyed the title "Child of the Sun" (Elvas in Clayton:I:77) for conducting dawn raids on unsuspecting villages, usually capturing the village chief and thereby subjugating its citizens to menial servitude. Women became objects of barter. Before his eighteenth birthday DeSoto formed a lifetime partnership with Hernan Ponce de Leon to assure equal estate for both in life (Hoffman in Clayton:I:425, 446-455).
Hernan Ponce's relationship, if any, with Juan Ponce, the explorer, has never been known, but events in DeSoto's later life would indicate some eagerness on his part to out-do Juan Ponce in the same area of Florida where his colony had failed. Balboa was put to death by a jealous Panamanian dictator, DeSoto's patron, in 1518. Balboa had over-stepped his bounds without the strength of a personal army to hold his ground. DeSoto, made wise by that act, signed on as a Captain with Francisco Pizarro to enter the Peruvian mountains and plunder Incan treasure with an army of his own. Kidnap brought huge ransoms for DeSoto's personal army, and Indian captivity brought intelligence of villages further ahead. Spectacular brutality became DeSoto's way of life (Clayton:I: 256-257). He amassed great fortune before Pizarro discharged him from Peru (Inca in Clayton:II: 61; Goza 1984:4).
DeSoto returned to Spain to seek recognition at Court, but was not accepted there as a peer. Narvaez and another conquistador had recently disappeared while attempting to colonize North America at two different places, thus tarnishing the reputation of New World Conquistadors in general but setting the stage for DeSoto's attempt to establish his own name. He married Isabel de Bobadilla, whose family held power at court (Hoffman in Clayton:I:449-450). About that time, Cabeza de Vaca, a survivor of the Narvaez Expedition, stirred the European population with astonishing stories of great wealth in North America (Elvas in Clayton:I:48). The King, despite DeSoto's petition for lands elsewhere (DeSoto in Clayton:I:358), fittingly granted this trusted soldier of the cross a four year commission to colonize and hold North America (La Florida) instead (see the King's Concession to DeSoto in Clayton:I:359-365). The King assigned DeSoto the Governorship of Cuba from which to stage his invasion of the eastern half of today's United States; land once "owned" by Juan Ponce, Narvaez and the other failed conquistador. Francisco Vazquez de Coronado was dispatched from Mexico to explore and conquer the western part of North America at about the same time (Inca in Clayton:II:63-66).
DeSoto selected eager volunteers from Spain and Portugal, many of African descent; farmers, soldiers, traders, accountants, ship builders, carpenters, clergymen and tailors (Elvas and Hoffman in Clayton:I:49-50, 451, 453). They averaged 24 years of age; some had been in the new world before, some with DeSoto. Lawyers were prohibited by the King from joining DeSoto (Clayton:I:363). Some investors provided their own weapons, horses, greyhounds, servants and equipment (Inca in Clayton:II:72-79, 86, 88, 130). Some brought their wives. They sailed to Cuba, at DeSoto's expense - with stores of clothing, trade goods, shields, armor, helmets, cross-bows, guns, black powder, nails, tools, seeds and plows - for exploration and long term settlement on our mainland. More animals and food (hardtack, Irish blood hounds, long legged Spanish herding pigs and mules) were bartered from, or provided by, Cuban plantation owners (Clayton:I:373). DeSoto's livestock count came to over five hundred, including at least two hundred and thirty-seven horses (ibid.; Rangel in Clayton:I:254).
On orders from the King, seven deep draft vessels, bound ultimately for Vera Cruz, New Spain (Mexico), were used to transport DeSoto's stores, animals, six-hundred forty men, their servants and women from Cuba to Florida (Clayton:I:252-253). Those ships would then be on their way to Mexico. Two shallow draft vessels, owned by DeSoto, carried a number of the force. They set sail from Havana on May 18, 1539. DeSoto's object was to land his horses, his precious cargo (Hoffman in Clayton:I:442), as soon as possible; lengthy sea passages were known to cause broken legs and thereby attrition among the horses.
Juan Ponce de Leon had explored Florida's nearby coast and discovered Charlotte Harbor in 1513 but died from wounds received somewhere between it and the Bay of Juan Ponce on his return to colonize in 1521 (Davis 1935:41-43; Lawson 1946:55; Morison 1974:510; Wiecknieski 1962:39; Williams 1986:41-46). The Bay of Juan Ponce is located sixty miles northeast of Key West, above Cape Sable.
In 1528, Panfilo de Narvaez (with Cabeza de Vaca), on a much smaller scale than Desoto, aimed to colonize Charlotte Harbor but a storm kept him from first stopping at Havana to procure needed provisions (Vaca in Hodge 1907:18). Narvaez' fleet was blown into the Gulf of Mexico, leaving one ship behind. He found Florida several days later (Ibid.), but with a critical food shortage, Narvaez was forced to disembark his army between breaker islands (ibid.:19-23). He dispatched his ships to Havana for supplies with orders to meet him further up the coast where they all surmised Juan Ponce's good harbor to be located (ibid.:23). They had been blown further north than they realized, however, and the captains of the vessels reported finding the harbor just five leagues south of his disembarkation point (ibid.:125). Stump Pass, at today's Englewood on Lemon Bay, was exactly that distance from the mouth of Charlotte Harbor on the Florida Township survey of 1896; Narvaez had disembarked there.
Since on their return Narvaez and his army could not be found, the captains of the vessels searched the shoreline for him, but to no avail. The next year, rescuers sent to find Narvaez also found Charlotte Harbor, thinking he would have settled there by that time. He had been there but had a skirmish with that harbor's chief, Hirrihigua, and led his army away (Inca in Clayton:II:101). The rescuers noticed a sheet of paper on a stick at the head of the harbor, which they thought Narvaez had left for them (Elvas in Clayton:I:60-61). When some of the men disembarked to read the note they were captured by Chief Hirrihigua (Inca in Clayton:II:101-102), whose nose had been cut off by Narvaez.
One of the rescuers, a boy named Juan Ortiz, spent several years of captivity and torture by Chief Hirrihigua, who understandably had much enmity of Spaniards (ibid.:102-115; Elvas in Clayton:I:60-62). Ortiz survived, however, and learned the chief's language in the process; the other captured men were killed. Ortiz would finally escape, with help from Chief Hirrihigua's daughter, to her fiancee's nearby village (ibid.). He was given safe refuge by her fiancee, Chief Mococo, and learned that chief's language during years of hospitable captivity (ibid.). DeSoto's scouts, in the luckiest stroke of the entire campaign, would find Ortiz shortly after their landing (ibid.; DeSoto in Clayton:I:376; Rangel in Clayton:I:255). He would serve DeSoto's army as guide and chief interpreter for the rest of his life. DeSoto's people would reward the good Chief Mococo with excess Spanish armor when the port was finally abandoned. Florida's early pioneers would find that armor and call Chief Mococo's abandoned village site "Old Spanish Fields", as we shall see.