DeSoto's Western Trails
by Donald E. Sheppard"The governor departed from Nandacao (Waco) for Soacatino (Killeen) and after he had marched for five days arrived at the (Coahuiltec tribe, another of the Hokan speaking group) province of Aays..."© Univ. of Alabama Press at Gatesville, having marched west, up the Brazos River to Valley Mills then around Middle Bosque River gorge. Another officer with the expedition says an Indian, "guided us across rugged land and off road, until finally he told us that he no longer knew where he was leading us, and that his lord had commanded him to lead us where we would die of hunger..." in the desert plains well west of Waco. Continuing, he says, "We took another guide who led us to a province that is called Hais (Gatesville), where cows (buffalo) are in the habit of gathering..." on the edge of the western plains. The first officer continued, "The (Coahuiltec) Indians who lived there had not heard of Christians (from their Tonkawan neighbors), and as soon as they perceived them the country was aroused... the affair lasted the greater part of the day before they reached the village... Great damage was done the Indians. The day the governor departed thence, the Indian who was guiding them said that he had heard (Chief) Nondacao say that the Indians of Soacatino (Killeen) had seen Christians. At this all were very glad, as they thought it might be true and that they might have entered New Spain (Mexico)... that Indian led them off the road for two days (southward, to Copperas Cove; still on the edge of the plain). The governor ordered him to be tortured... and another guided him to Soacatino ("east to other towns..." of Tonkawan Indians), whether he arrived the next day (at Killeen then at Belton and Temple a few days later; all east of Copperas Cove's through that large east-west valley where deer are abundant, even today). It was a very poor land and there was great lack of corn there (because the Tonkawan Indians did not plant it; they ate deer, fish and natural vegetation instead). He asked the Indians whether they knew of other Christians. They said they had heard it said that they were traveling about near there to the southward (at San Antonio). We marched for twenty days (to and around Austin) through a poorly populated region (below Little River, including Salado, Holland, Bartlett Granger, Georgetown, Round Rock, Taylor, Coupland and Elgin along the way) where they endured great need and suffered; for the little corn the Indians (probably Caddoan traders) had they hid in the forests and buried it where..." the Spaniards could find only a little, because Tonkawan Indians did not grow corn.
At Temple, before heading south, the King's Agent says that the guides "were leading us to where there were other Christians like us... It seemed afterward to be a lie and that they could not have any news of any others but us; (but) since we had made so many turns, in some of these (towns) they must have heard of our passing..." through Marlin, just east of there, weeks before. Had they followed the advice of the dying Indian at Centerville, they would have saved 10 days getting to Temple. He continues, "We turned south again, with purpose of living or dying traversing to New Spain (Mexico), and we walked about six days journey south and southwest..." pillaging the above mentioned villages around Austin. The first officer says, "On reaching a province called Guasco (Austin, on the Colorado River) they found corn which they loaded (onto) the horses and the Indians whom they were taking..." to serve as pack animals for the army. These Indians, unlike their Tonkawan neighbors, probably grew corn along the banks of the mighty Colorado River.
Austin was the end of the road for DeSoto's army. Scouting parties were sent out, in several directions, to explore under Harvest Moon; one west, up the Colorado River through the Texas Hill Country, the other southwest, to San Antonio. "There (at Austin) the Indians told them that 10 days' journey thence toward the west was a river called Daycao, where they sometimes went to hunt in the mountains and kill deer (probably near the Llano/Colorado River junction); and that on the other side (of the mountains) they had seen people, but did not know what village it was (probably Llano Indians). There (at Austin) the Christians took what corn they found and could carry (on the scouting parties) and after marching for ten days through an unpeopled region reached the (Llano) river of which the Indians had spoken." They found a poor village and brought back two captives "to the river where the governor was awaiting them (on the Colorado River at Austin). They continued to question the Indians in order to learn from them the population to the westward, but there was no Indian in the camp who understood their (Llano) language."
The other officer says, at Austin, "There we halted and sent ten men on swift horses to travel eight or nine days, or as many as they were able (with the corn they carried from Austin for their horses), to see if they could find some town in order to replenish the corn so we could continue on our way, and they traveled as far as they could and came upon some poor people who did not have houses..."
The scouts that went southwest reported, "...they went to another village called Naquiscoso (San Marcos). The Indians said they had never heard of other Christians. The governor ordered them put to the torture, and they said that Christians had reached another domain ahead called Nasacahoz... (Cabeza de Vaca, a shipwrecked Spaniard, had passed through there 5 years before). The governor (with the scouts) reached Nasacahoz (New Braunfels, probably in the same province below the Colorado River) in two days and some Indian women were captured there. Among them was one who said that she had seen Christians and that she had been in their hands but escaped. The governor sent a captain and 15 horsemen to the place where the Indian woman said she had seen them (at San Antonio), in order to ascertain whether there were any trace of horses or any token of their having reached there." Ten miles down the road the woman recanted her story and the scouts explored the area, "...and inasmuch as the land (around San Antonio) was very poor in corn, and there was no tidings of any village westward (of San Antonio), they returned to Guasco (Austin)." Both scouting parties had gone out and returned about the same time while the army pillaged the villages north of Austin, accounting for the reported twenty day time span for them to reach Austin from Killeen.
