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Chapter 2 Hosting Strangers, 1541–1650 On a sunny morning in late June 1541, the town of Pacaha was bustling. In fields outside the town walls, women used their imported stone hoes to weed and break up the ground around the new corn and bean shoots, while other Pacahans collected the rabbits caught in the snares dispersed throughout the cornfields. A canal brought water from the nearby Mississippi River to the moat that surrounded Pacaha on three sides, 100 feet wide, by one visitor’s estimation. A palisade of tall mortared posts enclosed the town’s fourth side. The broad hill that the town sat upon granted protection from flood waters and a long-distance view of the plain below. Atop the main hill rose several large mounds, on which sat many of its homes and public buildings.1 In the moat and canal, fishermen had cast their nets and were bringing in bass and catfish. Other Pacahans had gathered clay from the edge of the canal and were carrying it in large baskets along the road that led up to the town. In one of the town’s hundreds of wooden buildings, women picked out the pebbles and grass from the clay, sifted out any smaller debris, worked it with their hands into long coils, and built the coils into jars, bowls, and pitchers. Nearby, other women etched, rubbed, and painted elaborate designs on their vessels. In another building, men worked local and imported flinty chert into sharp arrowheads, which they bound to cane shafts. Near the canals, builders used torches and stone tools to carve out and shape twenty- to thirty-foot trees into boats. Skill and industry in boat-building and weapon-making had helped Pacaha to become a dominant chiefdom during the waves of dramatic change that racked the region in the previous centuries and to extend its influence over other towns on both sides of the Mississippi. Traders from the West walked past the fishermen and clay collectors to arrive at the town’s gate. They stated their business to the sentries and proceeded to the main plaza, hoping to find Pacahan partners as well as traders from the East with whom they could exchange their salt, bison hides, and wildcat furs for corn and beans from last year’s harvest, dried fish, shell beads, and freshwater pearls. At one end of the plaza, a priest was tending to temple business. On top of the largest of the platform mounds, the chiefdom ’s young chief, called simply Pacaha, strolled around his spacious residence . His dominion included not only this town but scores of nearby towns inhabited by tens of thousands of people. At the top of one of the palisade’s towers, a lookout surveyed the countryside. To the east, the Mississippi River rolled along, sparkling brown in the late spring sun. To the west, the flat bottom lands were interrupted by a single long ridge. Suddenly, the lookout glimpsed an alarming sight: an army approaching from the south. Five thousand warriors wore tall plumes and carried bows and arrows. The lookout recognized them as soldiers of Casqui, the chiefdom just to the south. Worn out by war with Pacaha that had lasted for generations, the Casquis had been losing ground. The last thing the people of Pacaha expected was an army of Casquis advancing on their own capital. What inspired this audacity? The answer marched in front of the Casquis: hundreds of warriors carrying gleaming spears and clanking swords, with crossbows strapped across their backs, some clad from head to toe in a gray metal that reflected the sun. Alongside them, other warriors in similar attire rode fearsome beasts, even taller than bison. In front walked dogs, bigger than the Pacahans had ever seen, snarling and baring their frightful teeth. The Casquis had found an ally—the Spanish conquistadors led by Hernando de Soto.2 The chief of Pacaha could more easily deduce the reason for Casqui’s boldness than the answers to his next logical questions: who were these new warriors with their strange implements, and how should he deal with them? The chiefs of Pacaha and Casqui, like sixteenth-century people across the Americas, had to figure out how to understand and interact with Europeans. In the mid-continent, Spaniards appeared as roving outlaws, different from normal visitors—traders, friendly diplomats, and enemy warriors. These men seemed to have no home and no clear identity or intent. While...

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