DeSoto's Midwestern Trail
by Donald E. SheppardHernando de Soto entered Kentucky on May 10th, 1541, under a Full Moon from Clarksville, Tennessee. He attained a truce with the natives there which would last through Kentucky and the next three States - with only one exception: at the Ohio River, Kentucky's northern border. The Spaniards described one Indian Tribe in Western Kentucky between the Cumberland and Ohio Rivers. It took most of the army only five days to hike the 80 miles from Fort Campbell, near the Cumberland River, to where the scouts reported sighting the Ohio River near Henderson. They marched quickly, just over six leagues (~16 miles) per day, across Western Kentucky's pastures because there are no burdensome swamps or rivers to ford. Stops were made at villages along their way. Today's Hopkinsville, Madisonville and Sebree were probably raided for favorite morsels: corn, women and dogs. From May 21st. until the next Full Moon on June 8th. they camped just above Henderson while building rafts to cross the Ohio River into Indiana. Four accounts of their Kentucky adventure are presented here; three written by eye-witnesses and one based on interviews with survivors.
DeSoto's people called Western Kentucky's Indian Tribe by slightly different names, ranging from Quizquiz (influenced by a place name of renown from DeSoto's Conquest of Peru) to Quizqui to Chisca, all sounding about the same in their language. The French would call them Casqui and the English Kashinampo. That tribe shared a unique language with the Casqui of Southern Indiana, the Alabamu of Central Tennessee and the Coste of Eastern Tennessee. They lived next to each other when DeSoto visited each of them. That entire Indian language group would be scattered well before being described by later Europeans.
Somewhere in Quizqui Province, probably at Madisonville, near its center; "The Indians moved out of their village and left the food they had in their houses for the Castilians. (Some of the Spaniards) remained in that village called Chisca for six days in order to care for the sick and wounded... The next day... (they) marched for four short daily journeys of three leagues (8 miles) each, since the indispositions of the sick and wounded did not permit longer ones." ©University of Alabama Press They would have camped near Slaughters, Sebree and Canoe Creek's East Fork along their way to the outskirts of Henderson, where the army was by then: 32 miles from Madisonville.
"There they saw the Great River. On Saturday, the twenty-first of May (1541), the (reassembled) Army moved on to a savannah between the river and a small town (Henderson), and they made camp (near Audubon State Park), and began to make four rafts in order to cross to the other side." Others said, "... they came to a passage where they could cross the Great River, not that they could ford it, but where there was an open passage for reaching it, for previously all along its banks there had been extremely large and very dense woodlands, and the banks on either side were very high and steep and one could not go up or down them." The river banks flatten north of Audubon State Park where there's a horse racing track on the grassy north bank near Green River "Island," as that bank is called today. The river's flats have shifted in five centuries; the "Island" on the north bank was part of Kentucky at Statehood but, in 1541, DeSoto found it about where it is today, slightly narrower and attached to the north bank.
"Many of the Conquistadors said that the river was larger than the Danube. On the other bank of the river up to seven thousand Indians gathered to defend the crossing with up to two-thousand canoes, all with shields which were made of canes joined together, so strong and so tightly sewn that a crossbow would scarcely pierce them." The Indians gathered on the west bank of the Ohio River which was filled by Spring run-off and April showers.
"We immediately moved there (very near Audubon State Park on the river's east bank), houses were built, and the camp was established on a level place, a crossbow flight from the river. All of the corn of all the towns behind (including Henderson, Sebree and Madisonville) was collected there, and the men set to work immediately to cut timber and square the planks for rafts. Immediately the Indians came down river (from Evansville, Indiana), landed, and told the governor that they were vassals of a great lord called Aquixo, who was lord of many towns and people on the other side of the river (he lived at Angel Mounds State Park and controlled the Evansville area; a large scattering of farms and villages at the time)."
"Here (from Audubon State Park to Spottsville, east of the Park) we found the first little walnuts (pecans) of the land, which are much better than those from Spain (they are still the pride of Northern Kentucky - the pecan breeding stock of America - the best in the World). This town was near the Great River. They told us that this and other towns there pay tribute to a lord of Pacaha, who was well known in all the land." He would be found in Terre Haute, Indiana. DeSoto was headed his way from the time he crossed the Cumberland River and first heard about Pacaha at Clarksville.
"During this time the Indians each day at the hour of three in the afternoon (with the sun at their backs, thereby blinding the Spaniards) placed themselves in two hundred and fifty canoes that they had there, very large and well shielded, and drew near the shore where we were with a great yell. They shot all the arrows that they could and returned to the other bank." The Natives assembled on the west bank of the Ohio River directly opposite today's Audubon State Park, where the Spaniards were building their rafts.
"Arrows came raining and the air was filled with them, and with such a yell, so that it seemed a matter of great dread; but when they saw that the work on the rafts did not let up for them, they said that Pacaha, whose men they were, commanded them to remove themselves from there, and thus they left the crossing undefended. And on Saturday, the eight of June (Full Moon), all the army crossed the Great River in four rafts, and they gave thanks to God, because in their opinion, nothing so difficult could ever be offered them again."
Another eyewitness says: "... they made four rafts, in three of which, one early morning three hours before it became light, DeSoto ordered a dozen horse to enter, four to each one - men whom he was most confident would succeed in gaining the land in spite of the Indians and assure the crossing or die in doing it - and with them some of foot - crossbowmen and rowers - to place them on the other side. In the other raft, he ordered Juan de Guzman to cross with men of foot... And because the current was strong, they went up stream along the shore for a quarter of a league (almost three-quarters of a mile) and in crossing they were carried down with the current of the river and went to land opposite the place where the camp was (there's reason to believe that DeSoto launched the rafts east of camp to surprise the Natives; the Ohio River's big bend, which DeSoto's camp was inside of, afforded him perfect opportunity to do so; rafts had been carried some distance at night elsewhere for the same purpose). At a distance of two stones' throw before reaching shore the men of horse went from the rafts on horseback to a sandy place of hard sand and clear ground (on Green River "Island" at today's Ohio River Bridge) where all the men landed without any accident. As soon as those who crossed first were on the other side, the rafts returned immediately to where the governor was and in two hours after the sun was up all the men finished crossing. The crossing was nearly a half league (about a mile) wide, and if a man stood on the other side, one could not tell whether he were a man or something else..."
Previous historians have pointed out that DeSoto's Secretary, from whom was gained our knowledge of the timing of DeSoto's activity in America, erred in reporting the day or date of the Great River's crossing. He wrote, "On Saturday, the 8th of June, all the army crossed the great river," but the 8th of June was a Wednesday in 1541. Historians have deduced that June 18th, which WAS a Saturday, was the actual date of the crossing. NONE of them, however, checked the timing of the moon's phases during DeSoto's Conquest. June 8th, 1541, was precisely Full Moon, a circumstance which DeSoto had wisely exploited elsewhere for making dawn raids on unsuspecting Native American villagers. If DeSoto's Great River crossing was made on the 18th, the moon would have been small but rising three hours before dawn; allowing for navigation but lessening the chances of the army being seen by the Indians (not much, given that DeSoto's army would have been crossing the river directly INTO the rising moon on June 18th). Either way, DeSoto definitely crossed the Ohio River in June of 1541; not the Mississippi River, as ALL previous historians have mistakenly surmised.
