Towns and Temples Along the Mississippi

10. The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Mabila to the Mississippi River

10 The Hernando de Soto Expedition: From Mabila to the Mississippi River Charles Hudson Marvin T Smith Chester B. DePratter Hernando de Sota's expedition into the southeastern United States was dealt a serious blow in the battle with Tascaluza and his allies at Mabila. De Soto lost men and horses, as well as clothing, food, and equipment. About 150 of his soldiers were wounded, many with multiple wounds (Fidalgo of Elvas 1866:89-90; RanjeI1922:127). He also lost the pearls that he had taken from the temple at Cofitachequi and that he intended to use as evidence of the wealth that could be obtained in the Southeast . His soldiers were dispirited. They had not yet discovered great wealth or a state-level society, and the Indians at Mabila had been so bellicose it was clear that it would be very costly to subdue the people of the Southeast by force. De Soto was aware that if he followed his plan of going south to rendezvous with the ships that were to meet him at Pensacola Bay, his army could disintegrate, and he would be ruined. At present, all that can be said about the location of Mabila is that it was in the vicinity of the Lower Cahaba River and perhaps at the site of Old Cahawba (lDS32), which lay on the western side of the mouth of the Cahaba River. Two indirect kinds of evidence argue for our placing Mabila in the vicinity of the Lower Cahaba River (Figure 10-1). One is that this location is consistent with the travel time of de Soto's line of march from Athahachi, whose location near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers is confirmed by evidence from the Tristan de Luna expedition (De Pratter et al. 1985:121; Hud'ion et al. 1985a). This location for Mabila is also consistent with placing Piachi-the town de Soto visited just before arriving at Mabila -in the vicinity of Durant Bend, where the topography accords well with Ranjel's description. A second indirect kind of evidence is that Mabila was a heavily fortified frontier town, and while ceramics do not always co181 182 • Hudson, Smith, and DePratter miles 100 kiJometen 100 Figure 10-1. The de Soto Route from Athahachi to Quizquiz incide with polities, the Lower Cahaba River lies near a cultural boundary between Pensacola phase and Moundville III phase to the north as well as a phase farther up the Alabama River that Ned Jenkins has described as a Moundville variant 0enkins 1982:121; Sheldon and Jenkins 1986:98-99). Moreover, uninhabited buffer zones apparently lay between our proposed The Hernando de Soto Expedition • 183 location for Mabila and the Moundville complex to the northwest and also between our proposed location for Mabila and a cluster of sites near the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers to the east (Knight 1988). Finally, these locations are consistent in a general way with events that occurred during the Luna expedition (Hudson et al. 1985a). A recent survey of the Lower Cahaba River by Boyce Driskell under the auspices of the Alabama Historical Commission has revealed substantial late prehistoric sites at two locations on the river-Old Cahawba and Haysop Creek near Centreville-and very little in between (Carey Oakley, personal communication). The site at Haysop Creek does not fit our reconstruction of the route of the expedition. It is too far distant from the Alabama River to have been the site of Mabila. Although it is possible that this survey failed to detect one or more sites in between these two, on the basis of the evidence that is now available, Old Cahawba is the most likely site for Mabila on the Cahaba River itself. Even more recently (February 1987), Vernon]. Knight,]r. conducted a limited excavation at Old Cahawba to determine whether this location could be eliminated as the site of Mabila. Knight found postmolds of a palisade like that described by the chroniclers; surrounding them was a ditch (not mentioned by the chroniclers); and in the bottom of the ditch were pieces ofLate Pensacola phase pottery that date to the sixteenth century. Near the site is a relic channel of the Cahaba River that could be the "pond" mentioned by Fidalgo of Elvas (1866:89). At present we can only conclude that Mabila could have been at the Old Cahawba site but that far...