Alabama and the Borderlands: From Prehistory To Statehood

7 Charles H. Fairbanks - From Exploration to Settlement: Spanish Strategies for Colonization

7 From Exploration to Settlement: Spanish Strategies for Colonization Charles H. Fairbanks The expedition of Hernando de Soto through considerable parts of Florida was not well recorded, at least by modern standards. While John R. Swanton and the United States De Soto Expedition Commission in I939 settled on what they felt was his most probable route, they had little archaeological evidence on which to base their deliberations. Since then, some forty-five years of research have helped clarify some points of Indian cultural inventories and have helped to define the styles of Spanish artifacts. We should therefore be able to make more positive statements, but I must confess I am doubtful that we can do this. The documents remain "secretive" about precise places. Nevertheless, I will discuss the sorts of evidence that have been accumulated since I939, and add a little weight to Swanton's arguments. During those forty-odd years the objectives of archaeological and anthropological research have changed dramatically. Publication of The Archaeology of the Florida Gulf Coast in I949 marked a significant synthesis and classification of cultures and periods of Florida aboriginal cultures.l Since then, archaeologists have managed to add only minor details to the chronology constructed by Willey. What we have done, or begun to do, is think about what happened during, and especially after, the events of I539 and I540. As the work of archaeologists has become more concerned with explaining past cultural events in terms of the processes at work, 128 FROM EXPLORATION TO SETTLEMENT there has been a shift to the general from the particular. These are the explanations that seem to interest archaeologists today. Few would dispute Swanton's assumption that Soto and his army landed on the west coast of the peninsula. As he pointed out, only two major bays could have been the ones discovered by the Spaniards. While Swanton considered Charlotte Harbor, he came out rather firmly for a landing on the shores of Tampa Bay. This is also my opinion; besides, Charlotte Harbor presents problems in its shallowness,2 and the distance from Charlotte Harbor to Apalachee is considerable-too far to have been traversed in the time involved. Linguistic evidence of Timucuan place names in the narratives also points to the more northern location, and modem archaeology casts doubt on the Terra Caia Island aboriginal shell mound as the probable site. We now look for later cultural complexes that show strong Mississippian elements. Safety Harbor and other sites of that period on the northern and northeastern fringes of Tampa Bay fill the bill much better. Recently, a few students have proposed that the Soto landing may have been at the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, at the southern extremity of Charlotte Harbor. The route of the expedition is postulated to have been up that river, to the large earthwork sites near Lake Okeechobee. In my view, the Ortona Mound Group, some 40 miles inland, would serve as the likely site, as its collection of early glass beads fits the time frame very well. An argument against the mouth of the Caloosahatchee River is the much greater distance to Apalachee, although slow progress from the landing place to Apalachee would have allowed the Spaniards to adjust to New World conditions of march. However, the fact that place names, and primarily persons' names, between the landing place and Apalachee are clearly Timucuan-and never Calusa-supports the northern location. Also, the Charlotte Harbor or Caloosahatchee-mouth landing would have added four rivers to cross. Swanton could not fit them into the descriptions and time frame, nor can I. Further, the overt hostility of the Calusa to the earlier landing in that area by Ponce de Leon seems essentially different from the timorous reception that Soto received. Fifteen years later, Menendez found the Calusa (probably at Estero) still intransigent. Early sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts from both the Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay vicinities consist largely of distinctive glass beads that reflect trading activities by Soto and other members of the expedition. Columbus, on his first voyage, planned to barter 129 Charles H. Fairbanks for spices and other East Indian products, and this practice continued some time, especially among the various exploring expeditions. Documents and archaeological sites demonstrate that brass hawk bells, copper maravedi coins, and glass beads were frequent items of this barter. These, moreover, have shown up in a number of sites in the Southeast and...