"The governor (Moscoso) ordered the captains and principal persons summoned (once the army had reassembled at Austin), in order to plan what he should do after hearing their opinions (based on their intelligence of the land, as is done there today: Austin is the Capitol of Texas). Most of them said that in their opinion they should return to the great river of Guachoya (the Mississippi River at Lake Village, Arkansas), for there was plenty of corn at Nilco and thereabout (just below Arkansas Post). They said that during the winter they would make brigantines and the following summer they would descend the river in them to look for a sea (the Gulf of Mexico), and once having reached the sea, they would coast along it to New Spain (Mexico), which, although it seemed a difficult thing... it was their last resort because they could not travel by land for lack of an interpreter (who could lead them to a place where there was enough food to sustain the army). They maintained that the land beyond the river of Daycao (the Colorado River), where they were, was the land which Cabeza de Vaca said in his relation he had traveled (he actually traveled through San Antonio then up the Rio Grande, which DeSoto's people mistook for the Colorado River, the largest they had seen in the west), and was of Indians who wandered about like Arabs without having a settled abode anywhere, subsisting on prickly pears (cactus buds), the roots of plants and the game they killed. And if that were so, if they entered it and found no food in order to pass the winter, they could not help but perish, for it was already the beginning of October; and if they stayed longer, they could not turn back because of the waters and snows, nor could they feed themselves in such a poor land. The governor, who was desirous now of getting a good night's sleep, rather than govern and conquer a land where so many hardships presented themselves to him, at once turned back to the place whence they had come ...it grieved many of them to turn back, for they would rather have risked death in the land of Florida than to leave it poor."
"From Daycao (Austin), where they were, it was 150 leagues (400 miles, a precise measure) to the great (Mississippi) river, a distance they had marched continually to the westward." The other officer says, "We returned along the same road that we had followed..." The army timed its departure from Austin to arrive at Mission Tejas, the most populated part of Texas at that time, under the Full Moon of October 23rd, 1542, so the horsemen could raid it from afar at dawn; their normal style of taking heavily populated areas. They had 3 weeks to get there. Some of the men told an historian, "...to avoid the bad country and the uninhabited regions they had passed through when they came (to Austin from Mission Tejas), they learned that by returning by a circular route to the right of the one by which they had come, the road they would travel would be shorter... (we call it the Old San Antonio Road) ...they marched in an arc toward the south." They departed Austin southward to Bastrop and spent several days there, gathering what they could, "and it seemed to them that they were going too far down from the province of Guachoya, to which they wished to return (Lake Village, Arkansas), so they turned toward the east, taking care always to ascend somewhat to the north." They followed the (very) Old San Antonio Road from Bastrop to Bryan and Crockett, spending days at each, and on to Mission Tejas, which the horsemen struck, on Full Moon, in advance of the army, then on to Nacogdoches. There they departed the Old San Antonio Road for Shreveport, Louisiana. That trail and Road would become the main entrance route for Texas settlers three centuries later.
An officer says, "On the backward journey, they found corn to eat with great difficulty, for where they had already passed the land was left devastated (Indians had been infected by the world's diseases brought in by the Spanish army), and any corn which the Indians had, they had hidden. The towns which they had burned in Naguatex, which was now regretted by them, had now been rebuilt and the houses were full of corn." The Hasinai Caddoan people, who lived at Mission Tejas, had avoided the Spaniards while they were there; they were not as effected by European and African diseases as tribes which had mingled. "This region (Mission Tejas/Caddo Mounds) was very populated and well supplied with food..."
Most of the place names recorded in Texas by DeSoto's army appear to be of Caddoan origin, despite the fact that many other language groups lived in Texas at the time; particularly the Tonkawans, from Waco southward, and the Coahuiltecs to westward. The Spaniards had relied, however, on Caddoan Indians from Shreveport for translations while in Texas, which would account for the lack of certain Tonkawan and other group place names in the Spanish journals. The Aays, as mentioned above, were probably Coahuiltec; hostile toward Caddoans and their country not well known to Caddoan guides.
The fact that Mission Tejas had been restored when the army returned would indicate that its surrounding villagers, others of the Caddoan language group, had helped the Hasinai rebuild during the army's absence. The army had been in Tonkawan and Coahuiltec Indian Country while those villages were being rebuilt. The army proceeded, without incident, onward to...