#20 The End of Hernando de Soto

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2021

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we follow the Soto expedition in the American south from the aftermath of the battle of Mabila to the “discovery” of the Mississippi River with more than the usual number of qualifiers, Soto’s anticlimactic death, the first true exploration of northeastern Texas, a journey past the site of New Orleans, the ultimate escape of almost half the expeditionaries and, as promised, a short review of the weird recommendations of the Federal government’s De Soto Expedition Commission. Enjoy!

Selected references for this episode

David Ewing Duncan, Hernando De Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas

Final Report of the United States: De Soto Expedition Commission

Quigualtam (Wikipedia)

Luis de Moscoso Alvarado (Wikipedia)

Rex W. Strickland, “Moscoso’s Journey through Texas,” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, October 1942.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast, episode 20, the end of Fernando de Soto.
0:15.0	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and we are recording this episode on May 3, 2021 in Austin, Texas.
0:23.7	Once again, music for the writing of this episode was supplied by WWOZ in New Orleans and the Guardians of the Groove.
0:33.6	Last time, we followed Hernando de Soto's expedition on a circuitous route through the American Southeast during 1540,
0:42.8	ending with a confrontation between Soto and Tuscaloosa, the great chief of the Adahatchie, in the Battle of Mabila.
0:51.9	That battle was by far the bloodiest involving Europeans on American soil up to that
0:57.3	point, and probably for a long time thereafter. Of course, we don't know whether Indians had fought
1:04.8	bigger battles among themselves, but generalizing here, intertribal Indian warfare was not known to have piled up huge body counts.
1:15.2	Mabila resulted in the deaths of many hundreds of Indians at least, perhaps a couple of thousand.
1:22.8	By comparison, total Indian casualties during King Phillips' war, from 1675 to 1678, reckoned by some to be the bloodiest war in American history in proportionate terms, were perhaps 3,000 dead and wounded.
1:39.0	During the so-called Indian wars in the American West between 1850 and 1890, there were roughly 15,000 Indian casualties
1:47.2	all told, of which only a subset, maybe half that number, were deaths. So if Indian deaths on one
1:54.5	day in October 1540, range from the high hundreds to 2,000 or more,
2:05.1	Mabila was a monster of a battle by the standards of the time and place.
2:10.4	For the Spanish, the notional victory was Pyrrhic,
2:14.6	in addition to 40 or so dead and 250 wounded.
2:23.5	The chronicler Biedma reported a total of 760 arrow wounds. The Spanish had lost most of their baggage when Tuscaloosa persuaded the Entrada's Indian porters to switch sides. The expedition,
2:31.1	now licking its wounds somewhere between Mobile and Selma,
2:36.0	not far from the Gulf Coast in November 1540, was at a turning point.
2:43.0	Should they go to the Gulf and look for a lift home, find a place to settle down,
2:48.5	or keep up the search for the next rich Indian civilization.
2:53.4	Regardless, winter was coming.
	...

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