In 1936, Congress created a Commission to identify Conquest Trails deep into America. Desoto's was the first, but unknown in 1936, foreign diseases, introduced by DeSoto's army, had changed America dramatically. Dr. John R. Swanton, a Harvard anthropologist, was appointed to Chair both that Commission and its Fact Finding Committee by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dr. Swanton presented a report describing DeSoto's activity in ten southern states nine months later. "Refined" then published by Congress in 1939, The Final Report of the United States DeSoto Expedition Commission still stands as our primary intelligence of Native America in classrooms across the country, despite the fact that modern science casts considerable doubt on its validity. Independent studies, outside the influence of Depression era politics, have illustrated oversights of DeSoto's peoples' descriptions. Mostly written in Spanish, they have all been translated since Schoolcraft's DeSoto Trail theory of 1857, which the Commission adopted, was hypothesized. Evidence presented here would indicate that America was extensively inhabited, at places which are cities today, by Native Americans in the 1540's. Conquistadors visited and described many of them. America was not a vast wilderness prior to the Pilgrims landing, as today's teachers and students are taught to believe it was.
This Internet Site presents what Spaniards wrote in light of modern scientific technology, improved Native American cultural understanding and complete English translation of all known records of DeSoto's expedition. Its conclusions vary substantially with the Commission's. The Commission proposed that archaeology would someday prove its route beyond doubt, but that science has failed to prove DeSoto's presence anywhere except in Florida, and the evidence found there cast serious doubt on the Commission's theory. On the other hand, the sciences of cartography, geography and medicine have made giant strides this century, well beyond anything imagined in 1936. Satellite imagery, laser topography and computer graphics provide very precise description of this entire continent. Geographers have shown that its contours - its mountains, rivers, plains and swamps - many of which were described in DeSoto's people's records, have not formed or moved since DeSoto was here. Modern maps and aerial photographs were used in this study to track DeSoto's army.
Native America was described by DeSoto's people in personal journals, but the Native Americans described in them were alien to the Commission's comprehension of Native Americans. Today, modern medical science has shown the profound effect the world's diseases had on Native America's population shortly after DeSoto's people introduced foreign viruses to this continent. Giant Indian cities, farms and provinces, all described by DeSoto's people at places which are cities today, were destroyed by epidemic; few were found by later explorers from whom was gained the knowledge of Native America which the Commission, and most of today's public, learned in school. The Commission, however, did not realize this and chose not to believe DeSoto's peoples' descriptions of Native American lifestyle. The DeSoto chronicles were dismissed by the Commission, for the most part, as simple fabrication. The names of various Indian villages, recorded in the DeSoto Chronicles, were used, however, by he who proposed the DeSoto Trail theory which the Commission largely adopted. Today we know that most of those villages were misidentified; Indian villages had moved, along with their inhabitants, away from contaminated population centers shortly after DeSoto arrived and well before other Europeans reported where they found them. Southwestward Tribal displacement, due to disease, intertribal competition, war and European colonization recently became apparent owing to long term study of Native American oral history. Unknown to archaeologists, America's cities were built over Indian village sites, thereby obscuring evidence of "Contact" Indian occupation and sixteenth century Spanish presence there.
The DeSoto Trail theory which the Commission adopted has had many "refinements" over the years, mostly by Southern archaeologists incorporating locally favored Indian sites and mostly along the lines of the Commission's DeSoto Trail theory. The ones which seemed more agreeable to modern archaeologists in 1985 were included in the Introduction to the most recent verbatim reprint of the Commission's Report. Dr. Jeffrey P. Brain, a Harvard anthropologist, wrote that Introduction, highlighted several refinements to the Commission's theory and presented a map of a broader swath of DeSoto Trail possibilities across the Southern States. He concluded that, short of finding more original documentation of the expedition, archaeology is the only prospect for refining the Commission's Trail theory.
History's deprived, given today's continued acceptance of the Commission's erroneous report, are the Native Americans who have never been recognized for having developed a highly sophisticated culture, in giant cities and provinces, before the world's diseases destroyed their culture. Since the Commission chose to ignore what Desoto's people wrote about Indians, our understanding of them has been frozen in time. Itinerant Indians living in teepees, riding horses, waiving spears and shooting arrows at frontier settlers is the common stereotype of Native Americans. Few Americans learned what DeSoto's people reported about them in American schools. Reluctance to have us believe what DeSoto's people wrote about Indians, living precisely where American cities are built today, may be owed to aging Federal litigation involving Native American land claims, or perhaps prejudicial politics played a part in the 1930's Congressional view, given DeSoto's people's reports of Native America's complete inter-racial harmony and respect for women. Dr. Swanton, an otherwise brilliant scholar, got caught up in the politics of his day, seemingly against his will, but for President Roosevelt's Reconstruction efforts in a Depression ravaged America. We, as concerned citizens, have every reason to investigate what DeSoto's people wrote about Native America's people, given that everything else they wrote about their journey through Native America has proven to be credible.