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Hernando de Soto:
A Savage Quest in the Americas
Colonial Period
Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas. By David Ewing Duncan. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. xxxvii, 570 pp. Paper, $21.95. This volume is a welcome contribution to Soto studies. Admirably researched and meticulously annotated, it draws together all known threads in the life story of one of the principals of the New World conquista. Soto is of particular importance to North American history, being the first to explore deeply into the interior vastness of the southeastern United States. The chronicles of that expedition are a source of invaluable, sometimes unique, information on the invading Europeans as well as the Native Americans who suffered because of them. Duncan offers little new here, however, as he essentially repeats the current consensus on these well-studied subjects. His major contribution is to look at the entire life of Hernando de Soto, and not just those last three years.
The problem confronting Duncan is that Soto, typical of his brotherhood, left so few personal documents, and these were mostly of an official or legal nature, so that we never meet the man himself. His youth remains conjectural, and the exploits of maturity can only be deduced from others, critics and admirers alike. The result is that we learn once again that Soto was a brave cavalier, skilled military strategist, effective leader of men and that he was greedy, brutal, and driven. In other words, he was a typical conquistador who conformed to the "God, glory, gold" standard. That he cannot be separated from this cliché leaves him still an elusive if not enigmatic character.
Another problem that hampers the telling of the last three years of Soto's life is that the route of the entrada into La Florida is unknown. The uncertainty is not essential to Duncan's story, but he feels compelled to accept the current theories of Charles Hudson and his colleagues, whose arguments are plausible but still speculative. To be fair, Duncan does play devil's advocate at certain stages and casts doubt on some of Hudson's conclusions (pp. 257-58), but time and again he takes refuge in what he considers majority agreement by most scholars (p. 359)--a dangerous acquiescence to an unproven theory.
Of the 500 pages in the book, half are devoted to Soto's activities in Central and South America, which of course consumed most of his mature life and are the best- chronicled. The first two years of his most famous exploit into La Florida cover another 160 pages. The third year of the entrada, and Soto's last, is described in only 20 pages. The brevity is due in part to the sketchiness of the chronicles and the even greater uncertainty as to the army's whereabouts, but we are left with the feeling that the author, like the army itself, ran out of steam. It is a pity, because the last year, full of the anguish and disappointment of this driven man, who must have realized the fullness of [End Page 177] his failure, might provide the ultimate test of his character. That we cannot come to grips with this final act is not truly the fault of the author, but it leaves us unsatisfied: we have not met the challenge of "untangling the real Hernando de Soto from the man of legend" (p. xx).
Such flaws are probably unavoidable at our present state of knowledge and should serve to spark future research. In the meantime, this well-written and fully documented biography provides a solid foundation for that research.
Jeffrey P. Brain
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass.
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Hernando de Soto: A Savage Quest in the Americas (review)
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